MINNEAPOLIS — AAA projects 122.4 million Americans will travel at least 50 miles from home over the 13-day year-end holiday period beginning December 20 and ending January 1. This year’s forecast is a 2.2% increase over 2024, surpassing last year’s record of 119.7 million travelers. View the full report.

“People are eager to travel this holiday season,” said Debbie Haas, Vice President of Travel for AAA – The Auto Club Group. “That’s leading to record numbers on the roads and in the skies. Our advice is to plan ahead. Book early, allow extra time to reach your destination, and think about travel insurance if you’re flying during winter weather. It’s the best way to protect both your trip and your peace of mind.”

National Holiday Travelers

• Total Travelers: 122.4 million (+2% / 2.7 million more than last year)
• Auto Travelers: 109.5 million (+2% / 2.1 million more than last year)
• Air Travelers: 8 million (+2% / 181,000 more than last year)
• Other Travelers (bus, train, cruise): 4.9 million (+9% / 407,000 more than last year)

West North Central* Holiday Travelers

*The West North Central (WNC) Region covers Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska

• Total Travelers: 9.3 million (+1.02% / 94,000 more than last year)
• Auto Travelers: 8.5 million (+.4% / 36,000 more than last year)
• Air Travelers: 397,000 (+3.9% / 15,000 more than last year)
• Other Travelers: 384,000 (+9.4% / 33,000 more than last year)

Holiday Travel Costs

According to AAA booking data:

• Domestic flights: Average $890 (up 7%)
• International flights: Average $1,400 (down 14%)
• Domestic hotel stays: Average $750 (up 13%)
• Rental cars: Average $635 (up 1%)

Year-End Travelers by Mode of Transportation

By Car: AAA projects 109.5 million Americans will travel by car for their year-end trips, an increase of 2% compared to last year. Driving is the overwhelming favorite among all modes of transportation because of its convenience and low cost. This year, 89% of holiday travelers will take road trips.

• Gas prices are lower than last year, with the national average dipping below $3 per gallon for the first time in four years. Minnesota’s current average is $2.77 per gallon, sitting lower than last year at $2.82 per gallon.
• Safety reminders: December is National Impaired Driving Prevention Month. Designate a sober driver and avoid distractions.
• Vehicle prep: Check tires, battery, and fluids before hitting the road. AAA responded to more than 860,000 emergency roadside service calls during last year’s holiday.
• Slow Down, Move Over: Protect roadside workers and stranded motorists.

Car rentals: AAA’s car rental partner Hertz says Saturday, December 20 is expected to be the busiest pick-up day. The top 5 markets with the highest demand are Orlando, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, and Phoenix. Small SUVs make up the most popular car rental class over the year-end holidays.

Air Travel Soars Above 8 million

AAA projects a record 8.03 million travelers, a 2.3% increase compared to last year. This will be the first time on record that the number of domestic air travelers over the year-end holiday period exceeds 8 million.

Domestic flights are 7% more expensive this year. According to AAA data, which is based on what travelers paid when they booked their holiday trips, the average ticket costs nearly $900.

The days leading up to Christmas Day are the most expensive, while flying on the holiday itself is cheaper. New Year’s flights are also pricey, with many people returning home on New Year’s Day or even squeezing one extra weekend out of the holiday season and coming back on Sunday, January 4.

Travel insurance is essential, especially when winter weather and heavy travel demand increases the risk of delays and cancellations. It helps offset unexpected costs associated with rebooking fees, lost luggage, and trip interruptions. For air travelers, this protection is especially valuable during peak holiday periods when flights are full and alternative options are limited.

Tips for Air Travelers

• Check flight status before leaving home and sign up for airline alerts.
• Arrive early: Allow at least two hours for domestic flights and three for international.
• Pack smart: Keep medications, chargers, and a change of clothes in your carry-on.
• Know your rights: Understand airline policies on rebooking and compensation.

Best/Worst Times to Drive and Peak Congestion by Metro

Christmas week is forecast to be busier on the roads than New Year’s week, but both weeks will see days of increased traffic, according to INRIX, a provider of transportation data and insights.

