DALLAS—A 20 percent salary cut wasn’t enough to make Scott Fuchs skip his family’s longtime tradition of a Thanksgiving reunion.

The 49-year-old computer programmer from the Dallas suburb of Plano was at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on Wednesday, preparing to board a plane for South Florida with his wife and two children.

The family was having to stretch for the roughly $2,000 the trip would cost, Fuchs said, but it was worth it for an annual trek now at 20-something years and counting.

“This is our once-a-year big get-together,” said Fuchs, whose brother in Maryland was forced to stay home after recently being laid off.

Travel volume in the Dallas and Houston areas appeared to tell a similar story: Airline passengers were forging ahead with plans despite the shaky economy, some even deciding to make their first big Thanksgiving trip.

Officials said Wednesday that numbers were down, but generally in line with projections and matching cuts in airline capacity.

At D-FW Airport, about 2.17 million passengers are expected to fly during the 14-day period of Nov. 19 to Dec. 2, said airport spokesman Ken Capps. He said that’s down about 5 percent, the same percentage as airline capacity cuts.

“We really feel like we’re holding our own,” Capps said. “Obviously it’s down, but people are still getting on airplanes and of course those planes are even more full because there’s less capacity.”

Steve and Debbie Boultinghouse of Dallas were on their way to Tampa, Fla., to visit their daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren. Normally, they said, the daughter’s family would come in for Thanksgiving. Their concession to the economic times was to do the math.

“There are five of them and two of us,” Debbie Boultinghouse said.

The economic downturn didn’t stop Hadley Galt and her husband from taking their toddler daughter to New York for their first Thanksgiving trip. The 35-year-old, who is pregnant with her second child, said the only thing to cause her pause had nothing to do with the economy.

“I hesitated to make the trip with the baby,” she said, glancing down at the stroller.

Capps said many travelers bought Thanksgiving plane tickets months ago, before the economy took its severe turn for the worse. He also said some travelers probably took advantage of fare deals in recent weeks as gas prices eased.

“We’re expecting brisk travel today, but not anything that’s going to cause anybody any heartaches,” Capps said.

D-FW Airport and Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston were operating smoothly in the early hours of the busiest travel day of the year. Marlene McClinton, spokeswoman for the Houston airport system, said Bush was expecting about 1.3 million passengers in the same 14-day period. That figure will be lower than a year ago, McClinton said, but a precise percentage isn’t known yet.

McClinton said airport officials in Houston were concerned about a late rush because schools had to stay in session during Thanksgiving week to make up for days lost from Hurricane Ike.

“There was a moment where we were thinking, ‘Oh, my goodness, we’re back to the days of packed travel plans,”’ she said. “We’re just not seeing issues. Of course, it’s early.”

AAA predicts that holiday travel will fall for the first time in six years, but Texas Department of Public Safety troopers are patrolling state highways with the same increased enforcement as usual, said spokeswoman Lisa Block.

“It’s not any less than it would have been in previous years because of less traffic,” Block said. “We’re still planning on a lot of people being out there, and we’ll have all available troopers on the road.”