Oil and gas prices Travel: Thanksgiving
by Patrick
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Being thankful will cost you more this year
You’re going to pay a little more for a lot of things this Thanksgiving.
If you drive anywhere, gas will cost about 20 cents a gallon more than a year ago. Texas prices average $2.68 today.
If you fly, tickets will cost about 4 percent more. On top of that, at some 70 airports, including San Antonio’s, you now face security scanners that see through your clothes or agents who will touch in ways that few people would dare.
Staying home? Cooking a traditional turkey meal will cost 13 percent more in Texas.
Meanwhile, 9.6 percent of U.S. workers are looking for jobs. Experts, revising predictions, now say unemployment will remain higher than thought for years to come.
Yet, Americans seem ready to celebrate, an AAA survey indicates.
About 42.2 million people will make a trip of at least 50 miles this holiday weekend, up 11 percent from a year ago. On average, they’ll travel 816 miles and spend $495, nearly the same as last year. Nine out of 10 will go by car.
“When purse strings and heart strings compete in a tug-of-war, especially at this time of year, the heart wins out,” AAA President Robert Darbelnet said.
And so it has. Some things you can’t put a price on.
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Thanksgiving travel shows glimmer of hope
Americans shaken by last year’s economic crash may be regaining enough confidence to hit the roads in higher numbers this Thanksgiving, according to AAA.
When a wobbly economy finally nose-dived last fall, Thanksgiving trips also plunged, by 25 percent from the year before, the travel association reports.
This year, with unemployment higher than it’s been since 1983 despite economic growth last quarter, 38.4 million Americans — one in eight — will travel at least 50 miles from home, up a slight 1.4 percent.
But the numbers, like the economy, could be rickety.