Spirit among airlines bracing for record holiday travel in South Florida
FORT LAUDERDALE - Get ready for airport crowds as the holiday rush is getting started with a record number of crowds expected between Saturday and Monday, Jan. 6.
Miami International Airport is expecting a little over 3 million passengers "for this very busy holiday season," MIA Director Ralph Cutie. This would represent a 1% increase over last year's record-breaking travel season.
And Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport expects 2.1 million passengers, up 6% from last year.
The Gomes family is going to Hawaii and purposely planned to leave before the big rush.
"We left a few days early so we would not get any of those big crowds which is what we expect, we see on tv," Alicia Gomes, whose family is going to Hawaii and purposely planned to leave before the big rush.
They flew aboard on Spirit, which is Fort Lauderdale Hollywood's biggest airline.
Spirit Airlines CEO Ted Christie gave CBS News Miami an exclusive behind the scenes look at their Operational Control Center.
"These are the, the folks who are in charge of making sure the airline runs. it runs on time, it runs reliably and navigating all those challenges is a 24 by seven by 365 job," Christie said.
When something goes wrong, this is where they begin to fix it. When it goes right, chalk it up to planning , much of it done here.
"Over the Thanksgiving holiday, we ran a 99.9% completion factor, which basically means we didn't cancel any flying and it's our expectation, we'll see similar results during this holiday," Christie said.
During the holiday period Spirit will operate more than 750 daily flights systemwide, including just over 100 a day from FLL and about 15 from MIA..
LIke all airlines, the goal is that good planning will lead to on time, smooth travel.
"We make sure we have the right level of spare aircraft in the right places," Christie said. "We have the right level of crews positioned in the right places. We give ourselves enough time to recuperate if there's a bad weather day," he explained.
What could slow you down are passengers going through security with banned items. Transportation Security Administration agents displayed some of those items, including a claw with knives, a hatchet and guns, real or fake.
During the holidays wrapped presents could be a problem.
"If an item does need to be checked unfortunately we will have to unwrap it and we really don't want to do that," MIA TSA Director Stephen Taber said.