Holiday travel in Texas expected to increase, AAA Texas predicts Read more: Holiday travel in Texas expected to increase, AAA Texas predicts

More Texans are expected to hit the road to visit relatives and friends this holiday season.

AAA Texas projects that 7.5 million people a 3.3 percent raise over 2009 will travel 50 miles or more from home between Thursday, Dec. 23 and Sunday, Jan. 2.

About 7 million of the 7.5 million Texans will reach their destinations by driving. The rest will travel by air, bus, rail or ship.

Car Travel to Rise 3.2% This Holiday Season

This current year about 85.7 million people will hit the road during the holidays, a 3.2% raise over previous year, according to AAA.

Folks who take their cars instead of fly are expected to make about 90% of all holiday travelers commuting more than 50 miles. Overall, the average holiday vacationer will travel about 1,052 miles round journey, up 33% from previous year, and it will cost them $694, which is a similar amount spent on the Thanksgiving holiday, AAA says. AAA defines the holiday period as between Dec. 23 and Jan. 2.

Delta Offers Winter Weather Travel Assistance to Customers in the Southeast

Delta Air Lines is offering consumers whose flight plans may be affected by winter weather in the Southeast tomorrow and Thursday the ability to make one-time changes to their travel plans without fees. Delta's weather advisory encourages customers to consider postponing or re-routing their travel to avoid possible inconvenience from expected flight delays.

Cold, snow hit schools, travel in many states

chilling cold swept across the snow-hit Great Plains and Midwest on Monday, closing schools and playing havoc with journey plans and pushing sub-freezing temperatures as far south as Florida.

Minnesota and Wisconsin shivered in temperatures not expected to top single digits with wind chills much colder than that ,motorists were stranded on impassable roads in northwest Indiana.

Air traffic was gradually returning to regular after hundreds of flights were canceled at airports in midwestern and East Coast hubs during the worst of a storm that dropped 17 inches (43 cm) of snow in Minneapolis on Sunday that ripped holes in a stadium's inflatable roof.

Oracle wants $211 million in interest from SAP

Turning up the heat in a bitter legal dispute, software maker Oracle is asking a federal judge to order German rival SAP to give $211 million in interest on a record $1.3 billion jury award for software pirating.

Oracle filed the request Friday, saying the interest is necessary to "fully compensate" Oracle for the worth of software licenses that SAP should have purchased in 2005 and 2006.

SAP has already made a separate payment to Oracle of $120 million for its legal expenses, after acknowledging that an SAP subsidiary copied Oracle software without authorization. A federal jury decided previous month that SAP should pay what would have been the market value for licenses to use the software at the time, which the jury pegged at $1.3 billion.

Holiday Travel: Government Says Babies Should Be Buckled Up on Airplanes

With the holiday travel period quickly approaching, the federal government, flight attendants and airlines are urging parents to buckle up their babies on airplanes instead of holding them in their laps, even if it means shelling out money for an extra ticket.

A special forum on child safety in Washington today brought together representatives from the NTSB, the FAA and the Association of Flight Attendants. Each one agrees that a young child is safer when buckled into a safety restraint on an airplane, but after decades of debate, tickets still will not be required for children under age two. The FAA has concluded in the past that such a requirement would discourage air travel and put more cars on the road, where the likelihood of harm is statistically far greater.

Airline industry group sees holiday travel up

The business group for the nation's airlines said Wednesday that it expects 43.6 million people to travel by air over the Christmas and New Year's holidays.

That's about 3 percent more than previous year. ATA says the busiest days will be Dec. 21-23, Dec. 26-30 and Jan. 2-3, based on 2009 patterns. The airlines have added surcharges of $10-$30 on most of those days, anticipating heavier bookings.

ATA says the government will probably open up airspace generally reserved for military aircraft, on an as-needed basis, to ease the air traffic crunch. Fewer flights and the possibility of weather delays are likely to add to congestion at airports and in the air.