AMSTERDAM, Dec. 01, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TomTom (TOM2), the location technology specialist, today released a new report examining how road congestion around major U.S. airports shifts during the country’s busiest travel periods, including the recent federal shutdown that stretched across November and contributed to widespread flight cancellations. Drawing on multi-year data across 11 major airports, the report highlights national patterns, regional differences, and how both holiday surges and unexpected disruptions shape the traveler experience before they even reach the terminal.
Top Findings:
- Most airports ran faster than normal during the November 2025 shutdown, with several seeing double-digit improvements.
- Boston’s Logan International Airport (BOS) recorded the strongest gains during the shutdown, with PM traffic improving 19%.
- Across all time periods, 1-5am remained the most reliable window for smooth airport access nationally. 10-11am and 5-8pm consistently emerged as the most congested windows, regardless of city or season.
- Tourism-heavy metros like Las Vegas’ Harry Reid International Airport (LAS), Miami International Airport (MIA), BOS, and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) frequently ran faster-than-baseline during peak travel periods.
- Meanwhile, commuter-heavy metros like Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) and Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) repeatedly showed worse-than-baseline congestion during high-demand weeks.
- Summer holidays like Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day in 2025 showed the clearest national split, with half of airports improving by 5-20%, while others slowed by 7-16%.
- Thanksgiving and Christmas 2024 travel produced some of the year’s widest spreads in airport road performance, with top congested hubs running more than 2x as slow as the smoothest airports.
- Across nearly all airports, holiday and shutdown impacts varied far more by region than by season, revealing local behavior as the dominant driver of airport-area congestion.
Top 5 Slowest Airport Roads by Holiday (Average Travel Time Per 6 Miles):
| Thanksgiving 2024 | LAX 35 min, 4 sec | DCA 20 min, 6 sec | MIA 18 min, 8 sec | EWR 18 min, 7 sec | BOS 14 min, 2 sec |
| Christmas 2024 | LAX 35 min, 9 sec | MIA 18 min, 5 sec | EWR 17 min, 9 sec | DCA 17 min, 5 sec | BOS 14 min, 5 sec |
| Memorial Day 2025 | IAH 15 min | LAX 13 min, 9 sec | SEA 12 min, 3 sec | ORD 12 min, 2 sec | EWR 11 min, 6 sec |
| Independence Day 2025 | IAH 14 min, 6 sec | LAX 13 min, 2 sec | SEA 12 min | ORD 11 min, 9 sec | EWR 11 min, 5 sec |
| Labor Day 2025 | LAX 14 min, 7 sec | SEA 12 min, 1 sec | IAH 10 min, 4 sec | EWR 12 min | DCA 11 min, 2 sec |
| Shutdown 2025 | LAX 29 min, 5 sec | MIA 20 min, 9 sec | EWR 17 min, 4 sec | BOS 13 min, 8 sec | DCA 13 min, 8 sec |
Thanksgiving + Christmas 2024
Thanksgiving and Christmas set the tone for everything that followed in 2025, showing how holiday travel tends to amplify each airport’s existing behavior rather than reshape it. LAX stood out as the most congested both weeks, with travel times above 35 minutes per 6 miles, far higher than any other major hub. Other airports like Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), which tracked 20.6 minutes at Thanksgiving and 17.5 at Christmas, and MIA (18.8; 18.5) saw sustained holiday slowdowns that closely matched their typical congestion patterns.
In contrast, airports that tend to disperse travel demand, like BOS (14-14.5 minutes), JFK (~11 minutes), and LAS (12.4-12.7 minutes), remained significantly smoother — often 20-60% faster than the most congested metros. Across both holidays, the rankings slightly shifted. The same airports that struggled in November struggled again in December, while those that eased during Thanksgiving stayed among the smoothest through the end of the year.
Summer Holidays 2025
Summer holidays revealed a divided pattern. JFK, MIA, BOS, Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), and Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD) generally experienced lower-than-usual congestion around Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day, with travel times improving between 5% and 20% depending on the window. Meanwhile, airports such as IAH and LAX continued to see elevated delays during these same periods, reflecting the influence of local travel behavior, commuting intensity, and regional land-use characteristics.
Federal Shutdown 2025
The analysis also incorporates traffic trends during the November shutdown, which created significant uncertainty for travelers due to cancellations and reduced federal staffing. During the shutdown weeks, many airports like BOS, ORD, and DCA saw markedly smoother road conditions with significantly faster morning and evening travel times than a typical week, suggesting many travelers may have shifted, delayed, or avoided airport trips altogether. Meanwhile, airports such as Denver International Airport (DEN), IAH, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA), MIA, and EWR saw only partial relief: smoother mornings but more congested evenings.
LAX showed the opposite pattern: morning travel times slowed by 12.5%, while evening congestion improved by 9% compared to baseline, underscoring how the LAX network reacts differently to demand shifts than other major hubs.
“Airport access roads are one of the clearest indicators of how travelers respond to major events, whether it’s a holiday surge or a period of uncertainty like the November shutdown,” said Ralf-Peter Schäfer, VP Product Management for Traffic and Travel at TomTom. “What we’re seeing in the data gives us a preview of how quickly demand patterns can shift, and how different cities experience those changes in completely different ways. When airports, DOTs, and city planners understand how travelers behaved this year, they can anticipate next year’s pressure points, adjust operations earlier, and make data-driven decisions that keep people moving even under unpredictable conditions.”
TomTom’s airport-area analysis is part of the company’s ongoing work to help cities, transportation agencies, and airports understand how travel behavior shifts during peak periods, seasonal events, and system-wide disruptions — enabling more predictable, reliable movement for travelers and communities alike.
To learn more about this analysis and explore additional visual findings including graphs, charts, and city-by-city breakdowns, visit the TomTom blog: https://www.tomtom.com/newsroom/explainers-and-insights/impact-shutdown-and-holiday-period-US-airport-traffic-in-2025/
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Methodology
TomTom analyzed traffic patterns around 11 major U.S. airports using anonymized, privacy-protected speed and travel-time data captured over 600 million connected devices across the TomTom network. For each airport, we evaluated the primary access roads and calculated real-world travel times, speeds, and congestion relative to a typical local baseline — the average travel time on the same airport access roads during a typical non-holiday week of the same year. The analysis covered multi-year holiday periods (Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas), baseline non-holiday weeks, and the November shutdown period, which saw widespread flight cancellations and operational strain.
All figures reflect percent changes versus typical conditions, as well as hourly patterns to identify the most and least congested times. Holiday and shutdown results were aggregated to highlight national trends and regional differences, using TomTom’s standard “travel time per 6 miles” metric to ensure comparability across networks. No personally identifiable information (PII) is ever collected or processed as part of TomTom’s traffic analysis.
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