Holiday travel
Thanksgiving at SBA
Santa Barbara Municipal Airport, Santa Barbara, CA. July 2023 – July 2026. Set against SBA’s own ordinary days of the same weekday in the weeks around each holiday.
The window, year by year
The window runs the Wednesday before through the Sunday after, around Thanksgiving Day (the fourth Thursday of November). In the data: Nov 22–26, 2023; Nov 27 – Dec 1, 2024; Nov 26–30, 2025. Three windows are in the data: enough to see whether a day repeats, not enough to call it a rule.
| Year | Departures | On time | Usual | Gap, points | Cancelled | Usual |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023Nov 22–26, 2023 | 100 | — | — | — | — | — |
| 2024Nov 27 – Dec 1, 2024 | 106 | — | — | — | — | — |
| 2025Nov 26–30, 2025 | 118 | — | — | — | — | — |
| All years3 windows | 324 | 84.8% | 83.4% | +1.4about the same | 0.62% | 0.89% |
Day by day
No single day has enough flights to print a rate here, so there is no chart. The table below still lists every day, with dashes where the flights are too few.
| Day | Departures against an ordinary day | On time | Usual | Gap, points | Cancelled | Each year: 2023, 2024, 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday beforeoutside the window | — | — | — | — | — | — · — · — |
| Tuesday beforeoutside the window | — | — | — | — | — | — · — · — |
| Wednesday before | — | — | — | — | — | — · — · — |
| Thanksgiving Day | — | — | — | — | — | — · — · — |
| Friday after | — | — | — | — | — | — · — · — |
| Saturday after | — | — | — | — | — | — · — · — |
| Sunday after | — | — | — | — | — | — · — · — |
| Monday afteroutside the window | — | — | — | — | — | — · — · — |
| Tuesday afteroutside the window | — | — | — | — | — | — · — · — |
A dash means fewer than 120 flights stood behind the figure, or behind the ordinary days it would be compared with: too few to print a rate, and nothing is estimated in its place. “Usual” is what ordinary days of the same weekday had at the same place in the weeks around the holiday, weighted by the flights being compared.
Which departure times held up
The busiest days at SBA were Wednesday, Nov 22, 2023 (21 departures), Saturday, Nov 25, 2023 (22 departures), Wednesday, Nov 27, 2024 (23 departures), Sunday, Dec 1, 2024 (24 departures), Wednesday, Nov 26, 2025 (26 departures), and Sunday, Nov 30, 2025 (28 departures).
SBA has too few flights in each departure window to compare them.
| Leaving | On time, whole window | Usual | Gap, points | On time, busiest days | Usual | Gap, points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5–9 AM | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 9 AM–12 PM | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 12–3 PM | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 3–6 PM | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 6–9 PM | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 9 PM–5 AM | — | — | — | — | — | — |
SBA beside every covered airport
Storms and outages move whole regions at once. This puts SBA’s year beside the year of all covered airports together, each against its own usual, to show whether SBA did better or worse than the network.
| Year | SBA on time | SBA, gap from usual | All airports on time | All airports, gap from usual |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023Nov 22–26, 2023 | — | — | 83.7% | +1.9 |
| 2024Nov 27 – Dec 1, 2024 | — | — | 82.6% | +0.8 |
| 2025Nov 26–30, 2025 | — | — | 72.8% | −9.0 |
For every holiday at once, see the five holidays at SBA, or the network view.