The Thanksgiving holiday weekend has officially started, and so has the pilgrimage back home to celebrate with family.

AAA expects more than 38 million Americans to travel at least 50 miles for their Thanksgiving holiday.

AAA also expects the roads to be busier this year as it predicts a 2.1% jump nationwide in cars on the road this weekend.

Meantime, the way people travel may be shifting this year, because of the economy.

Of course there are some downsides to driving.

“I have to go kind of close to Chicago so I'm hoping there’s no traffic because you can get stuck on 80 if its rush hour in Chicago,” said Scott Rice, who was headed to St. Louis Wednesday to spend Thanksgiving with his family.

But headaches aside, there's an upside.

“It's only 6 hours so driving's like $25 for gas, that's all it takes,” Rice said.

AAA says as the recession still looms, about 1% more people are also turning to trains or other even cheaper forms of transportation this year.

“Basically it takes like $30 dollars in gas, but today I’m only spending $7,” said Byron Allgood, who was taking the South Shore to Chicago for Thanksgiving on Wednesday.

“I think this is a wonderful way to get to see your family. Sometimes airports are so packed, but I usually have a good commute here,” said Dorothy Dase, who was also taking the South Shore.

While South Bend Regional Airport was still busy Wednesday, AAA says the amount of air travelers across the country are expected to drop by 6.7% for the Thanksgiving weekend, compared to last year.

“We don’t have as many flights as we've had in years past, so that's going to make it a little tougher for the traveling public to get in and out of South Bend,” said John Schalliol with the South Bend Regional Airport.

Schalliol says air lines have cut their number of flights year round, which causes even more troubles for people like Steve LaPlace of Edwardsburg, who saw his early morning flight cancelled Wednesday.

“They cut the number of flights and all, and that’s created the difficulty in trying to get there,” said Steve LaPlace, who was trying to get to South Carolina.

LaPlace had to wait hours to catch a connecting flight to a different destination that originally planned, and then decide there whether to go straight to South Carolina, or find a flight to another nearby airport.

“If you don't make your flight for whatever reason, it's going to be very difficult to get a seat on a later flight because they all will be filled,” Schalliol said.

But no matter how you get there...

“To be with family, you’ll do whatever needs to be done to get to see family; especially when you got grandkids you know,” LaPlace said.

So while AAA expects travelling by car to be slightly up, and air travel down, it expects the overall amount of people travelling for the holiday weekend to be up by about 1%

But actually that's a pretty good improvement, after a 26% drop in Thanksgiving weekend travel last year.

Meantime, the Air Transport Association says it only expects about a 4% drop in air travel this year. It also says ticket prices have been deeply discounted over the last few months, which should help keep planes full.

However, the people WNDU spoke with at the airport Wednesday said that locally, ticket prices are really about the same as in the past.