Special Edition: Travel Deals, Holiday Flights & Booking Myths

**Katy Nastro** (0:00)
You need to be thinking about looking and booking your Thanksgiving and even winter holiday flights now.

**Erica Mandy** (0:07)
Today is Saturday, July 25th. And yes, it may still be summer, but if you might travel in November or December, it may already be time to start looking. At the same time, a lot of people are still hoping to squeeze in one more summer trip or find a better deal for early fall. So what should you book now? Where can you still find savings? And what should you know before prices climb even more? Today, we're joined once again by Katy Nastro, a travel expert and spokesperson for Going. That's a travel platform that helps save travelers on average between 40 to 90 percent off flights. She's breaking down what's happening with airfare right now, how fuel prices, demand, and extreme weather are affecting travel, and the smartest moves to make before summer slips away.
Welcome to The NewsWorthy special edition Saturday, when we sit down with a different expert or celebrity every Saturday to talk about something in the news. Don't forget to tune in every Monday through Friday for regular episodes where we provide all the day's news in less than 15 minutes. I'm Erica Mandy. It's now time for today's special edition Saturday.
Katie Nastro, thanks for joining us here on The NewsWorthy.

**Katy Nastro** (1:10)
Thanks so much for having me back.

**Erica Mandy** (1:12)
Fuel prices have been a bit all over the place this summer, in large part because of the conflict in the Middle East. So has that actually impacted airfare so far this summer and even right now as we speak?

**Katy Nastro** (1:23)
It is an interesting conversation because when jet fuel prices rise, we don't automatically see that translate into higher fares. So I don't want people automatically thinking that that's the sole reason behind why airfare is on the incline. But we have noticed in the last few months that yes, jet fuel prices are certainly impacting fares because airlines aren't willing to eat that higher cost entirely in their bottom line. So unfortunately, that does mean higher fares.
As well as, they have modified schedules slightly. So think routes that haven't been super profitable or there were multiple flights per day that they could afford to maybe scrap one or two so they aren't burning more fuel than necessarily needed.

**Erica Mandy** (2:11)
And there was a time period in the summer where we saw oil prices actually go down but airfare was still going up.

**Katy Nastro** (2:17)
Exactly. And that's really when we see the price of oil come down, we see that at the pump pretty quickly. That's not really the same when it comes to jet fuel prices. One sort of piece of the puzzle is the fact that travel is still largely healthy, meaning people are looking to take trips, especially a mid-summer. We look forward to it all year round. And this year, even despite higher prices, people are still looking to get out and take that vacation.

**Erica Mandy** (2:45)
Demand is still high and so therefore, there's no reason for them to drop the prices.

**Katy Nastro** (2:49)
Exactly. Exactly. There's really no incentive. I was on a trip over to Asia and I had booked so many months ago. I was really surprised about how many people, and this is post-July 4th, how many people were on that flight to take a trip. As long as demand is still there and people are willing to pay these prices, unfortunately, we're in for higher fares for the immediate future.

**Erica Mandy** (3:12)
Is it more of a divide between who can travel and who can't?

**Katy Nastro** (3:16)
It's not necessarily who can and cannot, but it's more so who can afford to travel more comfortably. You know, we are seeing from the airline specifically that they're noting that premium economy demand is at an all-time high. That's one of the fastest growing sectors specifically in their planes. Even according to our going summer pulse check, we are seeing that while people are citing cost as the number one barrier as to maybe why they might pull back on travel, they're not not traveling entirely. And this is across most household incomes. What was interesting is out of the people that responded, they're citing things like taking one day fewer on the trip, or making the trip shorter, or making the trip a little bit closer to home. So think domestic locations or closer to home international destinations versus taking that big trip over to Europe, or Asia, Pacific, and etc.
So there are all these different ways that people are being creative in how they travel, but it's not necessarily people aren't traveling. Even at that lower household income.