\n<\/p>\n
Chelsea Blackmore saves up every year for an annual vacation with her 58-year-old mother. This year, after landing an especially good deal, they made plans to embark on a Disney cruise from Orlando.<\/p>\n
To keep costs low, she bought the least expensive plane tickets she could find: a $500 round trip fare on Spirit Airlines.<\/p>\n
Soaring oil prices have left <\/strong>many Americans with higher ticket prices and fewer options for summer travel amid the economic maelstrom brought on by the war in Iran. Typically, budget airlines offer travelers like Blackmore base-fare tickets that can make travel more affordable during financially unstable times.<\/p>\n But last Saturday, Blackmore opened up the airline\u2019s app and was faced with a pop-up message announcing Spirit was shutting down operations and her flight was cancelled.<\/p>\n \u201cI cried for about five hours trying to search for new flights,\u201d said Blackmore, 35, a photographer and travel agent based in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n Travel experts say the demise of Spirit is just a harbinger of the chaos higher energy prices will bring this summer. From drivers to flyers, all travelers are expected to feel the squeeze.<\/p>\n \u201cSpirit is, in many ways, emblematic of what most Americans are feeling right now \u2013 which is a real gut punch around increasing energy costs and gas prices in particular,\u201d said Lindsay Owens, the executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, a left-leaning economic thinktank. \u201cWe\u2019re all Spirit Airlines, when it comes to feeling really distressed and worried about high gas prices.\u201d<\/p>\n US oil prices have jumped more than 30% since the closing of the strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world\u2019s oil and gas products typically pass through, at the start of the war. Prices at the pump have reached highs not seen since 2022, when the Russia-Ukraine war crippled the global supply of oil. The current national average gas price is $4.56 a gallon, more than $1 a gallon more expensive than last year. In some states, average gas prices have breached $6 a gallon.<\/p>\n Though Donald Trump keeps teasing peace deals with Iran, experts warn that it could take months or even years to fully restore the Gulf\u2019s energy production even after the conflict ends.<\/p>\n Airlines, which rely on heavy jet fuel, have been hit particularly hard. While other major carriers like United and Delta can cut routes and increase fees to offset rising costs, budget airlines operate on thin margins that are thrown off by higher fuel prices.<\/p>\n Before its shutdown, Spirit was reportedly in talks over a $500m deal with the White House. Trump even floated the idea of the government buying out the airline, and other struggling budget carriers, including Frontier and Avelo, also asked the Trump administration to consider offering the low-cost industry a $2.5bn government assistance package to help with rising prices. But no deals were made, and Spirit abruptly ceased operations on 2 May.<\/p>\n In the wake of the company\u2019s closure, Spirit specifically <\/strong>cited the shock of increased jet fuel prices as the death knell for the low-budget airline. <\/strong>A company lawyer said higher fuel prices left the company, already beleaguered by other financial issues, with \u201cno remaining way out\u201d.<\/p>\n The impacts of Spirit\u2019s shutdown is expected to last far beyond the latest oil shock. Industry experts say the loss of Spirit will mean passengers will have to pay more for tickets in dozens of routes due to less competition.<\/p>\n \u201cEven if you don\u2019t like Spirit, and even if you never flew on Spirit, if you were flying on routes that Spirit flew \u2026 you benefited from their presence,\u201d said William McGee, a senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project.<\/p>\n When she scrambled to rebook on the next cheapest flight she could find, Blackmore ended up spending $800 on a pair of Southwest tickets that, unlike her Spirit tickets, didn\u2019t even <\/strong>include a checked bag.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, yes, we could drive to Florida, but then that\u2019s taking more time off of work,\u201d Blackmore said<\/p>\n Some passengers are turning to alternate forms of transportation. Flixbus, parent company of Greyhound, said it has seen a more than 30% increase in passengers across 130 <\/strong>routes that mirror Spirit\u2019s and a 20% year-over-year increase in online search activity, the company said in a statement.<\/p>\n Amtrak said that, while it is too early to isolate the impact of rising gas prices on the demand for rail service,<\/strong> it has noticed an uptick in passengers as well.<\/p>\n Despite higher prices affecting nearly every aspect of travel \u2013 transportation, eating out and accommodations \u2013 travel agents say demand for vacations is still high.<\/p>\n While one of Blackmore\u2019s clients postponed their summer trip to next year, she said most are determined to continue with their plans in some way. They want to escape the stresses of everyday life and are willing to put charges on their credit card to pay back over time.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, the world is crazy right now, and everybody deserves a vacation,\u201d she said, \u201cSo to put it on a credit card, it\u2019s out of sight, out of mind.\u201d<\/p>\n One international travel agency, Intrepid Travel, reported that demand was still \u201creally strong\u201d this summer. Instead of giving up trips altogether, Americans are adjusting how and why they are traveling, said Leigh Barnes, the president of the agency\u2019s Americas division.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing travelers look harder at overall value \u2013 asking a lot more hypothetical questions around fuel shortage impacts, future flight cancellations, wanting to know paid-in-full dates, \u2018just in case\u2019,\u201d Barnes said.<\/p>\n He added that while some travelers are trimming costs by traveling for fewer days or choosing more budget friendly styles of trip, \u201cthey\u2019re still unwilling to compromise on the actual experience\u201d.<\/p>\n Some travelers are also booking more closer to their departure date, with budget-conscious travelers waiting longer to lock in their plans.<\/p>\n But McGee strongly advised against that strategy.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems apparent that fares, which are already increasing, are going to continue to increase,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I think it\u2019s anybody\u2019s guess when that will stop.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chelsea Blackmore saves up every year for an annual vacation with her 58-year-old mother. This year, after landing an especially good deal, they made plans to embark on a Disney cruise from Orlando. To keep costs low, she bought the least expensive plane tickets she could find: a $500 round trip fare on Spirit Airlines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[540,21624,5640,335,660,150,225,24473,6707,111,2460],"class_list":{"0":"post-49253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-americans","9":"tag-busy","10":"tag-costly","11":"tag-feel","12":"tag-fuel","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-season","15":"tag-spiritless","16":"tag-squeeze","17":"tag-summer","18":"tag-travel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/49254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}