Airlines are adding new routes and reviving old ones, the latest
sign that demand for leisure travel is picking up as the national vaccination
rate moves higher.
اضافة اعلان
United Airlines said that it planned to add more than two dozen
flights starting Memorial Day weekend. Most will connect cities in the Midwest
to tourist destinations, such as Charleston, Hilton Head and Myrtle Beach in
South Carolina; Portland, Maine; Savannah, Georgia; and Pensacola, Florida.
United also said it planned to offer more flights to Mexico, the Caribbean,
Central America and South America in May than it did in May 2019.
The airline has seen ticket sales rise in recent weeks, said
Ankit Gupta, United’s vice president of domestic network planning and
scheduling. Customers are booking tickets further out, too, he said, suggesting
growing confidence in travel.
“Over the past 12 months, this is the first time we are really
feeling more bullish,” Gupta said.
Southwest Airlines also revealed plans to expand service.
Between late May and early June, the airline plans to add flights to Myrtle
Beach from Baltimore; Chicago; Nashville, Tennessee; Dallas; Pittsburgh;
Atlanta; Columbus, Ohio; and Indianapolis. It also said it would add flights
out of Austin, Texas, to a handful of cities this summer.
Airports have been consistently busier in recent weeks than at
any point since the coronavirus pandemic brought travel to a standstill a year
ago. Well over 1 million people were screened at airport security checkpoints
each day over the past two weeks, according to the Transportation Security
Administration, although the number of screenings is still down more than 40
percent compared with the same period in 2019.
Most of the new United flights will be offered between Memorial
Day weekend and Labor Day weekend aboard the airline’s regional jets, which
have 50 seats. The airline said it would also add new flights between Houston
and Kalispell, Montana; Washington and Bozeman, Montana; Chicago and Nantucket,
Massachusetts; and Orange County, California, and Honolulu.
All told, United said it planned to operate about 58 percent as
many domestic flights this May as it did in May 2019 and 46 percent as many
international flights. Most of the demand for international travel has been
focused on warm beach destinations that have less-stringent travel
restrictions.
“That is one of the strongest demand regions in the world right
now,” Gupta said. “A lot of the leisure traffic has sort of shifted to those
places and it’s actually seen a boom in bookings.”
Delta Air Lines issued a similar update, announcing more than 20
nonstop summer flights to mountain, beach and vacation destinations. Both Delta
and United have said in recent weeks that they have made substantial progress
toward reducing how much money they are losing every day.
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