United Airlines Prepares for Winter Holiday Travel Boom
Consider this your sign to book the trip. On Friday, United Airlines announced an abundance of new flights scheduled to fly to warm weather destinations from the bulk of major U.S. airports this holiday season. Also, the airline recently purchased the largest fleet of new aircraft in the company’s history.
Source: Fortune
“Celebrating the holidays with family and loved ones in 2020 was a challenge, and we know our customers are already eager to plan winter vacations and gatherings in person this year to make up for time that they lost,” said Ankit Gupta in a press release. Gupta is the United vice president of network planning.
“As pandemic restrictions ease, people are becoming more confident in planning travel further in advance, so we want to make sure to offer our customers as much choice as possible,” she added.
Image: Orlando Inside
Specifically, the airline added 150 flights to warm-weather locales in the United States. They also plan to increase flights to Latin markets by 30 percent compared to 2019, according to the release. The uptick begins in November and continues through March.
United’s forecast certainly has merit. Just before the July 4th holiday surge in travel, TSA reported that at least 2 million people passed through security check points on more than a few dates. TSA did not experience volumes of travelers like that in a single day since before the pandemic forced worldwide response in March 2020.
Luckily, travelers looking to celebrate the holidays at the Walt Disney World resort rejoiced earlier this week as well. Many waited anxiously for the announcement that the last four resorts that remained closed from the pandemic would open by the end of the year. This week, that news finally came. It’s certainly a great time to travel.
