Thread by @thisisinsider

✈️ Airlines and travelers are seeing the pandemic's disruptive effects on the complex system of air travel — and with the holiday travel rush on the way, it's only going to get worse.

@g_allon breaks down the seemingly impending airline apocalypse. ⬇️

businessinsider.com/flight-delays-…

Just as the delivery of gifts and goods depends on each link in the supply chain working properly, smooth air travel depends on a series of seemingly inconsequential but ultimately crucial movements: handoffs, layovers, catering deliveries, refueling.

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And much like the minor logistical snarls that grew into a full-fledged supply-chain crisis for the shipping industry, a series of pandemic-related strains threaten to break airlines' delicately crafted but dangerously thin linkages.

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As information emerges about the Omicron coronavirus variant, travel bans, testing requirements, and flight restrictions are injecting new chaos.

With the holiday travel rush on the way, it's only going to get worse.

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The surge in demand to near pre-pandemic levels presents a serious issue for airlines.

Load factor, or the percentage of an airline's capacity being used, dropped to just under 14% in April 2020 from a high of 88% in 2019.

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In response, airlines canceled routes and reduced flights.

But demand quickly returned. In January 2021, load factor had recovered to 50%, and it soared to 85% in July.

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When a flight is canceled, the passengers need to be reassigned.

But if flights are already full, it's hard to reassign passengers whose flights were canceled without disrupting those whose flights were not.

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As queueing theory explains, when a system gets closer to full capacity, the cascading delays get exponentially worse.

As load capacity increases this holiday season, any delay is going to make things much, much worse.

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❓If airlines could handle this volume before the pandemic, why can't they handle it now?

While the load factor is back to pre-pandemic levels, airlines' capacity is significantly lower than it was before COVID-19.

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The trouble doesn't stop there — some specific pandemic problems like labor shortages could cause a true travel nightmare this year.

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https://twitter.com/TranspoInsider/status/1470796346001178628?s=20

Airlines, like supply chains, are experiencing the convergence of many issues.

To read the full story, subscribe to @thisisinsider. ⬇️

businessinsider.com/flight-delays-…