Airlines say that passengers are booking flights much later than usual, often coming in at two weeks before departure or less. That is making for a nervous aviation industry, which may not be able to accurately forecast what demand will be in the coming months without the usual indicator of early ticket sales. Flights may need to be canceled or added depending on whether passengers purchase seats at the last minute — or simply don't purchase at all. The winter holiday season, typically a busy time
for airlines, could suffer big disruptions depending on how it breaks.
As Bloomberg reports, the industry has already been flying through a turbulent year. Geopolitical tensions may have weighed down on travel enthusiasm, not to mention tariffs looming over the global economy. A few high-profile plane crashes this year probably didn't help, such as an American Airlines jet striking a Black Hawk helicopter and a 787 crashing into an Indian city. At least America's air traffic control is in great shape — oh wait, that's also suffering badly and publicly.
With all that added up, February saw steep declines in passengers, though this has since recovered enough to prevent the airlines from panicking. Still, for an industry that was expecting growth this year, that's way off course. Plus, much of the above continue on as lingering problems. And even if total tickets end up being more or less even with last year, the airlines will still have forecasting issues if everybody buys them late.
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At least in the short term, all this chaos might actually benefit you. Per The New York Times, prices are quite a bit down at the moment for those flying international in economy class. Those tickets are about 11% cheaper than they were this time last year. Domestic flights have been a bit more stable, and premium seating is about the same or higher. If you have the money, it seems, travel is still on the menu.
For everybody else, it's more of a "wait and see" environment. If they get towards their vacation time and the sky hasn't fallen yet, people are pulling the trigger only then, at the last possible moment. Especially with lower prices and airlines pushing deals to get passengers into seats, it could end up being a good thing for you if you're looking to travel soon.
But all these low prices are bad business for the airlines that will actually fly you there, and this can't sustain forever. An environment where a company doesn't know how many flights it needs to schedule will lead to disruption at best and contraction at worst. The holidays are going to be here before you know it; let's see if enough flights get scheduled for everybody.
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