BATON ROUGE- Dec. 19 through Jan. 5 is considered the Christmas holiday travel period. This year, the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport is anticipating a busier-than-usual holiday travel period.

"Our numbers are showing we are about 7 and a half percent up compared to last year," Assistant Director of Aviation Louis Hubbard said.

Hubbard says airlines have increased capacity, allowing more seats to come into the market. He says this gives more options for people to fly out of Baton Rouge.

"This shows that the community is definitely supporting the airport. As the airlines bring in more flights and more seats, the more people that are obviously in those seats definitely helps us in the conversations of bringing on more air service and more destinations to the area," Hubbard said.

Hubbard says typically New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, Christmas Day, and Christmas Eve are slower travel days, but there were a few passengers catching last-minute flights out of the airport today.

"I'm here to go have fun and make new memories for Christmas and just reflect on the goodness of god too honestly."

While some passengers faced flight delays, it didn't rain on their Christmas spirit.

"Going skiing, meeting the daughters, but looks like it's not going to happen, our flight out of Baton Rouge is delayed, so our connection is going to be missed in Dallas," Traveler Danny McGlynn said.

McGlynn says they will probably end up having to stay in Dallas tonight and fly to their destination Christmas morning.

"It's not ideal, but it's Christmas, we'll make it, Santa Claus will just have to make a hotel stop," he said.

If you have any plans on flying out of the Baton Rouge Metro Airport this holiday season, be sure to check their website for information on flights and parking.