NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — Norfolk International Airport was pretty calm Sunday night to round out this year’s Thanksgiving holiday season.
Tamika Hart was dropping her daughter off for her flight and called the atmosphere “strange.” She said it was the quietest she’d seen the airport be on a Sunday after the holiday.
Hart told 10 On Your Side travel agents explained the surprising situation.
“I said, ‘How was today? Are you guys tired?’ And they said, ‘No, actually yesterday was horrible,'” Hart said. “They were talking about how busy it was. You know, how Sunday is normally the worst day, so I think that everybody planned on escaping the traffic and left yesterday, but they were in for a big surprise because it was swamped yesterday here.”
However, Hart said traveling on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving was a nightmare. According to TSA travel checkpoint numbers, there were 2.7 million passengers flying in the country that day.
“Wednesday when I went to pick [my daughter] up, we couldn’t even get in through the airport,” Hart said. “Traffic was backed up all the way on the bridge. It was horrible. People were fighting, actually.”
But it wasn’t only Norfolk International that saw a calm travel day on Sunday. Sarah Garrett came back to Norfolk from Michigan, and told 10 On Your Side that she expected a lot more chaos than there was.
“I was afraid that there would be a lot more traffic, but I didn’t really have a lot of issues through the checkpoints, though,” Garrett said. “I did get there two hours early.”
She could breathe a sigh of relief at the fact that she got home without any bumps in the road.
“I have work tomorrow, and I was like, ‘Please don’t snow please don’t snow,'” Garrett said.
Both women were just glad it was a day of smooth sailing to end holiday traveling.
Continue to check WAVY.com for updates.
