Majority of Holiday Travel Plans Are First Trips Since Pandemic Hit

A new survey from the online travel-booking site Hopper shows that the majority of Americans who plan to travel during the holidays will do so for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic hit.

That means the roughly six- to seven-week holiday window from Thanksgiving through New Year’s will be the first time that 55 percent of Americans surveyed will leave the house for significant travel in nine months.

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Hopper surveyed 892 people in September, according to Fox News, and found that 52 percent of Americans also said they planned to fly instead of drive for Thanksgiving, with 74 percent saying they planned to fly during the December holidays.

The survey comes less than two weeks after the Flight Safety Foundation, a global advocate for safe flying, released a statement saying the risk of catching COVID-19 on a plane was tiny.

The survey also found that 32 percent of Americans are willing to take a one- to four-hour flight; 25 percent said they would go cross country on a flight between four and eight hours, and 21 percent would fly for eight hours or longer.

It’s baby steps for an industry that is still flying at 62 percent less capacity on domestic flights compared to last year, according to Airlines for America, and down 79 percent on international flights.