MSP airport officials advise travelers to arrive 2.5 hours before flight

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. (KMSP) - At the Minneapolis-St. Paul International airport, traffic is bumper to bumper just days before the Thanksgiving holiday.

This Turkey Day, AAA estimates that more than 50 million people will travel, the most in 13 years.
Tuesday afternoon, airport officials urged travelers to arrive more than two hours prior to departure. For some not even that has been enough.

“We were trying to get here two hours early,” said one traveler. “You almost have to plan and leave three hours to get here two hours early.”

More than four million are expected to take to the skies, but according to AAA, tens of millions of travelers are hitting the road. Wednesday, Christine Barber will spend more than six hours on the road as she heads to Kansas City to see family. She experienced a bit sticker shock at the pump, but AAA predicts that gas prices will fall.

“It’s kind of high here, but I stop in Des Moines and the gas is really cheap there,” said Barber.

With the peak of Thanksgiving travel right around the corner, air and road traffic will be busy, but the metro likely won’t experience the gridlock that Los Angeles saw around this time last year.