• Interstates will be more congested the weekend before Christmas, as travelers hit the road on Saturday and Sunday ahead of the holiday.
• Friday, December 26 is also expected to be busy as travelers make moves post-Christmas Day.
• Because the year-end holiday travel period spans a longer time frame, travelers have more options for departures and returns.
• The holidays themselves – Christmas and New Year’s Day – typically have lighter traffic, but severe weather could create unexpected delays.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rob Reiner, the son of a comedy giant who became one himself as one of the preeminent filmmakers of his generation with movies such as “The Princess Bride,” “When Harry Met Sally …” and “This Is Spinal Tap,” has died. He was 78.

Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer, were found dead Sunday at their home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. A law enforcement official briefed on the investigation confirmed their identities but could not publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Authorities were investigating an “apparent homicide,” said Capt. Mike Bland with the Los Angeles Police Department. The Los Angeles Fire Department said it responded to a medical aid request shortly after 3:30 p.m.

Reiner grew up thinking his father, Carl Reiner, didn’t understand him or find him funny. But the younger Reiner would in many ways follow in his father’s footsteps, working both in front and behind the camera, in comedies that stretched from broad sketch work to accomplished dramedies.

“My father thought, ‘Oh, my God, this poor kid is worried about being in the shadow of a famous father,’” Reiner said, recalling the temptation to change his name to “60 Minutes” in October. “And he says, ‘What do you want to change your name to?’ And I said, ‘Carl.’ I just wanted to be like him.”

After starting out as a writer for “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” Reiner’s breakthrough came when he was, at age 23, cast in Norman Lear’s “All in the Family” as Archie Bunker’s liberal son-in-law, Michael “Meathead” Stivic. But by the 1980s, Reiner began as a feature film director, churning out some of the most beloved films of that, or any, era. His first film, the largely improvised 1984 cult classic “This Is Spinal Tap,” remains the quintessential mockumentary.

After the 1985 John Cusack summer comedy, “The Sure Thing,” Reiner made “Stand By Me” (1986), “The Princess Bride” (1987) and “When Harry Met Sally …” (1989), a four-year stretch that resulted in a trio of American classics, all of them among the most often quoted movies of the 20th century.

A legacy on and off screen

For the next four decades, Reiner, a warm and gregarious presence on screen and an outspoken liberal advocate off it, remained a constant fixture in Hollywood. The production company he co-founded, Castle Rock Entertainment, launched an enviable string of hits, including “Seinfeld” and “The Shawshank Redemption.” By the turn of the century, its success rate had fallen considerably, but Reiner revived it earlier this decade. This fall, Reiner and Castle Rock released the long-in-coming sequel “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.”

All the while, Reiner was one of the film industry’s most passionate Democrat activists, regularly hosting fundraisers and campaigning for liberal issues. He was co-founder of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which challenged in court California’s ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8. He also chaired the campaign for Prop 10, a California initiative to fund early childhood development services with a tax on tobacco products. Reiner was also a critic of President Donald Trump.

That ran in the family, too. Reiner’s father opposed the Communist hunt of McCarthyism in the 1950s and his mother, Estelle Reiner, a singer and actor, protested the Vietnam War.

“If you’re a nepo baby, doors will open,” Reiner told the Guardian in 2024. “But you have to deliver. If you don’t deliver, the door will close just as fast as it opened.”

‘All in the Family’ to ‘Stand By Me’

Robert Reiner was born in the Bronx on March 6, 1947. As a young man, he quickly set out to follow his father into entertainment. He studied at the University of California, Los Angeles film school and, in the 1960s, began appearing in small parts in various television shows.

But when Lear saw Reiner as a key cast member in “All in the Family,” it came as a surprise to the elder Reiner.

“Norman says to my dad, ‘You know, this kid is really funny.’ And I think my dad said, ‘What? That kid? That kid? He’s sullen. He sits quiet. He doesn’t, you know, he’s not funny.’ He didn’t think I was anyway,” Reiner told “60 Minutes.”

On “All in the Family,” Reiner served as a pivotal foil to Carroll O’Connor’s bigoted, conservative Archie Bunker. Reiner was five times nominated for an Emmy for his performance on the show, winning in 1974 and 1978. In Lear, Reiner also found a mentor. He called him “a second father.”

