Flying this week? Lambert predicts crowds in the St. Louis airport.

ST. LOUIS COUNTY — The yearly Thanksgiving surge is on again at St. Louis Lambert International Airport, and officials expect visitors for the November holiday period will exceed pre-pandemic totals for the first time.

The federal Transportation Security Administration projects more than 200,000 departing passengers going through screening at Lambert during the 11-day Thanksgiving travel period starting last Friday.

That would be about 8% more than last year’s total for the same period and slightly higher than the 198,649 logged in 2019, shortly before the pandemic.

Increases in arriving and connecting passengers are expected to track similarly, Lambert officials say.

Sunday again is expected to be the busiest day, with nearly 24,000 projected to move through Lambert’s TSA checkpoints.

“It looks like it’s going to be kind of a repeat of ... last year,” Lambert spokesman Roger Lotz said. “Sunday following Thanksgiving is like a monster.

Tuesday and Wednesday (before Thanksgiving) are really heavy as well.”

Daniel Velez, a TSA spokesman, said TSA officers here were screening an average of 17,500 people a day from last Friday through Monday, ahead of last year’s pace.

On Sunday, TSA is projecting an estimated 2.9 million passengers nationally, which would narrowly exceed a record set on June 30. Velez said 3 million is a possibility.

Meanwhile, AAA is forecasting an uptick in Thanksgiving travel of all types, predicting that 55.4 million Americans will go at least 50 miles from home between Wednesday and Sunday.

That would be 2.3% above last year’s total and the third-highest number since the auto club began tracking holiday travel in 2000, with 2005 and 2019 as the top two years. As usual, the most road traffic is expected on Wednesday.

Gas prices are down across the country since last Thanksgiving, according to AAA.

The average price for regular on Tuesday on the Missouri side of the St. Louis metro area was $2.98 a gallon, compared with about $3.12 a year ago.

The Missouri statewide average was $2.91, down from $3.25 in 2022. In Illinois, the statewide average dropped to about $3.47 a gallon from about $4 last year. The national average was $3.30 on Tuesday and $3.66 the same day last year.

Some travelers undoubtedly are hoping there won’t be a repeat of the Christmastime chaos that hit Lambert’s dominant carrier, Southwest Airlines, last year.

Severe winter storms knocked out thousands of flights and left millions of passengers stranded, including at Lambert. Many planes, pilots and flight attendants were trapped out of position and its crew rescheduling system bogged down.

Southwest officials say they have since bought additional deicing trucks and heating equipment and will add staff at cold-weather airports depending on forecasts. The company also has said it has updated its crew scheduling technology.

As for this week, the National Weather Service was predicting daytime highs here the next few days in the 40s and 50s, with a chance of rain Saturday night and Sunday.

But weather could snarl air and road traffic in some parts of the country. A storm system was expected to move from the southern Plains to the Northeast on Tuesday and Wednesday, bringing possible thunderstorms, sleet and snow.

Parts of Maine, Vermont and northern New Hampshire were expected to get 3 to 7 inches of snow between Tuesday night and Wednesday.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Monday that the government tried to better prepare for holiday travel over the past year by hiring more air traffic controllers, opening new air routes along the East Coast and providing airport grants for snowplows and deicing equipment.

“Mother Nature, of course, is the X factor in all of this,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Photos: Thanksgiving week at Lambert International is back on par with pre-pandemic trends

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