Airlines will offer almost 3,000 fewer domestic flights a day during the Thanksgiving season, promising fewer choices, fuller planes and higher fares for millions of Americans.

Compared with last Thanksgiving season, there will be 11 percent fewer flights — 2.6 million fewer seats — on nonstop domestic routes from Nov. 20, the Thursday before Thanksgiving, through Nov. 30, the Sunday afterward.

Hundreds of those routes have lost a quarter or more of the flights they had last Thanksgiving, according to a USA Today analysis of flight schedules that airlines filed with OAG — the Official Airline Guide. OAG provides trip planning and booking tools for travelers.

Cost cuts that airlines have made to cover high fuel prices eliminated many routes and flights after Labor Day. Scarce seats got pricier.

The busy Thanksgiving season will be many travelers' first encounter with the slimmed-down schedules.

The effect of fewer flights and full planes will make it harder for fliers to recover from delays, missed connections and canceled flights.

On Thanksgiving Day, the cutbacks are startling. US Airways won't operate 40 percent of the flights it flew Thanksgiving Day last year. Delta Air Lines cut 26 percent of Thanksgiving Day flights; United Airlines, 22 percent.

"Most of that's coming out in the afternoon, when people are eating turkey," says US Airways spokesman Jim Olson.

On many routes that lost a chunk of service, one or more carriers just stopped flying between those cities because the service is no longer profitable.

By Thanksgiving, American and Delta both will have halted nonstop flights between Charlotte, N.C., and New York LaGuardia Airport, for example. There will be 45 percent fewer nonstop flights than last season.

Passengers wanting to fly between Chicago O'Hare and Spokane, Wash., for Thanksgiving can't do it nonstop anymore. United Airlines, which now operates one flight daily each way, will stop Nov. 2. Travelers will have to connect.

In fact, 84 percent of U.S. airports that had nonstop service during the Thanksgiving season last year to Chicago O'Hare — one of the United States' busiest airports — will have fewer flights this holiday.

Bence Boelcskevy, gave up trying to book a convenient and affordable flight from Columbus, Ohio, to Washington Reagan Airport to visit family.

"The airlines have taken away a lot of flights," he says. "I found flights were disappearing."

Delta, which used to fly that nonstop route along with US Airways, stopped earlier this year.

So the 64-year-old widower is staying in Columbus to deliver turkey dinners to poor families and shut-ins.

JetBlue Airways is bucking the downsizing trend this holiday. It will operate 3 percent more flights.

Meanwhile, Southwest will add 15 extra flights Nov. 29 and 30, such as Dallas to Lubbock, Texas, to meet demand.