Summer sees heaviest air travel at Twin Cities

An analysis by the St. Paul Pioneer Press of federal flight data for the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport revealed that June is the busiest month of the year for flight traffic.

Specifically, the newspaper’s analysis showed that Thursdays and Fridays in June experienced the heaviest traffic, with 954 flights on each of those days. That number represents 100 more flights than on the average day.

The director of operations for the airport, Steve Wareham, reported that the June increase has to do with the start of family summer vacations, “and June is still a busy time for business travel.”

What was unexpected was that according to the analysis, and contrary to nationwide media reports, the days immediately before the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays aren’t as busy. Wareham explained that travel around these holidays has changed in the past several years. He said that ten years ago airport staff would start work at 4:30 am on the day before Thanksgiving and “it looked like a mob scene” throughout the airport. Now, that traffic is spread out over all the days of the long weekend.

Veteran travellers have said that being prepared can help make the whole process easier, whether airports are busy or not.

Ed Bertsch, a computer security consultant, and frequent traveller into and out of the Twin Cities, said that he typically flies out on Sunday night or early Monday morning and flies back later in the week. He uses one of the airport’s remote lots for parking and uses the time on the shuttle bus to prepare for airport security checks.

“When I’m on the shuttle bus, I’m taking off my wristwatch, taking my driver’s license out. I’ve got my shoehorn in my pocket,” he reported. “I’ve got it down to a science, pretty much.”

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