With school out for the holiday break, the travel rush is upon us.

Thousands are hitting the road or flying through the skies to go home for the holidays. Channel 9's Ken Lemon checked in on the crowd of people at Charlotte Douglas International Airport on Friday.

Airport officials expect 2.75 million people to fly in and out of CLT over the next two weeks. That's an increase of about 6% over last year. It also means a lot more people are jockeying to get to the gate.

Leaders at the airport say roads will be crowded, and it could take 45 minutes to an hour to get to the terminal.

We saw a big crowd Friday morning. The line at Checkpoint 1 was backed up, but people planned for this.

That includes the Peter family, flying to Baltimore for the holiday. They got here three hours early.

"Timing for our kids, in terms of naps, and really wanting to make sure that we weren't having to be stuck in lines -- we have to check a bag, check a stroller, we gotta gate-check stuff," said Chris Peter.

The good news is that once you get to your terminal, the delays should stop for most passengers. That's unless you're flying to New York, Boston or San Diego -- according to Fly FAA, some flights were delayed anywhere from half an hour to four and a half hours in large part because of snow and ice in the northeast.

One woman flew in from Philadelphia with her family, and she told Lemon they flew out at midnight to avoid problems.

"We actually started early because we did expect it to be a large amount of traffic, you know. We did expect a lot of people to travel during this time. So we made sure we planned ahead of time," said Ginger Weston.

You can check flight status at CLT by clicking this link.