Airlines are bracing for millions of travelers this Memorial Day weekend.
Some 3.5 million people are forecasted to fly over the holiday weekend — the most since 2005, according to AAA. Memorial Day weekend is expected to launch the start of a summer holiday season that will see a record 271 million travelers from June to the end of August, according to Airlines for America, an industry lobby group.
Airlines have staffed up to meet travelers’ expectations and ensure smooth journeys, reaching levels not seen in almost 20 years, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
“You've really seen airlines go to significant lengths to hire the pilots, the mechanics, staff just at all levels of the operation necessary to run a smoother operation,” Sean Cudahy, aviation reporter at The Points Guy, told CX Dive.
Airline staffing can grow customer satisfaction. Satisfaction reached an all-time high this spring, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which credited staffing.
ACSI found that satisfaction with check-in and boarding, flight crew courtesy and helpfulness, and cabin cleanliness — all customer experience factors impacted by staff — grew year over year. Proper staffing also helps out when things go awry.
“You have more support on hand, and when people call out sick or there's weather, you need to have another crew swap in,” Katy Nastro, a travel expert at Going, a flight booking and travel advice website, said. “Having extra people on the bench is never a bad idea, especially going into a peak season.”
Carriers were short staffed coming out of the pandemic — and travelers felt it.
“Airlines had to let go of a certain amount of staff to be able to just keep and stay afloat,” Nastro said. “And that really hit them hard in terms of being able to accommodate the amount of people that were looking to travel in those first few years out of a pandemic.”
Those first few years while airlines built back up their staffing were chaotic, with canceled flights and delays frustrating customers.
“A lot of people have a sour taste in their mouth from 2022,” Cudahy said. “If you look at the numbers, the cancellation rates, they are really trending far below what we saw in 2022. Airlines have been running a much better operation over the last two years — in fact, by a lot of metrics, last year was better than even 2019, pre-pandemic.”
