Turkey Day travel sees usual late rush

S.F. AIRPORT (Map, News) - At San Francisco International Airport, Thanksgiving travel started in earnest last week, but Wednesday at the airport — and on BART — was still busy, with passengers making late breakaways back home for the weekend.

Those who waited to secure their airfare took a hit to their wallets, with round-trip fares from San Francisco to locations such as Boston surpassing $600, according to several major online travel booking sites.

Some, such as Eileen Santiago, traveling late Wednesday to Washington, D.C., with her boyfriend, said they couldn’t get the time off, but it was worth it to make it home for family and turkey with all the fixings.

The Wednesday getaway appeared to be running smoothly, SFO duty manager Douglas Lyon said. However, there were delays expected for much of the day, and possibly into the rest of the weekend, for bad-weather areas such as Chicago, Boston and Newark, N.J., Lyon said.

Delays to these regions were estimated to be anywhere between 45 minutes and an hour. The airport did not expect delays to completely prevent people from flying to these regions, Lyon said.

“We’re keeping an eye on those regions, but we don’t expect any other major delays,” he said.

A record number relied on BART to bring them to the San Francisco and Oakland airports, destinations projected to see an estimated 50,000 and 29,000 passengers per day, respectively, through Monday, according to BART figures.

SFO is also expected to enjoy a significant boost in passengers this holiday season, with an estimated 3.6 million expected to pass through its terminals through Jan. 6, an increase of 10 percent over the same time period last year, according to airport figures. Some of the increase can be attributed to three new low-cost carriers, which added new domestic service at SFO this year.

tramroop@examiner.com