European airlines must soon make critical decisions about summer flight schedules, but with the pandemic still raging and a slower-than-expected vaccine rollout schedules are being made and scrapped at a dizzying pace.
Consumers, unsure of what the future holds, now favor last-minute bookings, making it difficult for airlines to forecast or identify patterns to help them plan summer schedules.
Video Spotlight:
- Travel In 2021: What To Know About Flying And More (Jan 1, 2021, Today)
- Stephen Kavanagh Costs will determine where airlines put capacity (Dec 16, 2020, Eoghan Corry)
This post is based on the WTVB article, Airlines flying blind into summer capacity sweepstake, by Laurence Frost and Sarah Young, February 2, 2021, and the YouTube videos in the Spotlight. Image source: Fly View Productions/E+/Getty Images
Discussion Questions:
1. How serious a mismatch was there last summer between forecasted and actual demand, and how did this affect final scheduling?
Guidance: Airlines planned summer flight availability in early spring of 2020. As the first lockdowns started, plans drastically changed. Of the 755 million seats originally scheduled for flights in Western Europe last summer, some 72 percent were cut.
