AAA: 45 million planning Memorial Day

Memorial Day travel is getting very close to full-throttle again. AAA now expects 45 million Americans to go at least 50 miles from home between Thursday, May 21, and Monday, May 25. That is a hair above last year’s 44.8 million, and enough to edge past the old Memorial Day high from 2005. Basically, the holiday is shaping up as a record-setting test of roads, airports, and everyone’s patience. ### What exactly changed? The new piece of news is the 2026 forecast itself. AAA put out its national estimate on Monday, May 11, saying Memorial Day trips will rise again this year after already strong numbers in 2024 and 2025. The increase is small in percentage terms, but that is the point — travel demand was already high, and it still managed to climb. (newsroom.aaa.com) ### Why is driving still the whole story? Cars dominate because Memorial Day is mostly a short-haul holiday. AAA expects 39.4 million people to drive, which means nearly nine out of every 10 travelers will be on the road rather than in the air. That makes this less of an airline story than a highway story — even if airports feel chaotic, the real pressure lands on interstates, rental lots, and gas stations. (newsroom.aaa.com) ### What about flights? Air travel is still huge, just smaller than the driving wave. AAA’s forecast has 3.61 million people flying over the holiday period, while American Airlines by itself says it expects more than 4.2 million customers across more than 40,000 flights from May 21 through May 26, with Friday, May 22 projected as its busiest day. The date mismatch matters a little — AAA is measuring holiday travelers broadly, while American is talking about its own six-day operating window. (newsroom.aaa.com) ### When will the roads get ugly? The rough answer is afternoons. INRIX expects the heaviest congestion over Memorial Day weekend to hit later in the day, and its broad advice is simple — leave in the morning if you can. That tracks with how holiday traffic usually behaves: departures bunch up after work, then return trips bunch up late on the final day. Think of it like everyone trying to squeeze through the same doorway with luggage. (newsroom.aaa.com) ### Is this just inflation, not real demand? Not really. Higher prices can change where people go and how long they stay, but they do not explain away record traveler counts. If anything, the stubborn part of this story is that Americans are still choosing to take the trip despite pricier lodging, peak-season fuel patterns, and crowded airports. AAA also notes that gas prices often rise into summer, which adds another layer of cost pressure just as demand ramps. (inrix.com) ### Why does 2005 matter? Because that was the old benchmark. Memorial Day travel had not clearly moved beyond that pre-financial-crisis peak for a long time, and now it has. So this is not just “busy holiday weekend” news — it is another sign that leisure travel demand has fully rebuilt and, at least on headline volume, pushed past older highs. (newsroom.aaa.com) ### What should travelers actually do with this? Book early if you have not locked things down. For drivers, the practical move is leaving early in the day and avoiding peak afternoon windows. For flyers, Friday, May 22 looks especially crowded on American, so extra buffer time matters more than usual. None of that is glamorous advice, but turns out the boring strategy is the useful one on record weekends. (newsroom.aaa.com) ### Bottom line The headline is simple — Memorial Day 2026 looks set to be the busiest one in two decades, and maybe the busiest on record. Most of that surge will happen by car, which means the real bottleneck is not some abstract travel boom. It is a lot of people hitting the same roads at the same time. (newsroom.aaa.com) (news.aa.com)