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American Morning
Interview With Mantill Williams
Aired November 08, 2001 - 11:17 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Two weeks from today, the holiday of Thanksgiving will ripple across America, and generally, it's the busiest travel time of the year. However, given the events of September 11th, will Americans venture far from home?
Mantill Williams is with AAA, North America's largest travel group. AAA came out with its Thanksgiving forecast last hour. Mantill, good morning to you.
MANTILL WILLIAMS, SPOKESMAN, AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION: Good morning, Bill. How are you doing?
HEMMER: What do you find -- I'm doing just fine. Thank you very much. What are you finding and what are you forecasting?
WILLIAMS: Well, we found that Thanksgiving travel will be down overall. That's sort of to be expected. But we are pleasantly surprised that it will only down by 6%. And car travel will only be down less than 2%. What we're finding is about -- over 34 million people will be going, travelling Thanks -- this Thanksgiving, and that is down from the 37 million traveling last Thanksgiving. Now, even though the number of people traveling by car and number of people overall will be travelling will be down, we do know that there will be a larger percentage of people will going by car, about 87%. So that's nine out of every 10 people that traveling this Thanksgiving will be going by car. And that is the highest percentage that we've recorded since the -- in our whole history of keeping track of holiday travels.
HEMMER: You know, we report on these numbers every year around this time, and I have always wondered, how do you get these numbers? You're not going out and counting cars.
WILLIAMS: Not that way. A little bit more scientific than that. We take a random sample of about 1300 individuals, and then we also talk to our 81 AAA clubs, and we ask them about their Trip-Tic numbers, about other things, and so we have a pretty good estimate. And in the past, when we compare actual to actual by our projections, they usually are pretty close.
HEMMER: You mention the car issue. What does that tell you?
WILLIAMS: Well, what that's telling me is that people need to increase their confidence in our aviation security system. Because as you know, Thanksgiving travel usually is the highest number -- we get the largest number of people traveling by air usually during Thanksgiving. I think some of that is being transferred over to the automobile and other modes.
HEMMER: Now, is that a suggestion, obviously based -- just inferring from your response there, that there still is a -- a huge concern right now -- huge might be overstatement, but a large concern at this point about security?
WILLIAMS: Yeah, I really do think so. I think the American public wants Congress and the administration to act immediately. They want to know that the -- our federal government and our airlines are doing everything in their power to make sure that the -- our airline security is as safe as it possibly can be. As a matter of fact, even though car travel is only down about 2%, the other modes are down about 27%, and most of that is being dragged down by the air travel numbers. Now we do believe that the confidence in air travel is starting to -- is starting to increase and people are easing back into travel. But they need a little help, they need a little help from Congress.
HEMMER: What do they tell you, Mantill?
WILLIAMS: Well, basically, the things that they care about -- a lot of the things that they care about are actually in the bills that have been proposed. The cockpit doors is like almost 92% of the people said they thought that was important. Sky Marshals. They thought that was very important. That was like, over 76% of people. But they want strong federal oversight, and they want strong federal presence in the aviation security and whether it's federal workers or not, that was sort of split down the middle, but the one thing they want, they want the government to take control of our security system in our airports.
HEMMER: Are you able to look past Thanksgiving, toward Christmas and the bigger holidays, or not?
WILLIAMS: Yeah, we are optimistic. We think that we are prime to be set up for a comeback to travel. For an increase in travel, for mainly three reasons. Number one: Thanksgiving and Christmas are usually the most heaviest-traveled times -- periods ever. And then also, we got low gas prices right now, and there are some great bargains in every area of travel. But as with last year, if you wait until last minute, you're not going to get those bargains.
HEMMER: Mantill Williams with AAA. Thanks for stopping by. Keep counting those cars, all right?
WILLIAMS: All right.
HEMMER: Thank you, sir. Much appreciated.
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