Saturday expected to be the busiest day of the Christmas travel season at OIA

ORLANDO, Fla. — Pandemic travel numbers are breaking records once again this weekend.

Orlando International Airport expects Saturday to be the busiest travel day of the Christmas holiday surge.

The omicron variant isn’t doing much to change passengers’ minds from seeing their families this holiday season.

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Holly Roddy says omicron variant or not, she’s still spending Christmas with her dad this year.

“I’m still precautious, you know. But it’s okay,” Roddy said. “It’s less than the amount of people we thought it would be.”

Roddy and her daughter are two of the nearly 157,000 thousand people expected to pass through Orlando International Airport on Saturday.

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The airport projects more than 2.6 million people to pass through its gates in the 19-day travel period.

While Saturday is supposed to be the busiest day. Second on the list is New Year’s Day, with approximately 153,000.

This comes as the airport struggled to handle the amount of travelers over the Thanksgiving holiday travel period.

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During that time 1.5 million people passed through OIA, and many waited hours to park, ultimately missing their flights.

Mark Wilson came to drop his daughter off for her flight Saturday morning and said this time around he’s pleasantly surprised things are working out.

“They were working pretty efficiently, so I think the airport is handling it pretty well,” Wilson said.

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The airport does ask you to arrive at least three hours early just in case the traffic surges pick up once again.

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