Category: Travel & Leisure

Delta Air Lines Inc. will stop selling tickets under the “basic economy” label that many large carriers have adopted in recent years to compete with no-frills offerings of discount competitors.

The airline on Thursday announced a reorganization of its fare categories aimed at giving passengers more options within each cabin section, with varying features such as assigned seats, the ability to change flights or loyalty benefits. Delta said it will still offer low-cost fares as a sub-category of its Delta Main tickets.

The change, which applies to flights departing on or after Oct. 1, is part of a strategy Delta detailed last year to respond to changing consumer demands and a growing preference for premium products. Some carriers have been focusing recently on more-lucrative upscale fare categories, deemphasizing the base-level fares that had been popularized by the likes of Spirit Airlines and spread to legacy carriers.

But Delta may risk creating customer confusion with all the new options, including both “classic” and “extra” versions of their Delta Comfort and Delta One fares.

“The traveling public is going to greet this with a gigantic, ‘Huh?’” said Henry Harteveldt, founder of Atmosphere Research Group, an advisory firm for the travel industry. “My concern is that it risks making it so confusing to customers that they seek out a competitor whose offerings are more straightforward.”

He also said the “slicing and dicing” of products could undermine the image Delta has cultivated for more than a decade as a premium carrier.

Delta said it’s using a “modernized shopping layout” on its website and app that details attributes of each fare category to help avoid any customer confusion.

The option to purchase “Main Basic” fares will exist across Delta’s network, but will be subject to availability, the airline said. Large carriers like Delta, United Airlines Holdings Inc. and American Airlines Group Inc. all adopted versions of the no-extras fare to lure travelers from deep-discount rivals that offered less legroom and charged for things like a carry-on bag or a bottle of water. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Business travel to the U.S. fell 9% in April as companies and workers grappled with economic uncertainty and anger over the Trump administration’s tariffs and border policies.

The National Travel and Tourism Office released preliminary figures Thursday showing the number of airline and ship passengers who entered the country last month using business visas.

The Middle East was the only region that saw higher business travel to the U.S., with arrivals up 9.4% compared to April 2024. But that didn’t make up for big losses from other regions; the number of business travelers from Western Europe fell 17.7%, for example.

The new government data didn’t include people coming from Canada for business or who traveled by land from Mexico. Mexican arrivals by air for those holding business visas were down 11.8%, the government said.

And overall travel from Canada also fell in April. According to Statistics Canada, Canadian residents’ return trips by air from the U.S. fell 20% in April, while return trips by car were down 35%.

Business travel to the U.S. held up better than leisure travel in the first quarter of the year. According to U.S. government data, more than 1.2 million travelers entered the U.S. using business visas in the January-March period, up 7% from the year before. The number of travelers using tourist visas fell 6%.

But that flipped in April, as the late Easter holiday likely encouraged more leisure travel. Travel to the U.S. by international travelers holding tourist visas was up 13.8% in April.

It’s unclear if that trend will hold. Cirium, an aviation analytics company, said an analysis of online travel agency data indicated that advance bookings from Europe to 14 U.S. cities in June, July and August were down 12% from those same months last year.

Multiple U.S. airlines have pulled their financial forecasts for the year, citing uncertainty and weaker demand from lower-fare leisure travelers. Many industry experts think business travel to the U.S. will continue to decline in the coming months.

Leslie Andrews, the global travel leader for real estate company JLL and a board member at the Global Business Travel Association Foundation, said she thinks corporate travel to the U.S. will slow in the second and third quarters of the year as the full impact of economic and geopolitical volatility sets in.

“What I am hearing is, ‘Things were good in the first quarter,’ but in the second quarter it’s a matter of, ‘Must you take that trip?’” Andrews said. “They’re pulling in the reins a bit to make sure only purposeful travel is happening as things grow and evolve.”

BT4Europe, a business travel association, said companies are increasingly wary about unpredictable procedures to enter the U.S. and the risk of detention, especially for LGBTQ+ individuals or those who have voiced political opinions on social media.

Kevin Haggarty usually travels to the United States from Canada several times a year to attend trade shows in Atlanta or Las Vegas or to visit suppliers in Los Angeles. But his concerns about crossing the border will keep him from making those trips this year.

Haggarty, who owns a company that sells gifts and souvenirs, said Canadian retailers no longer want U.S.-made merchandise. His U.S. suppliers are struggling to stay afloat due to U.S. tariffs on products made in China. Above all, he’s concerned about reports of international travelers being detained at the U.S. border.

“Honestly, my nervousness and reluctance to cross into the U.S. stems from that more than any hostility to the American market,” said Haggarty, who lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Global Business Travel Association CEO Suzanne Neufang said a poll of more than 900 of the association’s members last month showed nearly one-third expected a decline in global travel volumes this year.

Canadian members were the most pessimistic, with 71% saying they expect a decrease in travel this year, Neufang said.

“The uncertainty is unnerving for a business travel sector that likes to be safe and likes to be efficient,” she said.

A drop-off in business trips would represent a setback for the U.S. travel industry and cities that host international conventions and trade shows. The $1.6 trillion global business travel sector was finally returning to normal after the COVID-19 pandemic. U.S. business travel spending reached pre-COVID levels in 2023, Neufang said, while the rest of the world achieved that last year.

Brett Sterenson, the president of Hotel Lobbyists, a Washington firm that helps groups book hotels for meetings and conferences, said he was losing international business as some countries warn travelers not to visit the U.S.

