JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Millions of Americans are traveling this Labor Day weekend, making it one of the busiest periods of the year for U.S. airports. But at Jacksonville International Airport, staff and passengers say the weekend has gone smoothly so far.<\/p>\n
Tom Erdel, 15, who was traveling from Maryland, said this year\u2019s travel was easier than in the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cPretty smooth this year, wasn\u2019t as bad as previous years,\u201d Erdel said.<\/p>\n
Katherine Ellis came through JIA with friends on her way to St. Simons Island, Georgia. She said flying out of Jacksonville was easier than flying out of Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was pretty busy; we had to, like, get rushed through security because we were gonna miss our flight and we didn\u2019t. But our friend, some of our friends already went through security here, and they said it was really quick.\u201d<\/p>\n
Greg Willis, a spokesperson for the Jacksonville Aviation Authority, said this Labor Day weekend has not been as busy as some travelers might expect.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looks kind of standard fare in terms of summer travel,\u201d Willis said.<\/p>\n
Willis said parking should not be a problem for holiday travelers, even though a new parking garage is still under construction and a separate garage that was damaged in a fire last May remains closed. <\/p>\n
He encouraged passengers to check real-time parking availability at flyjax.com<\/a> before heading to the airport, noting the website shows current capacity for the hourly, garage and economy parking options.<\/p>\n The new garage, once complete, will add about 2,000 parking spaces to the airport.<\/p>\n For Michelle Ertan of Duval County, a smooth trip through the airport carried extra weight. Ertan, who was a student at Pace University near the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, is traveling to Switzerland and France ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks.<\/p>\n \u201cI am feeling anxious. As every anniversary from the last 25 years, the anxiety has lessened,\u201d Ertan said. \u201cYou can probably tell by my voice that it\u2019s still very hard, but I\u2019m going with the hope of putting the last 25 years down.\u201d<\/p>\n Another traveler offered simple advice for getting through the airport smoothly during the holiday rush: arrive early, and consider skipping checked bags.<\/p>\n Airport officials said the new parking garage is expected to open around Thanksgiving, the next major travel holiday.<\/p>\n >>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Millions of Americans are traveling this Labor Day weekend, making it one of the busiest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[982,10581,639,156872,15297,139992,116,118,117,24683,31988,156870,156869,634,156871,156873,15386,94034,628,119316,156874,66799],"class_list":["post-393107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action_news","tag-dc","tag-duval_county","tag-ertan","tag-france","tag-jack_zan_dekoto","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jacksonville_international_airport","tag-jia","tag-katherine_ellis","tag-labor_day_weekend","tag-local","tag-michelle_arton","tag-pace_university","tag-saint_simons_island","tag-switzerland","tag-us","tag-willis","tag-world_trade_center","tag-zion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}