Three years after covid-19 ground international travel to a halt, travel has rebounded faster than the industry can keep up with it — many are taking long-awaited trips while, due to a shortage of pilots and other airline workers, airlines are planning routes carefully to maximize every extra seat.
Even the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recently announced that it has reworked 169 flight routes along the East Coast to "redistribute volume across all available airspace" in advance of the summer season.
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Many vacation destinations retain their pre-pandemic status as visitor hotspots. Delta Airlines (DAL) recently released its list of most searched-for destinations outside the U.S.
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This year, London came out on top as the place Americans are most interested in visiting — the airline will be flying a total of 20,000 seats to Heathrow and Gatwick airports from its U.S. destinations over the summer.
The second and third spots were claimed, respectively, by Meixco's Cancun and France's Paris — while the city of lights has always landed among the world's most-visited, Mexico is a particularly choice for short getaways due to its proximity to the U.S.
"Delta has direct flights to Cancun from Atlanta (ATL), Boston (BOS), Detroit (DTW), New York (JFK), Los Angeles (LAX), Minneapolis (MSP), Salt Lake City (SLC) and Seattle (SEA)." the airline said.
Delta's top ten list was evenly divided by global capitals like Tokyo and Rome and sun-filled destinations — Montego Bay in Jamaica, Los Cabos in Mexico and Dominican Republic's Punta Cana all landed in the list as well.
"Filled with sandy beaches and fantastic tropical vacation resorts, Punta Cana sits on the eastern side of the island of the Dominican Republic," Delta wrote of the latter. "[...] A lazy beach vacation can be the pick, or a trip that includes golf, diving, snorkeling, or windsurfing."
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While interest for traveling to these places is high, airlines are not offering as many flights as they might have in prior pre-pandemic years due to the staffing shortage — American Airlines (AAL), Delta and United (UAL) all recently made major cuts to their flight routes in the winter and spring.
Delta also recently told investors that 75% of its international seats for the summer have already been booked and paid for.
"To meet increasing demand, we are growing our international seats by more than 20% in the June quarter compared to prior year, and we already have about 75% of our bookings on hand," Delta President Glen Hauenstein said in the airline's last earnings call.
To score cheaper travel, passengers have been relying on different strategies. Travel TikToker Madison Rolley recently asked ChatGPT to "create a travel itinerary for two weeks in Europe" in which they would visit between four to six cities and spend less than $1,000."
The OpenAI-developed chatbot that soared in popularity in the last six months quickly came up with an itinerary of affordable options. While the suggestions are subject to price fluctuations and may not always be to the traveler's liking, artificial intelligence has steadily been creeping into the travel industry both on the customer and professional side — companies like Expedia (EXPE) have also been using it to automate answering certain customer questions.
