Holiday travel is David Mower found easy parking and no lines yesterday evening at Honolulu Airport even though it was one of the busiest travel days of the year.
going smoothly at
Honolulu Airport
Star-Bulletin staff
"We were kind of running late," he said. "I was expecting a lot of long lines, but everything went very smooth."
Mower was escorting his daughter Racine, 13, and son Max, 11, to their flights to Kona to spend Thanksgiving with their grandparents.
He said lines were much shorter and security seemed more efficient and quicker than when they traveled during the summer.
The federal Transportation Security Administration began taking over the operation of security checkpoints at the airport in September and met last week's deadline to replace the private companies with federal employees.
TSA's Honolulu Airport director, Sidney Hayakawa, said officials monitored one checkpoint in the main terminal and found it took three to 14 minutes to get through the screening.
Nationwide, airports reported that the wait at security checkpoints averaged less than 10 minutes.
Hayakawa said the TSA did not add extra staff for the Thanksgiving weekend.
"You can only accommodate so many screeners at each checkpoint," he said. "The checkpoints are only so large."
Ginger Hamilton, who traveled to Honolulu from Hilo, said she was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to travel yesterday.
She said she had to make her reservations more than a month ago, and even then flights were sold out.
Both Hawaiian and Aloha airlines said they added flights to meet the demand. Both airlines said that the number of people traveling was about the same as Thanksgiving 2000.
FAA Airport Status page
