Name: What to know as holiday travel rush hits high gear
Uploaded: 2025-12-23T18:11:37.601Z
Duration: 2 min 1 s
Description: Holiday travel is ramping up ahead of Christmas, with more than 122 million Americans expected to travel this week, according to TSA. CBS News senior transportation correspondent Chris Van Cleave has the latest.

Holiday travel is ramping up ahead of Christmas, with more than 122 million Americans expected to travel this week, according to TSA. CBS News senior transportation correspondent Chris Van Cleave has the latest.

Los Angeles

As the holiday travel period intensifies, travelers are advised to avoid driving during peak traffic hours between 1 and 7 p.m. Weather conditions are expected to impact travel, with wintry weather in the northeast and significant rain forecast for California, including southern regions. At Los Angeles International Airport, early morning saw long lines, but operations improved as travelers arrived ahead of time.

Airlines and the TSA have increased staffing and adopted an all-hands-on-deck approach to manage the holiday rush. While flight cancellations remain low, some delays have occurred and are expected, particularly in areas affected by adverse weather such as San Francisco and the corridor from Philadelphia to Boston.

What to know as holiday travel rush hits high gear

If you are heading home for the holidays and plan on driving today, gear up. The worst times to drive are between 1 and 7 p.m. CBS News senior transportation correspondent Chris Van Cleve is at LAX in Los Angeles tracking this holiday rush. Chris, good morning. What do travelers heading out need to know? Well, certainly they're going to want to look at the weather. Depending on where you're going and where you're leaving from, you may be driving into or through wintry conditions in the northeast. There's rain, significant amounts of rain in parts of California. That's going to move into southern California where we are here tonight. So certainly where you're going and when you're leaving, you want to check that forecast. If you're flying, this is a pretty good time in that it's kind of a lull. It'll be busy but not the peak of the peak around Christmas and New Year's. So we saw very long lines here this morning at LAX, around 3 30 this morning. Very, very long lines as folks got here a little extra early. So early the ticket counter and the checkpoints hadn't opened. But since then, things have been moving pretty well here. We talked to a lot of folks who told us they were just leaving themselves a little bit of extra time to make sure they got through the gate and got to their flight. We just saw some b-roll of a very good boy in a bag. What have airlines and TSA done to prepare for this rush? Yeah, you know, you increase staffing, you plan to have sort of an all hands on deck approach. The airlines know that when it's the holidays, things matter just a little bit more. So if things go wrong, that's something people never forget. So the focus is on making sure that the flights get where they need to go. We've seen cancellations stay pretty low. A number of delays over the weekend. We'll see some delays today. We're watching for potential weather issues in San Francisco as well as basically from Philadelphia north to Boston. We're going to see weather related delays. So far, not a lot of cancellations, which is what everybody wants. You might get there a little bit late, but at least you're getting there. All right, Chris Van Cleve, thank you so much.

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