“It wasn’t just that he hired me for ‘All in the Family,’” Reiner told “American Masters” in 2005. “It was that I saw, in how he conducted his life, that there was room to be an activist as well. That you could use your celebrity, your good fortune, to help make some change.”

Lear also helped launch Reiner as a filmmaker. He put $7.5 million of his own money to help finance “Stand By Me,” Reiner’s adaptation of the Stephen King novella “The Body.” The movie, about four boys who go looking for the dead body of a missing boy, became a coming-of-age classic, made breakthroughs of its young cast (particularly River Phoenix) and even earned the praise of King.

With his stock rising, Reiner devoted himself to adapting William Goldman’s 1973’s “The Princess Bride,” a book Reiner had loved since his father gave him a copy as a gift. Everyone from François Truffaut to Robert Redford had considered adapting Goldman’s book, but it ultimately fell to Reiner (from Goldman’s own script) to capture the unique comic tone of “The Princess Bride.” But only once he had Goldman’s blessing.

“At the door he greeted me and he said, ‘This is my baby. I want this on my tombstone. This is my favorite thing I’ve ever written in my life. What are you going to do with it?’” Reiner recalled in a Television Academy interview. “And we sat down with him and started going through what I thought should be done with the film.”

Though only a modest success in theaters, the movie — starring Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, André the Giant and Robin Wright — would grow in stature over the years, leading to countless impressions of Inigo Montoya’s vow of revenge and the risky nature of land wars in Asia.

‘When Harry Met Sally …”

Reiner was married to Penny Marshall, the actor and filmmaker, for 10 years beginning in 1971. Like Reiner, Marshall experienced sitcom fame, with “Laverne & Shirley,” but found a more lasting legacy behind the camera.

After their divorce, Reiner, at a lunch with Nora Ephron, suggested a comedy about dating. In writing what became “When Harry Met Sally …” Ephron and Reiner charted a relationship between a man and a woman (played in the film by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan) over the course of 12 years.

Along the way, the movie’s ending changed, as did some of the film’s indelible moments. The famous line, “I’ll have what she’s having,” said after witnessing Ryan’s fake orgasm at Katz’s Delicatessen, was a suggestion by Crystal — delivered by none other than Reiner’s mother, Estelle.

The movie’s happy ending also had some real-life basis. Reiner met Singer, a photographer, on the set of “When Harry Met Sally …” In 1989, they were wed. They had three children together: Nick, Jake and Romy.

Reiner’s subsequent films included another King adaptation, “Misery” (1990) and a pair of Aaron Sorkin-penned dramas: the military courtroom tale “A Few Good Men” (1992) and 1995’s “The American President.”

By the late ’90s, Reiner’s films (1996’s “Ghosts of Mississippi,” 2007’s “The Bucket List”) no longer had the same success rate. But he remained a frequent actor, often memorably enlivening films like “Sleepless in Seattle” (1993) and “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013). In 2023, he directed the documentary “Albert Brooks: Defending My Life.”

In an interview earlier this year with Seth Rogen, Reiner suggested everything in his career boiled down to one thing.

“All I’ve ever done is say, ‘Is this something that is an extension of me?’ For ‘Stand by Me,’ I didn’t know if it was going to be successful or not. All I thought was, ‘I like this because I know what it feels like.’”

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Michael Jordan and NASCAR chairman Jim France stood side-by-side on the steps of a federal courthouse as if they were old friends following a stunning settlement Thursday of a bruising antitrust case in which the Basketball Hall of Famer was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit accusing the top racing series in the United States of being a monopolistic bully.

The duo was flanked by three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin and Curtis Polk, the co-owners of 23XI Racing with Jordan, Front Row Motorsports owner Bob Jenkins and over a dozen lawyers as they celebrated the end to an eight-day trial that ultimately led NASCAR to cave and grant all its teams the permanent charters they wanted.

“Like two competitors, obviously we tried to get as much done in each other’s favor,” Jordan said, towering over the 81-year-old France. “I’ve said this from Day 1: The only way this sport is going to grow is we have to find some synergy between the two entities. I think we’ve gotten to that point, unfortunately it took 16 months to get here, but I think level heads have gotten us to this point where we can actually work together and grow this sport. I am very proud about that and I think Jim feels the same.”

