Romulus —Travelers are rapidly returning to the skies over southeast Michigan, powered by flights to destinations overseas.
Detroit Metropolitan Airport handled nearly as many passengers in the first six months of this year as it did in all of 2020, according to the Wayne County Airport Authority’s June aviation statistics report. The main driver: a substantial rebound in international travelers unencumbered by COVID-19 travel restrictions.
Roughly 13.6 million passengers passed through DTW in the first half of this year, a 40.5% increase from 2021. International departures and arrivals increased by over 100% compared to last year, jumping to 831,000 this year from 282,000 in 2021.
Still, traffic has not quite rebounded to pre-pandemic levels of three years ago, when 16 million people arrived or departed in the first six months, almost 1.6 million of them international travelers. Overall, total air carrier operations at DTW remain down 23% from 2019 levels.
Expedia travel expert Christie Hudson said the main reason for increased travel abroad this summer was the mass removal of COVID-19 restrictions this spring, which made it significantly easier.
“Borders were opening. There were less restrictions in terms of having to test before you go, (and) a really big one was when the U.S. stopped requiring people test to return,” she said. “So for a lot of people who were delaying trips or being careful about that … we really saw the floodgates kind of open after that.”
COVID-19 travel restrictions dropped
Many European countries, such as Germany, Greece and the United Kingdom, lifted all COVID-19 travel restrictions this summer. Several nations that had been closed to tourists completely, such as Japan, Thailand and Indonesia, also have reopened their borders for leisure travel with vaccine or testing requirements.
Kevin and Anna Ruwersma are Michigan natives but currently live in Wales. They travel to Michigan every summer with their two sons to see family in Lansing and Grand Rapids, a tradition the pandemic disrupted two years ago.
“With no restrictions, things are a lot easier. No testing either way,” Kevin Ruwersma said at Detroit Metro last week on his way to Wales. “Last year, we had to get tests before we left the U.K., before we left the U.S.; we paid 1,500 pounds just in COVID tests.”
He added travel is almost back to how it was pre-COVID, with the exception of massive lines in London for travelers flying abroad.
The destinations that saw the biggest jump in flight demand since last year out of Detroit were all international, according to Expedia data. Demand for Vancouver increased by 80%, London increased by 75%, Paris increased by 50%, Beirut was up 45% and Cancun increased by 15%, Hudson said.
DTW serves as a hub for Delta airlines, with hundreds of international and domestic flights taking off every day. Delta spokesman Drake Castañeda said they’ve seen a rapid increase in demand for travel to Europe this year, in large part due to the elimination of COVID-19 travel restrictions.
“This summer has been predominantly focused on Europe,” he said. “We’ve been continually adding flights back as well and restoring our schedule.”
Hot destinations this summer
Travel agent Theresa Winters owns Faraway Places Travel with branches in Detroit, Port Huron and Grand Rapids. She said her business reflects these trends and has ramped back up since the start of the pandemic.
“Now, instead of just sitting around, they want to get out and see and do and experience more,” Winters said. “As soon as things started opening up, I started picking up business-wise.”
Europe has been a particularly popular destination over the summer, although Winters expects people to turn to the Caribbean during the winter to escape the cold. Given the recent wedding boom, fueled by celebrations that were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Winters has been booking honeymoons and destination weddings all summer.
“I have tons of clients going to Italy for honeymoons … not only honeymoons but also destination weddings,” she said. “I think people are just ready to experience, explore and create some really remarkable memories.”
Castañeda expects the demand for international travel to continue rising and eventually reach pre-pandemic levels. As countries in Asia continue to lessen their COVID-19 travel restrictions, he expects traffic there to increase next.
“That interest will always be there for folks to travel internationally, you know, travel to their favorite locations,” he said. “We’ve had flights to both (Europe and Asia) from Detroit, and I think we’ll likely see that increase as especially Asia continues to reopen. I think that’s the main area to look at for Detroit.”
Fall search trends on Expedia show interest in Asia is up, Hudson said: “Ho Chi Minh is up, like 634% for searches for Americans, Singapore is also really high up. I think people are starting to really feel like there might be a light at the end of the tunnel where they can plan those trips again soon.”
Delays, cancellations and demand at DTW
The boom in summer travel has been met with delays and cancellations, as airlines struggled to meet the increased demand after cutting employment levels and flight schedules in 2020.
“Over the course of operating an airline in the pandemic environment, it’s a lot easier to pull down the service like we did at the beginning of the pandemic than it is to bring it all back,” Castañeda said. “It’s not something where you can hire a pilot or a flight attendant, for example, and like a normal job maybe you can have them start in a few days. It’s a very long process that they have to go through.”
In May, Delta announced a reduction in flights scheduled for the summer with the goal of improving flight reliability. Castañeda said this has been effective.
“We’ve always had to be very cautious of making sure that we’re able to support the service before we add it,” he said. “We’re also making sure we can get our customers where we know they want to go to support that demand.”
Hudson said that while airlines are still struggling, they are working hard to get business ramped up again by rapidly hiring staff and pilots and adding new routes to popular destinations.
“Leisure travel has come back so strongly since the pandemic kind of wound down a bit, whereas work business travel is still slower,” she said. “If there were routes that were really heavily traveled by business travelers… those ones have probably been reduced and instead replaced with flights to Mexico, to the Caribbean.”
Many airport functions like the luggage handling and wheelchair pushing are handled directly by the airlines at DTW. Erica Donerson, a spokeswoman for the Wayne County Airport Authority, said Detroit Metropolitan Airport’s airline partners work hard to ensure they deliver the best customer experience possible.
“We’re not aware of any significant airline staffing issues at DTW,” she wrote in an email to The Detroit News.
AirHelp, a passenger rights company that specializes in flight delay or cancellation compensation, recently ranked the worst 10 airports in the United States for flight cancellations this summer. DTW did not make the list and had an on-time performance of 80.36% between May 27 and July 15, according to AirHelp statistics. AirHelp found that the average American airport saw 2.6% of its flights canceled during this time and DTW fell below this with only 2.4% of its flights canceled.
Demand for international travel, pent-up after a two-year-long hiatus, also drove up prices, with travelers spending more this July than they did in July 2019, according to the U.S. travel association. July was the third consecutive month this year that travel spending in the U.S. surpassed 2019 levels.
While prices typically drop at the end of summer and early fall as kids return to school and people take fewer vacations, the dip is expected to be more dramatic this year since summer prices were so inflated and the price of jet fuel has decreased by 25% since April.
“We are seeing that the savings compared to summer are looking really good,” Hudson said. “Even for places that are picking up like London and Barcelona, they’re showing some really good ticket prices still down from the summer.”
hmackay@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @hmackayDN
