After lockdowns, vacationers free to flee
More than 3.3 million Southern Californians are expected to take trips over the holiday weekend
Free from more than a year of pandemic restrictions, scores of Southern Californians are leaving town for an Independence Day weekend like few others this past year.
With little to no tourism for 16 months, experts say travelers should expect “record” levels of traffic clogging roadways and airport thoroughfares.
Travelers will face some obstacles, too, such as high gas prices and a hiring shortage that has stymied fuel deliveries at gas stations and left major airlines short of pilots.
Despite those issues, the Automobile Club of Southern California projects a strong bounce back in travel over the Independence Day weekend.
More than 3.3 million Southern Californians are expected to take trips over the holiday weekend — a 46% increase from last year when travel was discouraged.
More than 86% are expected to drive to their destinations, while more than 13% will fly, and about 1% will go by other means since cruises from American ports are canceled and fewer people are using trains or buses.
“We expect car travel to be the highest on record and air travel to be the third-highest amount since AAA started tracking data in 2001,” Filomena Andre, the Auto Club’s vice president for travel, said in a statement.
Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis for the Oil Price Information Service, said gas sta
tions are experiencing outages across the nation in such states and areas as California, the Pacific Northwest, Colorado and Iowa, as well as Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio.
“It used to be an afterthought for station owners to schedule truck deliveries,” Kloza said. “Now it’s job No. 1.”
The increased fuel demand for July equates to about 2,500 to 3,000 more deliveries needed nationwide every day.
“There just aren’t the drivers to do that,” Kloza said.
A shortage of drivers is a problem throughout the trucking industry and but it takes special qualifications to drive a tank truck, making that shortage worse than in other sectors.
High prices
Meanwhile, gas prices continue to rise.
On Friday, the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded in Los Angeles County was $4.31, up $1.22 from a year earlier, according to price tracker GasBuddy.com. That mirrored Wednesday’s price. But prior to that, the last time L.A. County’s average topped that level was in October 2012 when it reached an all-time high of nearly $4.71 a gallon.
Prices are similarly high in other regions of Southern California.
Orange County averaged $4.27 a gallon Friday, while San Bernardino County averaged $4.20 and Riverside County stood at $4.22 a gallon.
Karen Ellis of Castaic is planning an upcoming day trip to Santa Barbara. And with gas prices as high as they are, she alters her driving habits.
“I try to keep my foot off the gas and not accelerate too fast, but that irritates the people behind you,” she said. “I go to Costco, and last week I got gas for $3.59 a gallon. Plus, I get 4% off with my Costco credit card.”
The top five Independence Day destinations for Southern California travelers are Las Vegas, San Diego, Zion/ Bryce Canyon national parks, Grand Canyon National Park and Yosemite National Park.
Jen Moyse, a senior director at the online trip planner TripIt, said the company’s reservations for the Fourth of July show 85% recovery for car rentals and 64% recovery for lodging.
“Vaccines have made travelers more confident,” Moyse said in an interview with CNBC.
More than half of U.S. travelers surveyed by TripIt in April said getting a vaccination themselves was their top requirement for feeling comfortable flying again, she said.
Travelers who are not fully vaccinated are advised not to fly, and those who have been vaccinated will still be required to wear masks and remain as socially distanced from others as possible.
Air travel
FlightAware, a website that tracks airline delays and cancellations in real time, showed 4,202 delays and 641 cancellations Friday tied to U.S. flights in and out of the country. Southwest Airlines had more than 1,300 flights delayed or canceled over the June 26 weekend because of storm activity at its major hubs.
Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, also linked some of the problems to staffing shortages caused by pilots and others taking extended time off to avoid pandemic-related layoffs.
Heath Montgomery, a spokesman for Los Angeles International Airport, said that’s nothing new.
“There has been a pilot shortage for a long time — even before the pandemic,” he said. “It’s a challenge to get a new class of people trained as pilots. It takes time.”
LAX officials had to scramble Friday when part of Terminal 2 was evacuated at 7 a.m. after a suspicious package was found in a ticketing area.
Traffic was closed on the upper departures level and departing passengers were diverted to the lower arrival level.
The LAPD bomb squad was called to examine the package and gave an “all clear” announcement at 8 a.m.
Montgomery advises travelers to arrive early at LAX.
“There has been a surge in demand for air travel,” Montgomery said. “It’s a supply-and-demand issue. A lot more people are really itching to get back into the skies. We’re the busiest we’ve been since February of 2020, but we’re still at about 60% to 65% of our 2019 passenger numbers.”
And it’s wise to track flight status, he said. “Sign up for message alerts and get here early because LAX is currently an active construction zone.”
The airport is in the midst of a $14.5 billion modernization program that will add an automated peoplemover, rebuild Terminal 3 from the ground up and revamp all of the airport’s other terminals, among other upgrades.
“Parking is also at a maximum much of the time, so people need to have a backup plan,” Montgomery said. “They could have someone drop them off, or maybe take a shuttle.”