Airports busy today

It’s a busy day already on the highways — and at Des Moines International Airport, on the flyways, too. Spokesman Gary Hagan says flights are up about fifteen-percent there and the lines are long already today. He says there’s a common myth that in a smaller market like Des Moines you don’t need to get there early, but during this holiday peak time he says you’d better get there two hours early, and there are restaurants and gift shops if you wind up with time to kill. The airport’s on track to match or beat its record of one million people, set in the year 1996. Between this Thanksgiving weekend and Christmas he expects about 150-thousand passengers will go through the airport. And he’d advise every one of them to go ahead and take off their shoes going through security. He says it seems like a lot of people’s shoes set off the metal detectors, so take them off and send them in a big tray through the x-ray machine so you don’t set off an alarm that’ll require a second screening and back up the line.