As millions of Americans pack their bags for Thanksgiving, travel experts say this year is shaping up to be one of the busiest holiday weekends in recent memories.

Travelers with this Thanksgiving may still feel on edge after the historic government shutdown that caused widespread flight cancellations and delays.

And it's not just skyways and byways seeing an uptick in travelers.

Triple A bluegrass tells us a rising interest in cruise vacations is adding a new wave of travelers to an already crowded holiday rush.

To me, a busy Thanksgiving.

And that's not a surprise, because Thanksgiving is always the busiest travel holiday, as we call them.

When people like to get away, see family and friends.

So, here in Kentucky, you were expecting over a million people to travel, this Thanksgiving.

And really, the wide majority of those will be going by car.

So a lot of people are, planning that road trip.

And we looked at, the the forecast covers, travel from Tuesday ahead of Thanksgiving through that following Monday.

So with over a million people traveling, as far as Kentuckians go, as I said, Kentuckians love their road trip.

We expect about 96% of those to go by car, and then about 2.6% or so will, are expected to fly.

And then the remainder, that's just over 1%.

Those folks have, decided, to take a train or they or a bus, or they may have booked a cruise.

By far the overwhelming majority will be going by their personal vehicle.

Now, those, 1 to 1 million plus, Kentuckians, expected to travel.

They will be a part of almost 82 million people traveling nationwide.

We did see a slight increase in travel, this year, for Kentucky, we're about 1.6% higher than what we saw in 2024 for, the same number of days, over the Thanksgiving travel period and nationwide.

That's pretty close.

Nationwide, we're seeing about 2% higher.

A lot of that increase is actually, with people taking these other means of transportation, interestingly enough, when you look at flights and you look at people planning road trips, there are those slight bumps, but more of a bump when you start to look at people that are, going by train or bus or a cruise.

And it could be, you know, even though it's not broken out, it could be that the cruise, bookings are really, kind of pushing that upward compared to even a year ago.

Cruises continue to be very popular with travelers.

That's both in Kentucky as well as, across the country.

So, as far as, Kentuckians who are opting for some of those other, modes of transportation, including cruises, we're up about 6%.

So that's pretty significant.

If you look at the, Nashville forecast, it's expected, to be higher by about 8.6% compared to a year ago if you were flying.

And this is good advice, whether it's the holiday or not, but probably doubly so, during the holidays when airports are extra busy because it's a holiday or leave the leave for the airport earlier than you might on any other given day.

Give yourself another even 30 minutes to get there.

The other big tip that I have, and I say this often, if you're flying, download the airlines app.

That way, even before you head out to the airport, you can start to see whether your flight is expected to be on time, especially important if you're not, you know, flying out early in the morning first thing in the morning, because then you have to, also be depending on that plane coming in from whatever other flight that it was just on.

And so download that airline apps and, sign up for the alerts.

And that way if there's a gate change, if there's a delay, you'll know right away.

Weaver Hawkins says despite the federal government shutdown that caused widespread flight cancellations and delays, there has not been a significant increase overall this year in the number of flight cancellations and delays.