It’s only February, but signs are already clear: It’s going to be another summer of groundbreaking travel demand.
What’s less clear is what travelers can expect to pay this year.
Airfares surged in 2022 and 2023 as countries reopened for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and as Americans indulged in “revenge travel,” spending savings and banked time off to splurge on postponed trips. During that time, airfares surged from pandemic lows to record highs.
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Europe, in particular, saw an explosion in demand from the U.S., with fares rising to match.
As we head into another busy travel season, one big question that remains is whether travel demand will normalize or if what we used to call revenge travel is actually the new normal.
On that front, opinions are split.
Toward the end of last year, some analysts began to wonder if airlines had overcommitted to the transatlantic market, adding too many seats to try and meet the revenge travel-era demand. That would mean supply would outpace demand, which could result in lower fares (i.e., bad news for the airlines but a welcome relief for consumers).
“We are concerned by the substantial increases we are seeing in international capacity between the US and Europe for summer 2024,” analyst Helane Becker of TD Cowen wrote in a research note Nov. 30. “We believe an overcapacity situation is developing in the North Atlantic that is likely [to] lead to lower air fares.”
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“We continue to believe that the North Atlantic air fares seen in 2Q23 are not sustainable,” Becker added in the note. “We think the capacity will be absorbed in July and August, but at lower air fares than what we saw in 2023.”
Airline executives, however, refuted the idea.
“I think that demand is normalized,” United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told TPG in December. “This is the new normal.”
United executives repeated the sentiment during the airline’s fourth-quarter earnings call in January.
“Bookings and yields for transatlantic flying in early 2024 are also strong, and we expect these trends to continue into the second and third quarters,” Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella said. “We remain focused on slow growth across the Atlantic for 2024.”
“We expect a really strong summer across the Atlantic,” he added. “Our capacity is not growing materially, and we think that’s going to really allow us to get all of the capacity we’ve added over the last few years to be mature and incredibly and solidly profitable in 2024.”
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“We have pretty good visibility on the early bookings for the summer transatlantic season, and we have a higher booked load factor, as well as higher yields,” Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said on his airline’s investor call. “So, those are the two things we watch for, and both are indicating quite positive for the transatlantic.”
Notably, most of that demand so far has been led by Americans traveling abroad rather than Europeans traveling to the U.S., Nocella said. For United, inbound traffic had not fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
“When the inbound customer profile starts to rebound, I think that’s just further upside in the future,” he said. “It hasn’t happened consistently across the globe yet but we’ll see what 2024 brings.”
It’s still a bit too soon to confidently tell what actual demand — and, consequently, fares — look like for the summer. Americans have tended to book trips closer to the actual travel date than they did before the pandemic. For instance, Bastian noted that given the tighter booking curve, the airline was focused more on the outlook for spring break. Delta President Glen Hauenstein added that about 40% of the carrier’s seats across the Atlantic for April have been booked so far.
Still, early signs suggest that transatlantic demand will be robust — possibly stronger than last year.
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Data from the Airlines Reporting Corporation, a transaction and ticket processing service, shows that demand for transatlantic travel this summer is significantly higher than it was at this point last year.
Between this past December and January, customers purchased tickets for roughly 13% more summer flights to Europe’s top destinations — London; Rome; Paris; Athens, Greece; Dublin; Barcelona; and Amsterdam — compared to the same period a year ago.
The average fare paid so far was up 4%, according to ARC.
Data from travel booking service Hopper, on the other hand, shows that airfare to Europe for the summer months was down slightly compared to last year. According to Hopper’s lead economist, Hayley Berg, prices were averaging $918 round-trip for flights from the U.S. to Europe between May and September, down 5% from 2023.
The two companies look at different data, which explains the mismatch, but in both cases, it’s worth noting that as a general rule, the least expensive fares tend to be booked the earliest, meaning the average booked fare is likely to increase as summer gets closer.
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It’s also worth noting that prices are likely to vary by location. London, for instance, has had 26% more bookings at this point in the year when compared to last year, according to ARC data, but all of the capacity serving the city means that fares are actually down 1%.
Barcelona, on the other hand, has seen 24% more bookings, and fares are up 13% so far.
Regardless of where exactly fares go, it’s clear that demand is going to be high once again, which means that if you’re planning to travel this summer, it could pay to start making plans and booking flights on the sooner side.
TPG has resources to help you find the cheapest flight deals and save money on hotels — or use points and miles to cover the biggest expenses. Be sure to keep an eye on the site for the latest deals.
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