Sea-Tac airport expects upwards of 1 million travelers Thanksgiving week

Sea-Tac Airport is going to be swarming with holiday travelers next week.

From Monday to Monday, an estimated one million travelers are expected to pass through the gates, with the busiest day set to see 160,000. Sea-Tac’s Perry Cooper says that’s up to 30,000 extra people passing through per day.

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He says Sea-Tac is the fastest growing airport in the last five years in the country. They’ve gone up over 40 percent and this year they are are up another three percent, with over 50 million passengers in a year for the first time ever.

If you’re flying out, you should get there two hours early for domestic flights and three hours early for international. And if you’re picking someone up, he recommends “thinking opposite” and meeting loved ones at the departure gates rather than arrivals.

Testing out the newly-opened Paine Field Airport

Travelers can download the Sea-Tac Airport app to get real-time wait times for check points to get an idea of just how early you’ll need to get there.

“One of the big things we’re trying to encourage people to do is to download the Sea-Tac app … it gives you real-time wait times for our checkpoints, so you can get an idea of what it’s going to look like for you and how early you need to get in here,” he said

Thanksgiving day is expected to be a quiet one at Sea-Tac, with 103,000 people flying in and out.