Many airports globally are having trouble with delayed flights and lost baggage and a new survey done by Rates.ca shows many Canadians are thinking long and hard about their travel plans.
“We found that 35% of Canadians that were planning to travel by plane have changed their plans,” said John Shmuel, managing editor of Rates.ca.
In order to try and save themselves from the consequences of delayed flights and lost baggage, people are looking at buying travel insurance now more than ever.
“We also found that 78% of Canadians that did change their travel plans were also looking at purchasing travel insurance as a result of what’s going on,” said Shmuel.
These issues are largely due to the staffing shortages, an issue not specific to the travel industry, but many others as well.
John Shmuel says he has seen both the good and the bad.
“I’ve personally heard friends, family that have had a great experience, others of course have delayed flights or end up in a location and find out that their luggage didn’t arrive”.
SKYXE Saskatoon Airport hasn’t seen these challenges to the same extent.
“I think we’ve been fairly lucky here as a smaller airport not to experience as much of the operational challenges that some of our larger airport counterparts across the country have been seeing,” said CJ Dushinksi, Vice-President of business development and service quality at SKYXE.
According to Dushinski, the airport hasn’t seen a decrease in travel.
“Over the past summer period since June to July, were upwards of 78-80% recovered of what we would’ve seen in 2019 which is certainly a far cry from where we have been the last few summers”.
A couple concerns have been brought to the attention of the airport about traveling to other airports.
“When things are happening at upline stations, things are happening in Toronto, connecting flights, bags are not making it here to their final destination or of they are travelling outbound and it’s getting lost somewhere in the interim,” said Dushinski.
As summer travel slowly comes to an end, the amount of people traveling is expected to decline.
“We are really not seeing travel slowing down from a summer period perspective at this point, we’re still seeing those pretty high travel numbers, not really seeing that slowing down quite yet although we do expect that to change as the fall rolls around and kids go back to school and summer vacations end, she said.
If the number of travelers decreases, airports should be able to catch up, according to Dushinski.
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