A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The cost of hopping on a plane to get away from it all is skyrocketing. Vivek Pandya at Adobe Digital Insights has the numbers.
VIVEK PANDYA: The flight prices are up between 30 to 40% relative to where they were prepandemic.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Brett Snyder, who writes the Cranky Flier, says demand is way up. The industry blogger also says new regulatory challenges make it harder to add planes to airline fleets. All this since problems surfaced with the Boeing 737 MAX.
BRETT SNYDER: What's happened now is the FAA has really gotten much tougher. And because of that, there are airplanes that were supposed to be delivered that are still waiting in regulatory land.
MARTÍNEZ: Jet fuel is also more expensive. The great resignation hit airlines, too. So pilots, technicians and flight attendants are in short supply. And airlines downsized during the pandemic.
SNYDER: The airlines received a lot of money from the federal government. And as part of that, they weren't allowed to lay people off. However, they were allowed to offer early retirements, buyouts, all sorts of things. And so that's what they did. And you see some airlines - Delta, for example, dropped nearly a third of its workforce.
MARTIN: So what can someone who's eager to fly away actually do to get there? Adobe's Pandya says plan ahead.
PANDYA: Maybe book out further in the future. Take less peak time periods so that they can have some level of flexibility by way of pricing.
MARTÍNEZ: And road trips are an alternative, too, although gas prices make car trips, bus tickets and train rides a pricey proposition, as well. So it sounds like a situation for a staycation.
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