More Americans will travel for turkey

Better confidence reflected in state, where 9 percent will trek at least 50 miles

An estimated 38.4 million Americans, including 608,000 Washington residents, will travel 50 miles or more away from home this Thanksgiving holiday weekend, a 1.4 percent increase compared with last year, AAA said this week.

Last year, Thanksgiving travel dropped a precipitous 25.2 percent as the ongoing housing and financial crisis took hold, AAA said. This year’s expected increase in travel from last year reflects “improved consumer confidence from one year ago, better financial market performance and a growing sense among many consumers that the worst of the global economic crisis is behind us,” AAA researchers said.

Washington state is expected to be one of the top 20 states to produce Thanksgiving holiday travelers this year. Approximately 608,000, or about 9 percent of Washingtonians, will travel 50 miles or more from home, up slightly from last year. Of those travelers, AAA projects that approximately 518,000 will go by car, up about 10 percent, and 46,000 will go by air, down less than 1 percent.

Travelers hitting the road can expect to see higher prices at the pump compared with last year. The average price of self-serve regular unleaded gasoline in Washington is $2.85 a gallon, 62 cents higher than last year. In Idaho, gas prices are also up averaging $2.68 a gallon, 49 cents higher than a year ago. In Oregon the average price is $2.75 this week, up 70 cents a gallon from 2008

Nationally, the average price sits at $2.63 a gallon, 54 cents higher than last year, AAA said.

Thanksgiving travelers will journey an average of 815 miles round trip.

Weather forecasters are calling for a relatively dry day Thursday in the Vancouver-Portland area, with a new storm front moving into the region Friday. Temperatures are expected to remain mild in the 40s, cooling toward the end of the week.

Air travel trends

This year’s decrease in the number of air travelers continues a decadelong trend in which air travel as a percentage of total Thanksgiving travel has declined substantially. Since 2000, the number of Americans traveling by air during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend has dropped 62 percent. AAA says much of the decrease can be attributed to ongoing economic difficulties and the air travel experience itself undergoing a substantial change since the 1990s, with stricter airport security, more frequent flight delays, reduced capacity, and added surcharges and fees.

The decline in air travel has contributed to an increase in auto travel.

Portland International Airport expects 290,000 travelers to pass through the airport this week. That’s an average of 42,000 a day, up from the normal daily average of 33,000. For flight schedules and travel information visit www.pdx.com or call 877-PDX-INFO.

According to AAA’s Leisure Travel Index, a monitor of pricing in 20 popular U.S. cities for hotel and car rentals paired with air travel pricing, the lowest average published airfares for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend are expected to decrease 4 percent from last year to an average of $170 per round trip ticket.

Car rental rates are down 3 percent to an average of $44 per day for a mid-size car.