With crowded planes, winter weather delays, and sky-high airfares, most travelers find flying during the holidays to be a headache. But in a year as unprecedented as 2020, will those who still decide to fly home during the winter find that planes and airports are calmer—or even more hectic?
The answer is complicated. While November and December holiday travel usually means a record-breaking number of fliers—more than 2.8 million passengers passed through U.S. airports on the Sunday after Thanksgiving last year, TSA’s busiest day ever—this year’s statistics will likely be a mere fraction of the annual crush. With domestic air travel still down nearly 70 percent, airports are sure to look different this holiday season.
Many potential fliers are still showing hesitation about booking holiday travel, experts say. But even so, planes could be comparatively more crowded during the winter months than other times during the pandemic. According to a recent survey of more than 4,000 worldwide travelers by aviation data firm OAG, about 81 percent of North American respondents said they are planning to travel domestically within the next six months.
Here’s the current outlook for holiday travel this year.
Holiday airfares are down
In a typical year, holiday flight bookings typically begin to surge in early October, as it is one of the best times to find winter flight deals.
But this year would-be air travelers are dragging their feet: In the first week of October, domestic flight searches were down 81 percent and hotel searches down 74 percent compared to the same time period last year, according to data from travel search site Kayak. Planned November bookings are down more than 75 percent for major U.S. airlines like American and United, and down almost 90 percent for Delta, according to OAG.
Given the lag, airlines have been lowering fares, hoping to entice fliers with deals. Domestic flight prices are down nearly 16 percent year over year for the holiday season, Kayak says. Round-trip holiday fares to cities like New Orleans have been less than $100 in recent weeks, according to Scott’s Cheap Flights, while similar flights to Boston have been a paltry $51.
In a typical year, pouncing on these rock-bottom deals would be a no-brainer. In 2020 it’s more complicated, and not simply because of health concerns. Because demand has been so unpredictable, many airlines are continually scaling back the amount of flights they will operate in November and December, paring flight schedules down to avoid flying near-empty planes.
Flight schedules are shifting
What does this mean for the average traveler? If you do book, brace for inconvenient changes to your itinerary: potential flight cancellations, drastic time changes, and for that nonstop flight to be re-routed through a hectic hub. OAG says that U.S. airlines are responding to decreased demand by reducing capacity, or the number of seats available on planes, by 50 percent every few weeks.
“We expect significant movement in November and December capacity to be adjusted lower in the coming weeks,” Helane Becker, an aviation analyst at Cowen investment bank, wrote in a memo on Tuesday. Carriers like United, JetBlue, Alaska, and Delta are taking “a more aggressive approach by reducing capacity early to limit cash burn,” Becker said.
But some airlines, including Southwest, American, and Spirit, are making such adjustments closer to the day of travel, Becker says. Southwest, for instance, has been combining flights and adding layovers to numerous routes during the holiday season.
“We recently adjusted our flight schedule for November and December to reflect the demand we’re seeing for travel, a process we’ve been continually undertaking throughout this year,” a Southwest spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We’ve worked hard to keep service in all of our cities and to provide flights that are in highest demand. We realize that for some that means a previously nonstop journey now might require a same-plane stop, or a change of planes in a connecting airport.”
The Dallas-based carrier is offering customers affected by the cuts the chance to rebook their itineraries (although it has never charged change fees). The majority of U.S. airlines have also permanently eliminated change fees for domestic flights, which could help passengers resolve any undesirable shifts to flight schedules—although customers who want to alter their plans will usually be responsible for paying any difference for a new fare.
How crowded will airports be?
Most hubs aren’t predicted to have the same hustle and bustle of previous holiday seasons, but if you've flown at all during the COVID-19 outbreak, you can probably expect airports to look busier than they have been in past months.
The average number of daily fliers has crept up throughout the pandemic, and will likely crest amid the holidays. Becker predicted in her memo that by the December holidays, the amount of daily U.S. air passengers will top 1 million fliers. (Current numbers are hovering close to that: On October 11, there were 984,000 fliers—the highest daily total yet during the outbreak.)
If patterns from summer travel are any indication, airports will be more crowded over holiday stretches this winter. The three summer holidays—Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day—were all high points for air passenger numbers, with each holiday weekend setting a new pandemic record.
“We also believe a major driver of increased travel is boredom and Zoom fatigue,” Becker wrote. In other words, people are starting to brave boarding planes if it means being face to face with their families or friends instead of opening presents remotely or raising glasses of eggnog over video chat.
Another trend that will help thin out crowds at airports? Travelers are planning longer holiday trips, eschewing peak travel days for earlier departures and later returns. Searches for flights between 14 and 20 days are up by 26 percent compared to last year, Kayak’s data shows, while flight searches for trips of six days or less are similarly down nine percent.
“We believe Americans will travel this holiday season,” Steve Hafner, CEO of Kayak, said in a statement. "It will just look different."
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