U.S. government cuts are also hurting business, Sterenson said. He works with several groups that offer international exchange programs through the State Department. The programs welcome travelers from Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia and elsewhere and share best practices on things like energy policy and environmental stewardship, he said. But with funding cuts, that part of his business is down 75%.

“These exchanges were monumentally useful in spreading goodwill, but also in educating developing nations on good governance,” Sterenson said.

Haggarty, in Canada, said he canceled a trip to a trade show in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and said several retailers he works with also pulled out. He’s now looking to England, France, Spain and other markets for goods to sell.

“It’s unfortunate. It’s much easier to bring products to Canada from the U.S., but we’re in a corner,” he said. “I want people to know just how much damage this administration is doing to their relationships globally.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Air traffic controllers in Denver lost communications with planes around that major airport for 90 seconds earlier this week and had to scramble to use backup frequencies in the latest Federal Aviation Administration equipment failure.

The outage at Denver International Airport happened Monday afternoon and affected communications, not radar, the FAA’s head of air traffic control, Frank McIntosh, said during a House hearing Thursday. This communications failure follows two high-profile outages of radar and communications in the past 2 1/2 weeks at a facility that directs planes in and out of the Newark, New Jersey, airport.

The FAA said in a statement that the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center lost communications for approximately 90 seconds. McIntosh said both the primary and main backup frequencies went down, so the controllers had to turn to an emergency frequency to communicate.

“Controllers used another frequency to relay instructions to pilots. Aircraft remained safely separated and there were no impacts to operations,” the FAA said.

Rep. Robert Garcia of California told McIntosh during the hearing that “anytime there’s these outages which are happening now more regularly, it’s very concerning.”

“We know that there are staffing and equipment problems at air traffic control,” Garcia said. “We know that the problems have gone back decades in some cases, but it’s still an absolutely shocking system failure and we need immediate solutions.”

The Denver communications failure is the latest troubling equipment failure in the system that keeps planes safe. Last week, the Trump administration announced a multibillion-dollar plan to overhaul an air traffic control system that relies on antiquated equipment.

The Newark airport has generally led the nation in flight cancellations and delays ever since its first radar outage on April 28 that also lasted about 90 seconds. A second outage happened on May 9. In both those instances controllers lost both radar and communications.

The FAA was in the middle of a second day Thursday of meetings with the airlines that fly out of Newark about cutting flights because there aren’t enough controllers to handle all the flights on the schedule now. More than 100 flights have been canceled at Newark Thursday.

Officials developed the plan to upgrade the system after a deadly midair collision in January between a passenger jet and an Army helicopter killed 67 people in the skies over Washington, D.C. Several other crashes this year also put pressure on officials to act.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The air traffic controllers directing planes into the Newark, New Jersey, airport lost their radar Friday morning for the second time in two weeks.

The Federal Aviation Administration said the radar at the facility in Philadelphia that directs planes in and out of Newark airport went black for 90 seconds at 3:55 a.m. Friday. That’s similar to what happened on April 28.

That first radar outage led to hundreds of flights being canceled or delayed at the Newark airport in the past two weeks after the FAA slowed down traffic at the airport to ensure safety. Five controllers also went on trauma leave after that outage, worsening the existing shortage. It’s not clear if any additional controllers will go on leave now.

The number of cancellations of Newark departures jumped from the low 40s to 57 after this latest outage to lead the nation, according to FlightAware.com. Newark ranks second in the number of cancelled arrivals with 60, but that number also increased Friday morning. Nearly 300 delays were reported at the airport. Officials said there have been more than 1,700 cancellations and delays at the airport this week.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a briefing Friday morning that the “glitch this morning at Newark” was caused by the same issues as last week, but it didn’t disrupt flights.

“Everything went back online after the brief outage, and there was no operational impact,” Leavitt said.

U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer blamed the problems that have plagued Newark on the lack of proper air traffic controller staffing and modern technology. He said at a news conference Friday that there are currently about 20 controllers working, and that number should be in the 60s. And many of the lines connecting controllers to the radar are outdated copper wires. He said the April 28 outage was caused by one of those copper wires getting fried.

“Our region is a key economic artery for our country. Yet this region… one of the busiest air spaces in the world, as I mentioned, is running off a tower that’s full of copper wire dating back to the 1980s with outdated and inefficient technology. And the region is short — and this is a big deal. The region is short about 40 air traffic controllers,” Gottheimer said. He said the tower was built back in “the Brady Bunch era” in 1973.

The FAA said earlier this week that it is installing new fiber optic data lines to carry the radar signal between its facilities in Philadelphia and New York. Officials said some of the lines connecting those two facilities are outdated copper wire that will be replaced. But it’s not clear how quickly those repairs can be completed.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced a multi-billion-dollar plan Thursday to replace the nation’s aging air traffic control system to prevent problems like this from happening and give controllers modern technology. That plan includes installing 4,600 new high-speed connections and replacing 618 radars across the country.

Officials developed the plan to upgrade the system after a deadly midair collision in January between a passenger jet and an Army helicopter killed 67 people in the skies over Washington, D.C. Several other crashes this year also put pressure on officials to act.

But the shortcomings of the air traffic control system have been known for decades. The National Transportation Safety Board has not determined that a problem with the air traffic control system caused that crash near Reagan National Airport.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com