France concurred.

“I do feel the same and we can get back to focusing on what we really love, and that’s racing, and we spent a lot of time not really focused on that so much as we needed to be,” France said. “I feel like we made a very good decision here together and we have a big opportunity to continue growing the sport.”

A charter is the equivalent of the franchise model used in other sports and in NASCAR it guarantees 36 teams a spot in every top-level Cup Series race and a fixed portion of the revenue stream. The system was implemented in 2016 and teams have argued for over two years that the charters needed to be made permanent — they had been revokable by NASCAR — and the revenue sharing had to change.

NASCAR, founded and privately owned by the Florida-based France family, never considered making the charters permanent. Instead, after two-plus years of bitter negotiations, NASCAR in September 2024 presented a “take-it-or leave-it” final offer that gave teams until end of that day to sign the 112-page document.

23XI and Front Row refused and sued, while 13 other organizations signed but testimony in court revealed many did so “with a gun to our head” because the threat of losing the charters would have put them out of business.

Jordan testified early in the trial that as a new team owner to NASCAR — 23XI launched in 2021 — he felt he had the strength to challenge NASCAR. Eight days of testimony went badly for NASCAR, which when it began to present its case seemed focused more on mitigating damages than it did on proving it did not violate antitrust laws.

Although terms of the settlement were not released — NASCAR was in the process of scheduling a Thursday afternoon call with all teams to discuss the revenue-sharing model moving forward — both Jordan and NASCAR said that charters will now be permanent for all teams. 23XI and Front Row will receive their combined six charters back for 2026.

An economist previously testified that NASCAR owes 23XI and Front Row $364.7 million in damages, and that NASCAR shorted 36 chartered teams $1.06 billion from 2021-24.

“Today’s a good day,” Jordan said from the front-row seat he’s occupied since the trial began Dec. 1 as he waited for the settlement announcement.

U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell, who had presided over two days of failed settlement talks before the trial began, echoed the sentiment. Bell told the jury that sometimes parties at trial have to see how the evidence unfolds to come to the wisdom of a settlement.

“I wish we could’ve done this a few months ago,” Bell said in court. “I believe this is great for NASCAR. Great for the future of NASCAR. Great for the entity of NASCAR. Great for the teams and ultimately great for the fans.”

The settlement came after two days of testimony by France and the Wednesday night public release of a letter from Bass Pro Shops founder Johnny Morris calling for NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps to be removed.

The discovery process revealed internal NASCAR communications in which Phelps called Hall of Fame team owner Richard Childress a “redneck” and other derogatory names; Bass Pro sponsors Childress’ teams, as well as some others, and Morris is an ardent NASCAR supporter.

Childress gave fiery testimony earlier this week over his reluctance to sign the charter agreement because it was unfair to the teams, which have been bleeding money and begged NASCAR for concessions. Letters from Hall of Fame team owners Joe Gibbs, Rick Hendrick, Jack Roush and Roger Penske were introduced in which they pleaded with France for charters to become permanent; France testified he was not moved by the men he considers good friends.

Hendrick and Penske, who were both scheduled to testify Friday, expressed gratitude that a settlement had been reached. Penske called it “tremendous news” and said it cleared the way to continue growing the series.

“Millions of loyal NASCAR fans and thousands of hardworking people rely on our industry, and today’s resolution allows all of us to focus on what truly matters — the future of our sport,” Hendrick said. “This moment presents an important opportunity to strengthen our relationships and recommit ourselves to building a collaborative and prosperous future for all stakeholders. I’m incredibly optimistic about what’s ahead.”

The settlement came abruptly on the ninth day of the trial. Bell opened expecting to hear motions but both sides asked for a private conference in chambers. When they emerged, Bell ordered an hourlong break for the two sides to confer. That turned into two hours, all parties returned to the courtroom and Kessler announced an agreement had been reached.

“What all parties have always agreed on is a deep love for the sport and a desire to see it fulfill its full potential,” NASCAR and the plaintiffs said in a joint statement. “This is a landmark moment, one that ensures NASCAR’s foundation is stronger, its future is brighter and its possibilities are greater.”