Passengers filled terminals as families, couples, and solo travelers headed out for end-of-year trips. For some, the journey is all about spending time with loved ones.<\/p>\n
“We’re here to visit my grandma,” said Percy Smith, who was traveling from Bend, Oregon to Philadelphia. “She lives in Delaware.”<\/p>\n
Others opted to plan strategically, scheduling trips outside the peak holiday window to avoid the crowds.<\/p>\n
“We made sure it’s going to be after the new year,” said Elsie Jolade of Williamstown, New Jersey. “By January 1st, we’ll be back here again on our way out to another trip. We intentionally did that because during the holidays there’s a lot of people.”<\/p>\n
Despite those efforts, Jolade admitted the airport was still busier than expected. “I thought I was trying to avoid it, I guess I’m not,” she said.<\/p>\n
Airport officials say the crowds are no surprise. More than one million passengers are expected to fly in and out of PHL between December 23 and January 4, a five percent increase compared to last year. The busiest travel days are projected to be the Friday, Saturday, and Monday following Christmas.<\/p>\n
Many travelers are heading to nearby destinations, like Angela Pastor, who was traveling from Toronto.<\/p>\n
“We’re on our way to Cape May,” Pastor said. “We’re going to go see my boyfriend’s parents who live there.”<\/p>\n
Despite the record-breaking numbers, most travelers said their trips went smoothly.<\/p>\n
“I came from Toronto, my daughter came from Los Angeles, so everything went off without a hitch today,” said Lucian Cucchiarella. “We were concerned because we wanted to make sure I didn’t get delayed and leave her in the airport by herself.”<\/p>\n
For Cucchiarella, the long journey was well worth it.<\/p>\n
“Being home with my mom and dad,” he said. “And home cooking and mom’s making lasagna.”<\/p>\n
Airport officials say travelers bringing gifts should consider packing them in gift bags rather than wrapping them, which can help speed up the security screening process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Passengers filled terminals as families, couples, and solo travelers headed out for end-of-year trips. For some, the journey…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[35657,35656,35655,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-67258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-airport-officials","tag-elsie-jolade","tag-percy-smith","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}