This photo, taken on August 7, 2018, shows an American Airlines Airbus A330-243 aircraft on the tarmac at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport, north of Paris.
Airlines executives say demand for flights to Europe from the US has remained resilient well into the fall, well past the traditional peak for travel to the region, as eager travelers make up for lost time and airlines seek revenue after more than two years to increase. corona pandemic.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in my life in terms of fall demand,” Patrick Quayle, United Airlines’ senior vice president of global network planning and alliances, told CNBC.
It’s a welcome shift for airlines as they look to generate revenue after travel restrictions and concerns about Covid-19 undermined demand for many European travel in 2020 and 2021. Lucrative business travel segments bounced back more slowly than leisure, making these trips all the more important.
“I think there’s no doubt that people’s appetites for going to Europe have grown,” said Kyle Potter, editor-in-chief of Thrifty Traveler, a travel and flight deals website. “A lot of the really ugly flight prices led people to postpone those kinds of trips that they put off for years.”
“They really saw $900 gross, $1,200 airfare in July and August, and maybe they saw a deal to get there for half the price,” Potter said this fall.
Plus, a strong US dollar makes fall travel to Europe more attractive, lowering the cost of everything from shopping in Milan to fine dining in Paris or London for many US travelers.
The extension of the typical European travel season follows a rocky summer for air travel, especially in that region, where challenges ranged from staff shortages and lost luggage to heat waves and sky-high fares.
But as temperatures drop, airlines are not pulling back on US and European capacity as they did in 2019, before the pandemic. For example, United operates Newark to Reykjavik and Newark to Athens routes until October, later than in 2019.
From August to September, airlines reduced the number of seats they flew from the United States to Europe by 5.4%, followed by another 3.6% from September to October, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. In 2019, there were schedule discounts of 7% and 7.6% respectively in the same periods.
Overall, capacity is still lower than in 2019, meaning travelers can choose fewer seats compared to three years ago, a factor that has kept fares stable.
Fare tracker Hopper estimates international round-trip tickets average $891 this month, up 12% from 2019, but lower than a June peak of $1,064.
“Where we are at this stage of the recovery is that international is now outpacing domestic in terms of unit revenues,” Glen Hauenstein, the president of Delta Air Lines, said at a Morgan Stanley conference earlier this month. “We have a fuller schedule through October and through November.”
“The planes are full,” United’s Quayle said. “The amount people are paying remains incredibly strong and it is even significantly stronger than in 2019.”
— Gabriel Cortes of CNBC contributed to this article.
