Summer Travel: A Season of Headaches
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Here's your Money Briefing for Wednesday, July 21st. I'm J.R. Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. Americans have had the summer of 2021 marked on their calendar for a while now. After being cooped up for much of the past year and a half, they're packing their bags and heading to the airport to take their first summer vacation since before the pandemic. The problem is, even if you're ready to travel, the airlines might not be.
They thought they were going to be more ready for it. I think this has caught a lot of them by surprise. But in many ways, they really didn't see the sudden restart coming.
And this year's travel challenges go beyond the airlines. So what can travelers expect? Coming up, we'll get an update on the summer travel season from our Middle Seed columnist, Scott McCartney. That's after the break.
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Why are travelers expecting a chaotic summer travel season in 2021?
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More than 2 million travelers made their way through U.S. airport security this past Sunday, more than any day since the pandemic started. For many travelers this season, their dreams of fun in the sun were put on hold while they dealt with a travel industry that's not quite ready for the summer rush. Our Middle Sea columnist Scott McCartney has been following the industry as it rebounds from the pandemic, and he joins me now. Scott, thanks for coming on the show.
Good to be with you, JR.
So, you know, Scott, you've been on the show a few times this year talking about how the travel industry was seeing the summer season coming at it like a locomotive. Now that we're in the midst of it, how are things going?
The locomotive is here. You know, there were a lot of fears that things were going to be bad. And for a lot of travelers, things have been bad. And summer is tough anytime, but this summer has been particularly tough. It has been disappointing to a lot of people who are really excited about, you know, finally getting out and traveling and they fly right into delays, cancellations, high costs, expensive problems, you name it.
Yeah, as you mentioned, the summer season in any year comes with a host of travel challenges. A lot of times they're weather-related. We've seen some bad storms in the Northeast, for example. But what are the kinds of problems are travelers facing this summer?
Well, there have been particular shortages of people. You know, it has been pilots in some cases. American made a mistake with 20 pilots of when they would get out of the retraining that's required after a layoff. In a lot of respects, airlines were starting from scratch. They had federal money to keep pilots and flight attendants on the payroll, but a lot of them chose to take early retirement. A lot of them chose to not work during the pandemic, and they needed retraining when they came back. A lot of the airport infrastructure and staff, the wheelchair pushers were gone. The fuelers were gone.
How did airlines misjudge the speed of the travel restart?
people to drive catering trucks, all those different aspects. And so when you hit the reset button and you have this incredible surge of summer travel, a lot of airlines just weren't ready for it.
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