Holiday Air Travel Is Changing As More People Are Working Remotely

Airlines have always been a seasonal business. Seasonality is more than just big seasons like summer and winter. It includes many mid-size and smaller peaks and valleys, and even demand variations by days of the week. The industry has reacted to this by the way they allocate their capacity offerings, and also how they manage maintenance time and crew vacation times. Many of the demand peaks throughout the year focus around holiday and standardized vacation times. People in the U.S. travel for President’s Day, Easter, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and for a myriad of reasons in late December. Airlines have to plan for this increased demand, and the slow demand period that usually precedes it.

While holiday-based travel is been constant for years, recently the travel patterns associated with these holidays are changing. That’s because the times to travel aren’t as fixed as they used to be, and when you can work from anywhere, the strict definitions of travel days starts to break down.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is the only significant travel period that falls on the same day of week each year. While the date can change, it’s always a Thursday. Historically, the busiest days have been the Wednesday prior and the Sunday after. This was starting to spread out even before the pandemic, but based on 2022 it looks like this could be a more permanent move.

Based on TSA processing statistics for a period from eight days before Thanksgiving to eight days after, and comparing 2022 to 2019, 6.6% fewer people traveled by air over the 16-day period this year. But, 9% fewer flew in the more traditional Wednesday through Sunday period, showing that more traffic was moved to earlier and/or later holiday flights. Confirming this, the week prior to the Wednesday before Thanksgiving this year had only 3% less traffic than 2019. As of this writing in early December, all of the Thanksgiving traffic hasn’t yet returned, either.

Variable-Day Holidays

Other major holiday travel periods in the U.S. can happen on different days of the week. Christmas, for example, drives different travel patterns based on the day of week it falls. But even in these cases, there are a few reasons that these, too, may spread out.

The biggest reason is the increase in work from home, or at least outside of the office. When people can work from any location on the grid, it’s easier to find flights with lower fares, or that historically run more on time. There is also a reduced stress for the consumer, as compared with flying on the busiest days. For the minority of businesses that now expect everyone back in an office five days a week, like Morgan Stanley, even they are likely more flexible at holiday times when employees can stay in touch. As we move through 2023, tracking trends around other peak periods will help reveal if this spreading out of traffic is a natural and expected adaptation.

Impact On Scheduling And Crews

It may take some time to fully understand these trends and to be confident they will be repeated. But given this, over time they will and this could mean a few things. One is that “peak” scheduling could change to dampen the height of the peak but extend the number of days. For short holidays, like President’s Day, this likely could mean time both before and after the long weekend. What great way to get a longer skiing vacation!

For crews, this also has implications. One of the sad realities of the industry is an increase in sick calls during peak holiday times. When demand is less “peaky,” it may reduce this somewhat. It also increases the options for stand-by flying, a popular benefit for many airline employees.

Link To Blended Travel

Blended travel, or bleisure travel, is trend identified as increasing by airline executives. The idea of this is that more business travel is being combined with leisure travel. This could mean extending a trip to stay the weekend, or having family join for some of the trip. American Airlines is even making this easier for their business customers.

Another way to blend travel is just to work remotely when possible, making work while in a leisure destination possible. This means that by stretching traditional holiday periods, people who do this by working remotely for some of the holiday period are also blending their travel. In this way, airlines could encourage this activity, like American is, and help with their own capacity planning and some crewing issues.

This Is Good For Airlines And Consumers

Managing seasonality creates challenges for all airlines. An airline like IcelandAir, with a single hub in Reykjavik, has different issues than Emirates at Dubai. But both deal with seasonal issues that affect their fleet, annual capacity, and quarterly earnings.

Dampening seasonality is good for airlines, as it makes forecasting easier, smoothes some operational challenges, and should also make earnings more consistent. Stretching out holiday travel will help this, but airlines will still be quite seasonal. You can’t change that more people want to be in Florida in February than July with just working from home or blending your travel!

This stretching out of holiday travel times is good for consumers, too. With more flexibility on when to fly in and out, people can choose flights that may be easier for the schedule, are lower price, or both. It also likely reduces some of the stress that accompanies holiday travel.