“We assume that capacities in November and December will decrease significantly in the coming weeks,” wrote Helane Becker, aviation analyst at Cowen Investment Bank, in a memo on Tuesday. Carriers like United, JetBlue, Alaska and Delta are “taking a more aggressive approach by reducing capacity early on to limit cash usage,” Becker said.
But some airlines, including Southwest, and American ghost, make such adjustments closer to the travel day, says Becker. Southwest, for example, combined flights during the holiday season and added stopovers to numerous routes.
“We recently adjusted our November and December flight schedule to reflect demand for travel, a process we’ve been doing continuously this year,” a Southwest spokesman said in an emailed statement. “We have worked hard to maintain service in all of our cities and to provide the flights that are most in demand. We are aware that for some this means that a previous non-stop trip may now require a stopover on the same aircraft or a change of aircraft at a connecting airport. “
The Dallas-based airline is offering customers affected by the cuts the option to rebook their itineraries (although change fees have never been charged). The majority of US airlines have too permanently eliminated change fees for domestic flights, which could help passengers fix unwanted changes to flight schedules – although customers who want to change their plans are usually responsible for paying a difference for a new fare.
How busy will the airports be?
Most hubs are not predicted to have the same hustle and bustle as they did in previous holiday periods. However, if you’ve flown at all during the COVID-19 outbreak, you can probably expect the airports to look busier than they have been for months.
The average number of daily fliers has increased during the pandemic and is likely to peak during the holidays. Becker predicted in her memo that by the December vacation, the number of daily US passengers will exceed 1 million. (Current numbers are close to that: there were 984,000 airmen on October 11 – the highest daily total during the outbreak.)
If patterns of summer travel indicate this, airports will be overcrowded over vacation routes this winter. The three summer holidays –Memorial day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day– were all highs for passenger numbers, with each holiday weekend setting a new pandemic record.
“We also believe that boredom and zoom fatigue are a major reason for increased travel,” Becker wrote. In other words, people start defying planes when it means meeting their families or friends face-to-face rather than opening gifts remotely or raising a glass of eggnog on video chat.
Another trend that will help reduce the crowds at airports? Travelers plan longer vacation trips and avoid them Main travel days for earlier departures and later returns. Searches for flights between 14 and 20 days is up 26 percent year-over-year, data from Kayak shows, while searches for flights for trips of six days or less decreased by nine percent.
“We believe Americans will be traveling this holiday season,” Kayak CEO Steve Hafner said in a statement. “It will just look different.”
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