Travelers sleep as others wait inside the Greyhound Bus terminal
But what about the rest of us? The American consumer can usually be counted on to make the Thanksgiving-Christmas period the years busiest travel season, with people skipping work and skipping town to be with loved ones, bask on beaches and generally keep the airline, hotel and destination businesses in business another year.
But this time around theres a recession on, and a war on terrorism, and the particular manner in which the first shot was fired. And between the folks who are too worried about terrorists to fly and those who are too worried about losing their jobs to do much of anything, well, it could get ugly.
Plane? The airline business may never be the same as it was before those planes hit — although air traffic has rebounded slightly since Sept. 11, it was still off 25 percent in October from last years numbers, and most analysts figure the industrys 20-percent reduction in capacity is here for good. That tight supply-demand relationship means that this holiday, even flyers willing to brave the clogged security lines (and they're going to get longer — Congress' new security measures havent even arrived in force yet) and the possibility of another air disaster aren't getting the flying bargains (or empty seats) they might have expected. (On the upside, the airlines' on-time rates have rarely been better.)
George W. Bush has promised to do whatever it takes to prevent UAL machinists from going on strike and finishing off ailing giant United, and other bigs like American, Continental and Delta say theyll make it through — but even high-flying Southwest is expected to bleed red ink this quarter. Before September 11, regional jets and small, nimble carriers were already eating away at the debt-ridden big guys' share of the skies. After Sept. 11, it's starting to look like the comet and the dinosaurs, and this holiday should provide most of the dust.
Train? Heres where the good news starts. Amtrak says it's getting 10 percent more inquiries about tickets for the Thanksgiving period than it did a year ago, when the passenger rail service carried 567,000 people, said spokeswoman Karina Van Veen. And Greyhound Bus Lines reported a 20 percent surge in advance-purchase tickets for the Thanksgiving period and an increase in trips longer than 1,000 miles.
Automobile? The decline in air travel means that the overall number taking airplanes, trains and buses is expected to drop 27 percent, according to the AAA. You guessed it — of the 34.6 million Americans that the association estimates will travel at least 50 miles from home during the Thanksgiving holiday, a record 87 percent are expected to drive.
And why not? Gasoline prices are down near a dollar a gallon and still getting lower, and besides — everybody and his brother just spent October propping up national retail sales by buying brand-new zero-interest-rate automobiles. To grandmothers house we go. But drivers take shorter trips than flyers and riders, spend less on hotels and spend more time at rest stops and less at the mall. They go to less exotic places — Club Med is closing 15 locations due to a 20-percent bookings decline since the 11th. And how'd you like to be in the rental-car business right now?
All in all, it's not exactly going to be a post-apocalyptic wasteland out there on the roads and in the airports and terminals. Plenty of people shaken up by the disasters of the past few months are more eager to be with their friends and family than ever, and new world or not, the busiest holiday season of the year will still be pretty busy — the AAA's 34.6 million guesstimate would be a 6 percent decline from last year. Bad but not disastrous.
Just think twice about giving airline stock for Christmas.