Empty Airports on Christmas Eve?

After noticing the very light airport traffic on Christmas Eve while depositing the bro back to Chicago, and then searching Twitter to confirm other reports of empty airports, I did another search to see what statistics the Bureau of Transportation Statistics has collected regarding holiday travel. Here's a key quote very relevant to Christmas falling on a Tuesday:

Unlike Thanksgiving, which always falls on the fourth Thursday of November, the Christmas/New Year’s travel period, and the resulting travel pattern, varies depending on the day of the week on which the two holidays fall. In 2001, when Christmas and New Year’s Day fell on Tuesday, the Saturday and Sunday preceding Christmas and Christmas Day were generally the busiest travel days of the entire 17-day holiday travel period.

So, the mad rush to get home to family when Christmas falls in the middle of the week happens on the weekend prior, or immediately after. This is a good thing to know for making those air travel plans.

Stale Comics?

Or stale gum?

New inserts will feature brainteasers, like a challenge to list 10 comic book heroes named after animals, or activities, like instructions on folding the insert into an airplane. They also include codes that, when entered at BazookaJoe.com, will unlock content like videos and video games.

Bazooka Joe and his sidekick, Mort, who wears his turtleneck up over his mouth, will appear only occasionally as illustrations in the new inserts, but without the antics and corny jokes of the three-panel strips.

I wonder if the 50% drop off in sales over the last five years has less to do with the stale comics and more to do with the company not spending a dime in advertising over those same five years.