Ahead of the Fourth of July holiday weekend, Delta is waiving change fees for passengers who booked airfares from July 1-4. The airline is seemingly anticipating mass chaos at airports after air travel in recent months has become increasingly fraught. Meanwhile, most adults say they plan to travel just once this summer amid high prices. When could the travel sector return to some semblance of normalcy? Lindsey Roeschke, Travel and  Hospitality Analyst at Morning Consult, joins Closing Bell to discuss 

Closing Bell

Is Delta Fee Waiver a Sign of How Bad Air Travel Has Become?

Welcome back to closing bell here on cheddar news. So are you traveling for the july 4th weekend? Are you flying? Well, do I got news for you? Some airlines are expecting such a mess that airlines, yes. Airlines are dropping change fees for real. In fact, Delta is waiving fees between tomorrow and monday as they literally try to get people to change their flights in order to avoid potential chaos at the airport. Now, this warmth, if you will, comes after months of turbulence for the airline business. I assure you. So joining us now is lindsey, Rosky, travel and hospitality analyst and research for morning council and lindsey. How big of a deal is it that Delta is waiving change fees for the long holiday weekend. It's a pretty big deal. Airlines did introduce some new flexibilities throughout the pandemic for people to change their flights, reschedule their flights. Um but the ability to do so without having to pay a fare difference um is something that is pretty new for this holiday weekend. And I think it suggests that Delta and other airlines know it's going to be a very, very busy one. Now is Delta's fee waiver a sign of how bad things have gotten when it comes to flying. Yeah, I mean, it's it's been a rough few weeks for the airline industry. And what's really interesting is that travel demand actually still hasn't gotten to pre pandemic levels. The t s a numbers are still below what we saw in 2019, but at the same time. Airlines don't have the staff or the routes available to answer the demand as it exists now. So um there are a lot of challenges and kind of getting staffed up, not the least of which is that they're trying to hire pilots and provide all their training and everything that they need to get back in the air and that's just a long process. And so there are, you know, kind of backups and backups that are happening because of the lack of staff and the demand that's rising even though we're still not quite the pre pandemic levels. Alright. So there's some new data today that says 43% of adults plan to travel less this summer. Why? What is driving this decision That's specifically because of price uh that was 43% say that they're traveling less because of the cost of travel. Um so I think that makes that number even more eye popping when you think about that. COVID concerns are still there but much lower than they were in previous months. In fact More people feel comfortable taking a vacation now um than they did kind of any other time in in 2022 so far. But those price concerns are really impacting folks. And so what we see is that people are cutting back on the amount of times they're going to travel this summer? The number of people that say that they'll travel multiple times this summer is down five points year over year And the people that say they're going to travel multiple times are taking fewer trips compared to previous years. So I think what we're going to see is a very busy holiday weekend. Um, and unlikely a quieter end of summer as people kind of get to travel out of their systems and then tighten the budgets a little bit for the later months. All right, I got another staff for you triple a predicts that 42 million people will travel by car this weekend despite high gas prices. Now if car and air are your only options is less travel well, is travel really a lose lose situation here. Yeah, absolutely, consumers are feeling like they are facing high prices no matter where they go and travel is not the only place where they're experiencing that it's, it's hitting their wallets in other areas to groceries and, and things that they need to pay for. So they really do feel like they're in a tight spot right now when it comes down to it, at least, you know, traveling by car allows you a little bit more flexibility. Um, and 61% of people who are traveling for leisure this summer say that they're going to travel by car, which is pretty similar to what we saw last year. So the road trip is still a staple for americans. Um, it's just that they may try to tighten their wallets and, and, and reduce their spending in other areas on road trips. So maybe paying a little bit less for accommodation may be paying a little bit less for food and beverage or activities along the way to kind of offset those high gas costs. So why have airlines had so many issues in recent months? Uh It's a it's a combination of things. I mean the staffing is definitely an issue. Um It is in employment in general, you know, we're seeing in a lot of sectors that companies are having trouble staffing up. But as I said earlier, you know that it's not just people that you can kind of hire and get on the job immediately when you're talking about folks that need to be as highly trained as pilots, it takes a long time to staff up. Um Beyond that it's not just the pilots, it's support staff, its flight attendants and even the FAA is having some staffing issues, so that's definitely contributing to that along with the rising demand among consumers. You know, like I said, we may not be back to pre pandemic levels, but demand is definitely up compared to prior months? Um And so that balance just hasn't been struck yet and the demand is really outpacing the supply. When do you think things like air travel will get back to normal, if that's a thing that will ever exist again. Normal is a funny word, isn't it? Um You know, I think when we see the slowdown in demand later in the summer because people are, you know, kind of front loading their travel. We'll start to see things even out a little bit more. However, there's more that goes into say, um, airfare than just the demand. There are rising fuel costs and operational costs that go into that. And so, um, you know, in terms of back to normal volume wise, we may see a little bit more of that towards the end of the summer, maybe less delays and cancelations. But as far as those kind of high airfares and lack of availability of routes that may last a bit longer, depending on how the economy fares in the coming months, do you think this disaster will trickle over into like thanksgiving season than holiday season or do you think airlines will just have to deal with this summer rush and then try to work things out between september and october, I think they'll hopefully learn some lessons from the summer rush and take the slower season in the fall to um really, you know, right, the ship for lack of a better term. Um, but demand will be back up over the holidays again. And so, you know, I think we'll see a bit of a rush as we have in previous years. It's just hopefully at that point the airlines are ready to deal with it. All right, well, if you're traveling lindsey, I hope you have some happy and chaos free traveling Lindsay, rosky traveling hospitality analyst at research firm Morning consult. Thank you so much for coming on our show.