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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
Holiday travel will be as busy as ever this Thanksgiving despite high gasoline prices and airline bankruptcies.
Travelers passing through the nation's airports could see a greater likelihood of flight delays, based on year-to-date on-time performance, and stricter rules about arriving early to catch flights.
Those taking to the highways will see gas prices well below the near-record highs seen over the Labor Day weekend. But gas is still about 13 percent above the pump prices seen at Thanksgiving 2004.
The AAA survey estimates that 37.3 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more from home this holiday. That's up slightly from 37 million travelers a year ago. About 83 percent of those making those trips will do so by car, about the same percent as a year ago.
"It's a rare American who will pay less than $2 a gallon this year," said Justin McNaull, spokesman for AAA. "That said it (gas) is still a small part of the travel cost, and it's tough to tell Grandma you're not going to visit because it's going to cost $5 more to fill up the car."
The continued growth in low-fare airlines has helped push leisure fares down this year compared to 2004, even as airlines struggle with higher jet fuel prices that helped push Delta Air Lines (Research) and Northwest Airlines (Research) into bankruptcy in September.
The AAA survey found that leisure fares -- those purchased three weeks or more in advance -- are down 4.8 percent from a year ago. But those cheap fares were somewhat tougher to come by this year, according to the group.
"There were folks who thought they were early bookers in September who may have found out all the cheap seats on the flight they wanted were gone already," said McNaull.
The limit on the number of cheap seats offered has helped take the average U.S. airfare up between 5 to 8 percent over a year ago since July, according to the Air Transport Association, an industry trade group. The group estimates about 7.8 million passengers will make round-trip flights this holiday period, essentially unchanged from last year.
Air travelers could have a "hurry-up-and-wait" problem this holiday season. USA Today reported Tuesday that airlines are getting stricter in their rules that passengers check in for a boarding pass at least 30 minutes for domestic flights and 60 minutes on international flights. Fewer than half the airlines will now guarantee that a late-arriving passenger who is denied boarding will be put on the next flight. And many airlines are requiring late passengers who are booked on a later flight to pay a fee.
"They're absolutely getting stricter," Terry Trippler of Cheapseats.com, told the paper.
But government statistics show that the percentage of on-time flights is down for the first nine months of the year for the second straight year. About 77.3 percent of flights were on time year-to-date through September, the most recent month available, down from 78.4 percent in 2004 and a record 82.3 percent in 2003. The percent of flights canceled altogether rose for the fourth straight year to 1.98 percent from only 1.24 percent in 2002.
Weather is still the primary cause of flight delays, so the chances of landing on time depends on the forecasts in the cities they are flying between.
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