Summer Air-Travel Dand Down; Expect Full Planes and Delays. Huh?_forecast airfares Smarter Travel

You may find:

Military Airfare Discount ; Airfare ; flights las vegas

Summer Air-Travel Dand Down; Expect Full Planes and Delays. Huh?

Tag：forecast airfares Smarter Travel forecast airfares |

90 Viewers|

joesharkeyat 2009-05-15 05:51:17 Publish:

Fewer people will be flying this summer, despite those frantic fare sales all winter and spring. Planes will be more crowded. Expect delays to start growing again after a lull all year.

Say what?

In its summer travel forecast, the Air Transport Association said today that 14 million fewer passengers will board U.S. airlines this summer. The total drop (domestic and international) will be between 6 and 7 percent, the airline trade group said.

Passenger traffic has been down far more than 7 percent so far this year, so a summer drop of a mere 7 percent actually reflects an improvement generated by all of those fare sales, it seems to me. (The summer period as defined by the airline trade group in its year-to-year comparison is June 1 through August 31.}

Approximately 195 million passengers are expected to fly this summer on U.S. airlines, down from 209 million during the summer months of 2008. The ATA projects that 7 percent fewer passengers (171 million versus 183 million) will travel domestically, and 6 percent fewer passengers (24 million versus 26 million) will travel internationally.

Airline data for the first quarter show that load factors -- the percentage of seats filled with customers -- are well into the 80 percent levels, meaning most domestic flights are taking off full. That's because airlines evidently have had some success in reducing capacity -- by dropping flights and removing planes from their fleets -- in response to the decline in demand.

The ATA president, James C. May, said the poor economy is the main reason for the decline.

"The weak economy has forced additional aircraft out of the marketplace, so despite fewer travelers, planes will remain near full," May said. He used the occasion to take a well-aimed shot (again) at our sagging, lagging air-traffic control system. "We remain concerned that delays may be inevitable due to the combination of an aging air traffic control system and convective weather period," he said. [My comment: "Convective weather" meaning the summer thunderstorms, etc., that the airlines like to blame for everything that goes wrong.}

airl_# Yahoo: forecast airfares Summer Air-Travel Dand Down; Expect Full Planes and Delays. Huh? forecast airfares Smarter Travel
Google: forecast airfares Smarter Travel Summer Air-Travel Dand Down; Expect Full Planes and Delays. Huh? forecast airfares

9
DIG IT

Related

›› Pet Airways' eerste vlucht vanaf Farming
›› Scramjets Promise Space Travel For All
›› Make Your Child Smarter. Do Science Proj
›› Virgin: the worlds best passenger compla
›› Great Quarter, Guys!
›› AUR#702 May 30 Macroeconomic Situation U

Airline Tickets Booking Latest

›› Pet Airways' eerste vlucht vanaf Farming
›› Scramjets Promise Space Travel For All
›› Make Your Child Smarter. Do Science Proj
›› Summer Air-Travel Dand Down; Expect Full
›› Operation Salliq 2008: The Coast Guard
›› New York winter continues...
›› Is money saving expert Martin Lewis an e
›› Increased Flights to Cape Verde
›› Business - Airlies face worst crisis for
›› Everybody's back off the mountain!!
›› Maciej Berbeka the famous Polish climber
›› Drought and Heat

Airline Tickets Booking Popular

›› Blue Gal's "Hello Kitty!" Airline Travel
›› Cheap Flights Make Travel Affordable and
›› Malaysia Airlines offers monsoon special
›› New York winter continues...
›› Boeing Cuts India Commercial Aircraft Sa
›› Wednesday | March 4 | 2009
›› European Airline Consolidation Continues
›› Going to Minneapolis? United's first-cla
›› Delta Adds Fee: 15 Dollars for First Bag
›› Make Your Child Smarter. Do Science Proj
›› Scramjets Promise Space Travel For All
›› Increased Flights to Cape Verde