Busiest travel day of the holiday week at Sea-Tac Airport



SEATTLE -- Sea-Tac International Airport expects about 900,000 people to travel through the airport from Nov. 20-26 -- with the busiest travel day being Wednesday with more than 160,000 people expected on the eve on Thanksgiving.

“We never travel on Thanksgiving, this is the first time we’ve done it,” said Jenna Mason who was travelling with her family from Kirkland to Florida for the holiday weekend.

She was expecting long delays but was pleasantly surprised.

“We’re coming from Kirkland. We hopped in an Uber and it was super easy, now we’re three hours early. We were expecting it to be about 45 minutes but we got here in about 20 minutes,” said Mason.

Airport officials say if you’re flying out, it’s a good idea to avoid driving in. Instead, they encourage travelers to take the train into the airport or other public transportation to avoid getting stuck in traffic lines.

“We’re here to pick up my parents, they’re flying in from the Tri-Cities,” said David Schneider who was with his little boys picking up family.

He suggests avoiding the drive decks, “Once you hit arrivals then it got a little crazy. Nobody is parking so we were able to direct terminal park,” said Schneider.

Parking at the airport garage only costs a few bucks an hour.

Inside, navigating the crowds has gotten easier this holiday season.

SeaTac has a new tool to help you get through security lines faster. Download the SeaTac app, and you can click on the security checkpoint you’re at and see how many minutes it’ll take to go through those lines.

TSA security lines on Wednesday took about 20 minutes to get through on Wednesday. With no major delays and the majority of flights on time, it means a Happy Thanksgiving for families this year.

Airport officials also suggest to pick up travelers from the departures deck and drop them off at arrivals, doing the opposite than what most people do they say saves a lot of time getting in and out of the airport.