Unlike other students, Jason VanderLaan won’t be spending his spring break with drinks with umbrellas - he’ll be “just working.”
The finance junior knows a few people partaking in traditional student spring breaks in less than a month, but, in his opinion, this spring break will be just a normal one.
“I don’t really think it’s that big of a thing,” he said.
For airlines and travel agents, the idea of normalcy sounds pretty good.
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, airlines reduced rates and the number of flights. But as the spring break season approaches, things are again approaching average.
“They have started to swing back up,” said Bill McCullough, branch manager for AAA, 2829 Grand River Ave. in Lansing. “Everyone still wants to go to Cancun.”
McCullough said five months ago air fares and flight availability fell, but then slowly rebounded from the initial financial fears.
The spring break period bucked those trends, demanding higher prices than those immediately following Sept. 11.
“There were certainly some lower fares that were available for dates that were not peak,” McCullough said. “But the rates we’ve been following were not too much different. They were still pretty high compared to some for the deals available.”
Generally, the spring break trend is lower fares early in the semester followed by higher rates, McCullough said.
A decrease in the number of flights provided the only major change seen for this spring break season.
But Northwest Airlines spokesman Kurt Ebenhoch said flights continue to be filled at about the same rate as in past years.
“We have reduced flights about 14 percent from the average rate,” he said. “But the percentage of seats occupied year after year stays about the same.”
Regardless of any moderated trends or less-than-notable drops, the spring break season could be a good time for airlines to re-establish themselves as reliable, MSU economics Professor Charles Ballard said.
“(The airlines have) been moving in the direction of normalcy for quite some time now,” Ballard said. “But I think this is a time when some of the airlines could potentially get back to normal.”
After Sept. 11, which created a sudden weariness in the public, spring break could be the reconciliation between airlines and the public, at least the 18-25 age bracket, Ballard said.
Ballard said such a move could come at just the right time for both consumers and the travel industry.
“A lot of passengers are convinced that the system is getting back to normal,” he said. “And (the airlines are) probably looking forward to it as an opportunity to continue their business as usual.”
