Spring break travel demand is picking up, driving up airfare and hotel rates. Travel app Hopper said in a report last week that domestic airfare is averaging $264 a round trip for March and April, up 20% from a year ago and 5% above pre-pandemic levels. Airlines, grappling with pilot shortages and aircraft delivery delays, have already limited capacity growth, which is keeping airfare up from last year. Now travelers are going back to booking patterns common before the pandemic, flying on peak days to traditional destinations, airline executives say. That makes it even more important for travelers to stay flexible if they’re trying to save money to avoid spikes in fares. It’s good news for airlines that are trying to make up for higher costs. Spring break demand is “probably the best we’ve ever seen,” Frontier Airlines CEO Barry Biffle said in an interview. “Constrained capacity is real. When you couple that in with higher costs, most notably fuel, people are willing to pay [the higher fares], and the airlines need to charge it.” Matt Klein, Spirit Airlines’ CCO, told CNBC that there was a travel lull following the new year, when schools reopened after a longer-than-usual holiday break, but demand has perked up for trips through the spring, even beyond peak holiday weeks. “The busiest days of the week are returning to your Fridays and Sundays,” Klein said in an interview. “The best deals and the best offers should be on Tuesdays and Wednesdays would be my expectation.” But midweek during popular vacation periods, like when schools are off, could keep demand high all week, he added. “People will move around for the best opportunity,” he said. Klein said that demand to Florida is particularly strong and that Spirit has boosted capacity to certain cities such as Orlando, where it’s ramped up service to hit a near-record 96 daily departures on peak days.<br/>
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Unloved during the Covid-19 pandemic as their businesses were incapacitated almost overnight, airlines that cut back to survive the crisis are now blowing through profit forecasts and luring back investors. Virgin Australia, so financially frail when Covid-19 hit in 2020 that it folded in weeks, has undergone a remarkable transformation under new owner Bain Capital. Free of much of its debt after exiting administration and with a scaled down fleet, the airline is making money for the first time in years. It plans to relist in Sydney, possibly in 2023. These freshly – and forcibly – streamlined carriers are capitalising on a surge in travel since virus restrictions fell away. The ICAO expects passenger demand to recover to pre-Covid-19 levels on most routes this quarter, and then to about 3% higher than 2019 levels by the end of 2023. “Aviation is investible again,” said Jun Bei Liu, a portfolio manager at Tribeca Investment Partners in Sydney. “Asian airlines are going to go through the roof.” A Bloomberg gauge of 29 airlines from around the world has climbed almost 30% since the end of September. The reopening of China, the largest outbound travel market before the pandemic, should drive a fresh traffic rebound in and out of favoured destinations like the United States, Japan and Singapore. In Hong Kong, hammered by China’s shutdown, Cathay Pacific Airways will in 2023 make its first profit since 2019, according to analyst forecasts. It is an extraordinary turnaround for an industry that suffered losses approaching US$200b (S$268b) over the past three years.<br/>
The Department of Transportation’s internal watchdog said Tuesday it is launching a probe into the spike in flight cancellations and delays that have come in the wake of the pandemic. The Office of the Inspector General audit will focus on the federal agency’s role in these cancellations, rather than the airlines. In a memo, the IG said more than “30,000 of the delayed and cancelled flights were attributable to issues in the National Airspace System such as heavy traffic and air traffic control.” It identified disruptions that took place over the summer and during the Christmas holiday and pointed to staffing and weather as contributing factors. The IG wants to find out both the causes of the delays and cancellations as well as the accuracy of the government’s data around flight disruptions. “We are initiating this audit to inform Congress and the general public about the reported causes of these events. This will be first in a series of audits to understand and evaluate flight delays and cancellations as well as DOT’s actions to address them,” the memo stated. The IG plans to conduct its work at DOT and FAA headquarters, it said. The IG also announced a separate audit of the FAA’s planned NextGen effort to upgrade the air traffic system, a multibillion-dollar infrastructure program.<br/>
Atlanta Hartsfield International airport handled nearly 94 million passengers last year, still short of pre-pandemic highs but enough to see it retain its crown as the busiest airport in the world. The Delta Air Lines’ hub had long held that title, with the notable exception being during pandemic-hit 2020, when Chinese airport Guangzhou – boosted by the early reopening of the large Chinese domestic market – led the way. Since then, passenger numbers at Chinese airports have plateaued as strict Covid-19 travel restrictions remained in place while the majority of other markets gradually reopened. While most Chinese airports are yet to release passenger data for last year, they are unlikely to figure among the upper reaches of airports given China has only now taken steps to reopen. A FlightGlobal analysis of preliminary 2022 airport traffic data underlines the strong pick-up in passenger numbers among US airports.<br/>
The number of passengers allowed to depart from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport will be capped at 66,000 per day during the May school vacation season, the airport said on Tuesday. The airport said that the numbers mean about 5% fewer seats can be booked than airlines had planned during peak hours. Schiphol suffered delays due to shortages of security personnel and baggage handlers for much of 2022 until it imposed a cap system.<br/>
The UK's busiest airport has warned the country risks falling behind others in making aviation greener. Heathrow Airport has called for the government to help make sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) more commercially viable in the UK. SAF cuts the amount of carbon emissions released during air travel but is currently several times more expensive to produce than traditional fuel. The government has said it wants five SAF plants under construction by 2025. SAF is produced from sustainable sources such as agricultural waste and used cooking oil. It is claimed to reduce carbon emissions by up to 70%. Heathrow runs a scheme which provides SAF to airlines and covers up to half the extra cost through a GBP38m fund. However, last year only 0.5% of the fuel bought at the airport was through the initiative. It announced on Tuesday that it aims to triple its SAF usage this year, raising the figure to 1.5%. But the major airport fears a tax credit scheme in the US designed to lure investors in SAF production has put the UK at risk of missing out.<br/>
Madagascar's government suspended schools and transport in the path of tropical cyclone Freddy, which made landfall in the southeast of the island on Tuesday evening, causing a storm surge, ripping roofs off houses and killing at least one person. Freddy weakened slightly before landing around 30 km north of Mananjary town, at around 07:20 p.m., with average winds of 130 km per hour, and gusts of 180 km/h near the eye, the Madagascar meteorological service said. "Torrential rains will continue along its path. The sea remains very rough to huge, and a significant risk of coastal flooding will continue overnight," the service said in a statement. Heavy rains and waves of over 26 feet (8 metres) were expected near the impact zone, the International Federation of Red Cross said on Twitter, issuing a red alert for the area. Flights which had been grounded late on Sunday had resumed on Tuesday morning, according to Mauritius' airports operator.<br/>
Japanese airlines will no longer require passengers to wear face masks on flights, starting March 13. The Airline Association of Japan, which has 19 members including ANA and JAL, announced Tuesday that it will leave it up to individual passengers whether to wear masks on board planes and at airports. The decision follows the government's downgrading of COVID-19 under the Infectious Disease Control Law. The policy will also apply to passengers and airline employees. The wearing of masks has never been mandatory in Japan but was a government recommendation, particularly in enclosed environments such as on planes. However, the government had said that as of March 13, it would lift the recommendation. Shinichi Inoue, chairman of the association and president of ANA, said, however, that passenger safety was still a priority, "We will continue our efforts to ensure that our customers can use our aircraft with peace of mind."<br/>