By DAVID KOENIG-As­so­ci­at­ed Press

DAL­LAS (AP) — De­ter­mined to re­claim Thanks­giv­ing tra­di­tions that were put on pause last year by the pan­dem­ic, mil­lions of Amer­i­cans will be load­ing up their cars or pil­ing on­to planes to gath­er again with friends and fam­i­ly.

The num­ber of air trav­el­ers this week is ex­pect­ed to ap­proach or even ex­ceed pre-pan­dem­ic lev­els, and au­to club AAA pre­dicts that 48.3 mil­lion peo­ple will trav­el at least 50 miles from home over the hol­i­day pe­ri­od, an in­crease of near­ly 4 mil­lion over last year de­spite sharply high­er gaso­line prices.

Many feel em­bold­ened by the fact that near­ly 200 mil­lion Amer­i­cans are now ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed. But it al­so means brush­ing aside con­cerns about a resur­gent virus at a time when the U.S. is now av­er­ag­ing near­ly 100,000 new in­fec­tions a day and hos­pi­tals in Michi­gan, Min­neso­ta, Col­orado and Ari­zona are see­ing alarm­ing in­creas­es in pa­tients.

The sev­en-day dai­ly av­er­age of new re­port­ed cas­es up near­ly 30% in the last two weeks through Tues­day, ac­cord­ing to fig­ures from Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty. The U.S. Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion says un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple should not trav­el, al­though it is un­clear whether that rec­om­men­da­tion is hav­ing any ef­fect.

More than 2.2 mil­lion trav­el­ers streamed through air­port check­points last Fri­day, the busiest day since the pan­dem­ic dev­as­tat­ed trav­el ear­ly last year. From Fri­day through Mon­day, the num­ber of peo­ple fly­ing in the U.S. was more than dou­ble the same days last year and on­ly 8% low­er than the same days in 2019.

At Newark Lib­er­ty In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in New Jer­sey, Pe­ter Ti­tus, an en­gi­neer at the Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty plas­ma physics lab, was head­ing to vis­it ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly in Cana­da with his wife and adult son. He car­ried a fold­er with print­outs of their vac­ci­na­tion cards and neg­a­tive COVID-19 tests need­ed to fly in­to Cana­da.

His son, Chris­t­ian Ti­tus, who works as a voice ac­tor, says he’s spent much of the pan­dem­ic in­side but is will­ing to risk fly­ing on a crowd­ed air­plane be­cause he miss­es be­ing around his fam­i­ly. He got a boost­er shot to in­crease his pro­tec­tion.

“My men­tal health does bet­ter by be­ing around my fam­i­ly dur­ing these times,” he said. “Yeah, it’s dan­ger­ous. But you love these peo­ple, so you do what you can to stay safe around them.”

Me­ka Star­ling and her hus­band were ex­cit­ed for many mem­bers of their ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly to meet their 2-year-old son, Kaiden, for the first time at a big Thanks­giv­ing gath­er­ing in Lin­den, New Jer­sey.

“We’ve put pic­tures on Face­book so a lot of them have seen pic­tures of him, but to get to ac­tu­al­ly touch him and talk to him, I’m ex­cit­ed about it,” said Star­ling, 44, of West Point, Mis­sis­sip­pi, who will gath­er with near­ly 40 fam­i­ly mem­bers, all of whom agreed to be vac­ci­nat­ed.

For their part, air­lines are hop­ing to avoid a re­peat of the mas­sive flight can­cel­la­tions — more than 2,300 apiece — that dogged South­west and Amer­i­can Air­lines at dif­fer­ent times last month.

The break­downs start­ed with bad weath­er in one part of the coun­try and spun out of con­trol. In the past, air­lines had enough pi­lots, flight at­ten­dants and oth­er work­ers to re­cov­er from many dis­rup­tions with­in a day or two. They are find­ing it hard­er to bounce back now, how­ev­er, be­cause they are stretched thin af­ter push­ing thou­sands of em­ploy­ees to quit when trav­el col­lapsed last year.

Amer­i­can, South­west, Delta and Unit­ed have all been hir­ing late­ly, which gives the air­lines and in­dus­try ob­servers hope that flights will stay on track this week.

“The air­lines are pre­pared for the hol­i­days,” said Helane Beck­er, an air­lines an­a­lyst for fi­nan­cial-ser­vices firm Cowen. “They cut back the num­ber of flights, the in­dus­try has enough pi­lots, they are putting more flight at­ten­dants through their (train­ing) acad­e­mies, and they are pay­ing flight at­ten­dants a pre­mi­um — what I’m go­ing to call haz­ardous-du­ty pay — to en­cour­age peo­ple not to blow off work.”

The air­lines have lit­tle mar­gin for er­ror right now. Amer­i­can ex­pect­ed to fill more than 90% of its seats with pay­ing cus­tomers on Tues­day. That’s a throw­back to hol­i­day trav­el be­fore the pan­dem­ic.

“There is not a lot of room to put peo­ple on an­oth­er flight if some­thing goes wrong,” said Den­nis Tajer, a pi­lot for the air­line and a spokesman for the Amer­i­can pi­lots’ union.

Mean­while, the Trans­porta­tion Se­cu­ri­ty Ad­min­is­tra­tion is dis­miss­ing con­cern that it might have staffing short­ages at air­port check­points this week be­cause of a re­quire­ment that fed­er­al em­ploy­ees be vac­ci­nat­ed against COVID-19. White House of­fi­cials said 93% of TSA em­ploy­ees are in com­pli­ance with the man­date, and they don’t ex­pect any dis­rup­tions.

For hol­i­day trav­el­ers go­ing by car, the biggest pain is like­ly to be high­er prices at the pump. The na­tion­wide av­er­age for gaso­line on Tues­day was $3.40 a gal­lon, ac­cord­ing to AAA, up more than 60% from last Thanks­giv­ing.

Those prices could be one of sev­er­al fac­tors that will dis­cour­age some hol­i­day trav­el­ers. In a sur­vey con­duct­ed by Gas­bud­dy, which tracks pump prices, about half of the app users who re­spond­ed said high prices will af­fect their trav­el plans this week. About two in five said they aren’t mak­ing as many trips for a va­ri­ety of rea­sons.

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden on Tues­day or­dered 50 mil­lion bar­rels of oil re­leased from Amer­i­ca’s strate­gic re­serve to help bring down en­er­gy costs, in co­or­di­na­tion with oth­er ma­jor en­er­gy con­sum­ing na­tions. The U.S. ac­tion is aimed at glob­al en­er­gy mar­kets, but al­so at help­ing Amer­i­cans cop­ing with high­er in­fla­tion and ris­ing prices ahead of Thanks­giv­ing and win­ter hol­i­day trav­el.

The price at the pump was a bit of a shock to Tye Reedy, who flew in­to Cal­i­for­nia from Ten­nessee and bor­rowed his friend’s truck for some sight­see­ing. Gas was run­ning $5 a gal­lon at the Chevron in Alame­da, and it cost $100 to fill up the truck.

“We did not trav­el last year be­cause of COVID re­stric­tions and all,” Reedy said. “But you know, we’re con­fi­dent enough … with the vac­cine and where things are now with the virus that, you know, we felt com­fort­able trav­el­ing.”

AP staff writ­ers Ted Shaf­frey, Ter­ry Chea and Seth Wenig in Newark, New Jer­sey, con­tributed to this re­port.