The Amateur Travel Society Podcast - Episode 2 (Travel News w/ Jen Baughman)

And I can either read it or I can paraphrase it.

But long story short is there is a seasonality to airplane routes every year.

Spring and summer are the hottest times of the year.

Fall and winter, they kind of fall off.

So it's not uncommon for airlines, if you fly, I'm going to use O'Hare and Orlando.

If you fly 30 routes in one day from O'Hare to Orlando, you might pair that down to 20 routes.

And what you're hoping to do is instead of the plane flying at like 80% full, you're going to pair those routes down so now every plane flies at 85% full, but you've eliminated some that might fly only at like 30% full.

Because that plane is not making money.

I guarantee you that, especially with the fuel costs.

Well, the price of fuel right now has gone crazy and gone crazy for a variety of reasons.

But honestly, it's gone crazy because of this ridiculous war.

So right now, the price of fuel is gone nuts.

So the demand's been hot still for flights.

But part of that demand is being so hot is they've eliminated routes on the seasonality alone.

Well, at the beginning of the year, jet fuel was about $2 a gallon on average.

But right now, it's at $4.50 a gallon, and that was as of the 21st.

I'm willing to say it's probably close to like $4.75 or almost $5 a gallon right now because Lord knows your unleaded is that price no matter where you live.

In Chicago, it's above $5 right now.

So when you have weaker demand and you've got rising fuel costs, they're not paring down like these big routes they are doing that but they're just they're axing routes that are like i'm sorry if you live in little rock arkansas but like little rock to boise you you just might have lost that route because they can't make money on that route they have a certain percentage they got to fill on that plane to make sure that plane makes money with the fuel costs with you know the labor with the maintenance of that vehicle you know the plane so And there's several reasons you could say, but they've targeted the rising fuel costs, which have gotten out of control.

I think everyone who's listening, I don't care if you're a supporter, if you're a Republican, if you're a Democrat, if you're a Trump supporter, I don't care what you are.

Right now, when you go to the pump right now, your expression is, what the? Every time you fill up that car, it's a backbreaker right now.

Yeah.

So I guess I'm like, oh, hey, I live in Chicago.

I feel exempt to this.

No, there are still routes in Chicago that have been eliminated because they're pulling routes for fuel.