Travelers prepare to head home after busy weekend at Orlando International Airport

ORLANDO, Fla. - Sunday was a very busy day at Orlando International Airport. Airport staff expected nearly 185,000 passengers to pass through the airport, that day. "It was a little crazy, the holiday travel. The traffic was pretty crazy coming in, but once we got in lines were long, but they do move," said Darlene Brown, who was dropping her son off for a flight.

Over the course of the 12-day thanksgiving travel period, Orlando International will host more than two million passengers. "So far, so good. Pretty smooth checking in. We'll see how it goes through security and yeah, hope for a smooth flight home, yeah," said Steven Hash, who was flying with his family to Denver.

Sunday's numbers were an eleven percent jump over this time, last year. Overall, during this Thanksgiving travel period, Airport Board Chairman M. Carson Good said they'd seen a big jump in passengers over 2022. "Things are moving much faster than I would have expected. We're moving the TSA lines relatively quick, the curbs relatively quick. We were absolutely expecting to be slammed, our local traffic is up seventeen percent."

Officials said to be on time, passengers should be at the airport ticket counter three hours before their flight; at the checkpoint two hours before; and at the gate an hour before departure. "Our overall traffic is up dramatically since last year and the year before. We're up way over COVID, we're busy and trying as hard as we can," Good said.

Even though the airport has about 24,500 parking spaces, including about a thousand overflow spaces they keep open for the holidays, officials said parking may still be tight. They recommended passengers use the taxi and rideshare options available here, or one of the many off-site paid parking lots.