Author: Eliza

LOS ANGELES, Sept 19 (Reuters) – FedEx (FDX.N), United Parcel Service (UPS.N) and other delivery firms that fought with too much pandemic-fueled demand from online retailers like Amazon and Walmart, now have the opposite problem – too much delivery capacity.

Online sales started fizzling during last year’s peak delivery season from Thanksgiving weekend through the end of the year. FedEx, UPS and the US Postal Service (USPS) kept adding facilities and staff, even as more consumers returned to in-store shopping and higher food, fuel and rent costs eroded discretionary spending.

Those delivery firms can now handle 110 million holiday packages per day. That could outpace peak season demand by 18 million packages per day, according to Satish Jindel, a consultant whose holiday peak volume forecasts are closely watched by delivery firms.

That

Yahoo Finance’s Kerry Hannon outlines how American travelers are already planning their holiday travel, the best dates to fly, and how to find the best deals in airfare.

Video Transcript

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RACHELLE AKUFFO: Well, if you’re hoping to travel for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, you might want to book your flight as soon as possible. Yahoo Finance’s Kerry Hannon joins us now to break down the staggering cost of holiday travel this year. Kerry, as if we needed one more thing to worry about. Break down these numbers for us.

KERRY HANNON: Well, here we go. It’s up, up, and away. We talked to our friends over at Hopper, the travel app, and they have a new survey– a survey out this week that says, hey, guess what? The domestic fares are going to be up roughly 20% from 2019 and 40% from last year. International fares, roughly

If the summer was any indication, air travel’s hustle and bustle will carry over into the end of the year.

That’s the outlook from airlines and the tourism industry going into the fall travel season and looking forward to the winter holidays.

Hopper, a travel agency that analyzes data for airfare price predictions, is seeing strong booking demand for holiday travel after an “extraordinary” summer.

The pent-up demand after two pandemic years is in part because, for some travelers, this will be the first time they visit family for the holidays since COVID-19 erupted, said Hopper spokeswoman Lindsay Schwimer.

“Last year omicron was surging around the holiday season, so people will be eager to take holiday trips this year and see family and friends,” she said.

Is air travel getting back to normal?:I went to Europe this summer and so did my suitcase

Which day is the cheapest to