Airports prepare for busiest travel day of the year

The week of Thanksgiving is one of the busiest travel weeks of the year.

People have already started to fly into and out of DFW Airport to celebrate turkey day. The other busy airport in North Texas is Dallas Love Field.

The holidays are all about families spending quality time together and navigating in and out of airports to get to them.

At Love Field, there is still plenty of parking in the A and B garages. And there are 5,000 more spaces in the newly opened C garage.

“We want our customers to know that we have plenty of parking availability for them,” said Chris Perry with Dallas Love Field. “If they want to drive themselves to the airport, we want them to do that and park in one of our garage in A, B or C.”

The city has reduced parking rates to be more competitive with ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft. On an average day, airport officials say 2,400 people a day are picked up buy ridesharing services. They know that number because drivers pay a fee to pick someone up at the airport but not to drop them off.

“There’s like no point in coming here to park and pay for parking when you can spend less money to take an Uber,” said traveler Kevin Walker.

“It was 60 bucks to park here. About 30 bucks to catch a Lyft back and forth,” said traveler Pierre Durant. “So it was just cost effective to go ahead and catch our Lyft.”

“I usually just take Uber because it’s just easier to take instead of parking,” said traveler Joseph Mahoney. “It just takes too much time for me to have to park.”

But there are still people who like to drive their own car in park at the airport.

“We always park in the garage because it’s accessible to the terminal,” said traveler Barry Malyon. “So it’s just the quickest way to get in and out when we land.”

Parking Garage C opened three weeks ago and is expected to be able to accommodate the holiday demand for airport parking.                      

Parking prices at Love Field range from $7 a day for rooftop parking, $9 a day for the B garage and $15 dollars a day in A and C garages. Those garages are closest to the terminal.

Wednesday is expected to be the busiest travel day of the year. It will be the worst in the early morning.

It is suggested you get to the airport 90 minutes before your flight leaves.