Air travel is expected to soar this summer season as demand remains high following the isolation of the coronavirus pandemic. And that demand has led to an increasingly disgruntled airline passenger base, according to J.D. Power’s 2023 North America Airline Satisfaction Study.
The biggest driver of dissatisfaction was costs and fees, said Michael Taylor, managing director of travel, hospitality and retail at the consumer research and data analytics firm.
“Prices will always rise when demand rises for a good that can’t be overmanufactured, [and] there’s only so many airline seats flying,” Taylor said. “The demand for leisure travel’s quite high. It’s higher than I think most everybody expected post-pandemic.”
While the primary factor contributing to inflationary ticket prices is demand, Taylor said, there’s also the underlying cost of goods for the airlines—like the price of fuel.
And, while aircraft are filling up fast, fewer are in the air as the industry grapples with an ongoing pilot shortage. Taylor cited a decade-plus-old Federal Aviation Administration rule that significantly increased the number of hours someone must fly before becoming a copilot, and early retirement packages during COVID-19 as possible factors.
“That’s the constraining variable that everybody’s looking to fix,” he said. “And it’s not a short-term fix. You can’t hire a pilot off the street and expect them to be flying an aircraft three weeks later. So it’s going to be a long-term problem, because the demand will probably remain high.”
Respondents to the survey, released last month, also showed a desire for additional direct flights to their destination, along with more room on airplanes. The latter is unlikely this summer, Taylor said, as the load factor—or percentage of seats filled—is expected to reach upwards of 90%.
Summer travel kicked off in earnest over Memorial Day weekend, during which Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air flew hundreds of thousands of people, according to Scott DeAngelo, the airline’s chief marketing officer.
Summer is typically Allegiant’s biggest season, and DeAngelo said this year should be no different. The airline aims to plan ahead and meet the demand of passengers as they come, he said, instead of making promises it can’t fulfill and ultimately having to cancel flights.
“We at Allegiant certainly have prepared for that by not overpromising,” he said. “Meaning, planning in a way that we make sure that we can fulfill all the demand … we have the airplanes, the pilots, the flight attendants, the mechanics required to maintain our operation at [a] high degree of reliability.”
In anticipation of high demand and limited supply this summer, Taylor said many airlines have already taken precautions.
“To cope with the summer, the airlines give themselves a little bit more slack in the system,” he said. “They’ve been canceling flights way in advance.”
DeAngelo said Allegiant and other ultra low-cost carriers have seen many passengers who were previously more likely to fly major airlines like United, Delta or American. He pointed to Allegiant’s multiple direct flights as one aspect attractive to customers, along with cheap rates that allow a passenger to save for their actual trip.
“The more you can save on that flight, that’s more money to spend in the destination,” he said.
Allegiant serves more than 60 destinations with nonstop service to Las Vegas, DeAngelo said, and the Harry Reid International Airport is the airline’s top booking for the summer.
Joe Rajchel, spokesman for Harry Reid, expects locals and tourists to take opportunities to travel. The city continues to be in high demand: In 2022, the airport saw a record 52.7 million passengers.
“We are in, I think it’s safe to say, a period of growth,” Rajchel told the Las Vegas Sun last month. “Maybe not past recovery, but growth.”
On a positive note, Taylor said, the study showed an increase in passenger satisfaction with gate agents and flight crews, even though, he pointed out, “A full aircraft doesn’t make for an environment where you can be really friendly with people all the time.”
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