JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 AAA is predicting record travel this holiday season, with more than 122 million Americans expected to hit the road, skies, or even seas over Christmas and New Year\u2019s, and there was no shortage of travelers taking to the skies on Christmas Eve at Jacksonville International Airport.<\/p>\n
But even with the hustle and bustle, things were smooth sailing for the most part.<\/p>\n
\u201cI travel a lot in the summer to go to festivals, and this was much easier, much quicker. There was absolutely no one in front of me in line at security,\u201d said Ronda Carman, who flew in on Christmas Eve from Baltimore.<\/p>\n
The lack of line and delays made Carmen\u2019s trip a piece of fruit cake.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n She made the trip down to visit her sister and nephew for the first time in many years.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the first time in a long time we\u2019ve gotten together. Gonna meet my second great nephew for the first time\u2026 And he\u2019s ten,” said Carman.<\/p>\n It was all also a day of firsts for J\u2019fran Chamorro, who set out to fly all the way to Spain with his family for the holidays.<\/p>\n It\u2019s his first time making the trip to visit his grandparents at their home.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a fun time,\u201d said Chamorro.<\/p>\n While most flights may have been on time, or even early, all of the main airport parking lots and garages were at or near capacity on and off all day Wednesday.<\/p>\n It comes as no surprise, given that AAA is predicting this holiday travel season to break records for the second year in a row. <\/p>\n The vast majority of the 122.2 million travelers will be hitting the road, but air travel is setting a record of its own.<\/p>\n The number of Americans flying to their destination is expected to surpass 8 million for the first time.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n Brooke Smith and her partner, Taylor Goranson, were on their way to catch a flight to Maryland to see Brooke\u2019s family when we ran into them.<\/p>\n She said it was the allure of the ticket prices that enticed the couple to travel on Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n \u201cI was stressed out about it at first. I thought it would be more expensive, but it wasn\u2019t, and I mean, it\u2019s not that stressful here right now. Honestly, probably one of the better experiences I\u2019ve had in the airport,\u201d said Smith.<\/p>\n Francis and Caroline Spinola decided to go all out for their trip down from Detroit, sporting checkered green and red overalls.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was just something fun to do,\u201d said Francis.<\/p>\n Christmas antics aside, they said this will be a special holiday for their family, with a gathering of 30 relatives getting together for the first time in five years.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s one person they\u2019re looking forward to seeing the most.<\/p>\n \u201cMy daughter. Seeing my daughter. Seeing my daughter and family,\u201d said Spinola.Year\u2019s<\/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 AAA is predicting record travel this holiday season, with more than 122 million Americans expected…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11246,344,347,40454,28,348,116,351,118,1645,117,349,350,346,345],"class_list":["post-95208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-aaa","tag-action-news-jax","tag-cbs47","tag-christmas-eve","tag-florida","tag-fox30","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-fl","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-international-airport","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-northeast-florida","tag-southeast-georgia","tag-wfox","tag-wjax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95208","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=95208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}