Grateful for uneventful Thanksgiving journey

Another yr of Thanksgiving journey is within the books, and this yr’s version of it someway occurred with none flight cancellations, interruptions and even delays. That looks like much more of a miracle than the phrase “no delays” may recommend, as a result of 2025 has been such a snakebit yr for air journey.

It began with the horrifying information of an nearly 16-year streak of zero deadly crashes amongst U.S. airways ending just a few miles from my home, went on to function months of meltdown-level disruptions amongst flights out and in of Newark that by summer time had despatched EWR to the underside of my record of United hub airports, after which it left already-stressed air-traffic management workers working for greater than a month with out pay courtesy of the federal government shutdown.

But in spite of everything that, Wednesday’s JetBlue flight from National Airport to Boston arrived on the gate at BOS six minutes early, after which Saturday’s United nonstop from Boston to Dulles reached its gate exactly on time. Service was nice on every flight, the WiFi labored high-quality, and even the planes had been above common: a four-year-old Airbus A220 on the flight up, a renewed Boeing 737 with screens at every seat on the way in which residence.

The expertise feels much more like successful a lottery ticket contemplating among the depressing Thanksgiving journey experiences I’ve had up to now. I’m serious about when coming residence for the vacation meant an extended drive interrupted by Breezewood, Penn.; the next years when a theoretically brief drive to a suburb of Philadelphia may develop into a three-hour slog; most of all, the last decade and alter when the Thanksgiving journey both concerned taking Amtrak after which two NJ Transit trains or spending four-plus hours on I-95 and the Jersey Turnpike that would simply stretch previous six hours on the roads.

(It’s sort of loopy that I’ve hosted Thanksgiving dinner in my very own abode solely twice since leaving for faculty: Everybody visited us in 2019 for a change, after which the pandemic put a household reunion out of the query the subsequent yr.)

Now that my mom and my brother and his household all dwell in the identical city simply north of Boston, I simply need to cope with spending cash, not time. But as costly as Thanksgiving flights could be, they beat the absurdity of driving 450 miles and alter on the busiest journey weekend of the yr. Bonus: The flights, even when I probability a connection, are so brief that I can deliver a container of frozen pumpkin puree in my carry-on baggage and never fear about that pie ingredient melting earlier than I’ve reached household.

I’m grateful for having this a part of vacation journey simpler than it was once. And I’m grateful, as ever, for everyone linked with the journey business who labored this vacation in order that the remainder of us may journey for it.