Worst Travel Day? Not This Year

Nov. 25, 2007— -- Despite bumper-to-bumper traffic on the highways, and shoulder-to-shoulder crowds in airports and bus terminals, this normally hectic holiday travel weekend has been anything but.

"I think preparation was there," said Troy Green, spokesperson for the AAA auto club. "So, therefore, people knew what to expect when going into the airports or the highways."

The Sunday after Thanksgiving is typically the busiest travel day of the year, with more than 29,000 planes flying over the U.S. throughout the day. But the Federal Aviation Administration says there were few delays.

"I would say it's better than last year," said Cherokee King, a holiday traveler at Chicago's busy Midway Airport, where 80,000 people were expected to pass through Sunday. "It's better, because there's not too many people, and I've had luck with not full flights, so it's pretty OK."

So, why did everything go so right?

Analysts say the weather helped. And those "Thanksgiving Express Lanes," allowing flights to detour through military airspace along the East Coast, also worked.

But there were some travel hiccups. At Chicago's Greyhound bus station, there were long lines and short tempers.

"I've been experiencing hell today," said Tomeka Roberts, 25, who was traveling with her two kids.

Monica Robinson loaded her kids onto a bus for a long trip back to Georgia, but she had no idea the lines would be so long.

"We got about 20 more hours and lots of lines," Robinson said.

Gas prices could be to blame for the longer bus lines.

"We were gonna drive back, but the gas prices are beyond ridiculous right now," said college student Jacob Lesniewski, who was returning to his school in Ohio onboard a Greyhound.

But with gas prices up 85 cents a gallon from a year ago, Thanksgiving travelers still didn't stay home. Triple-A says 31 million Americans hit the highways this weekend. And millions more will do it all again next month, when Christmas comes.