Air travel
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.
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 people-mover, 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.”