With flights to catch and family to see this holiday season, you can expect airports to be packed. In fact, this year is supposed to be the busiest holiday travel season in TSA history. And to make it even worse, a new study just declared New York City the fourth worst city in America for holiday travel.
Forbes Advisor took a look at 42 of the country’s most populated cities to determine the absolute worst places for holiday travel. The research was based on three categories: driving experience, city experience and air travel experience. In the end, Memphis (with a score of 100 out of 100) was crowned the worst city for holiday travel.
New York City (76.09 out of 100) wasn’t too far behind as the fourth worst city for holiday travel.
Findings showed this was a result of visitors traveling to NYC during the holidays having the worst air travel experience. Not to mention, NYC has the second highest percentage of flights being delayed, canceled or diverted during this time of year from data taken between 2018-2022. Plus, NYC experiences an average of 2.13 claims per 100,000 domestic passengers for property loss and damages during each holiday season.
As for driving, NYC sees the third highest hours lost in traffic (117 hours) and the fourth slowest average speed in rush hour traffic.
This year, 48% of Americans are planning on traveling between Thanksgiving and mid-January. TSA even expects to hit the highest volume of passengers screened in one day with 2.9 million travelers. So though we can’t ensure how smoothly travel will be this holiday season in NYC, we at least have some tips for you, like how JFK actually has the third worst security lines in the country during the season.