113 million Americans expected to travel during Christmas holiday season

Yahoo Finance columnist Kerry Hannon previews the upcoming holiday travel that Americans should prepare for.

Video Transcript

DAVE BRIGGS: All right, millions of Americans expected to hit the road and the skies this holiday season. Let's bring in Yahoo Finance's Kerry Hannon with what travelers can expect this week. What's it going to be out there this week, Kerry? I'm a little nervous. I'm traveling on Christmas Day.

KERRY HANNON: Dave, it's going to be busy, busy, busy. I mean, they're saying that most people are going to be hitting the roads versus flying, although flights are going to be packed. They're going to be full to capacity. Up maybe 17% from last year is what Hopper is saying.

But in fact, it's going to be one of the busiest holiday seasons probably in the last two decades, according to AAA. So everyone needs to brace themselves for a lot of people saying, hey, I'm getting out of town. I'm going home. I'm leaving home, or I'm going home-- one or the other. But expect it to be congested.

Here's some good news, though, Dave. The thing is with remote work and hybrid work, those crunch travel days aren't going to be as bad as they used to be. You know, Friday, Thursday and Friday this week are still going to be busy, but because people can flex and work remotely, leave a little bit earlier, work from where their destination is, we're seeing a little bit of easing there on the roadways, as well as people have booked flights with a little more flexibility on each side of those peak travel days. So that's a really good thing.

The other good news is, hey, gas prices have come down, right? They are-- the national averages are below where they were a year ago. So this is promising. If you're hitting the road, this is good news. It's a bright spot for sure. So I think that's really people need to-- TSA, they had an announcement out today saying, hey, we're prepared.

We can handle the surge of traffic of passengers coming through. But they're expecting the big days for them December 22 and December 30 will be the biggest travel days. They're saying, if you can believe it, 10 minutes if you have TSA pre-check in the lines and 30 minutes if you don't. We'll see if that works.