Paul Charles, Chief Executive of travel consultancy The PC Agency spoke to CGTN Europe about the busiest Christmas season on record.
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00:00And talking of airlines, airlines on both sides of the Atlantic are set for their busiest Christmas season on record,
00:06driven by strong travel demand and lower ticket prices.
00:10In the UK, carriers plan to offer over 6 million seats during the Christmas week,
00:15surpassing the 2019 record, with popular destinations including Amsterdam, Dublin and Tenerife.
00:22Across the Atlantic, US airlines forecast a record 54 million passengers
00:27between December 19th and January 6th, with top destinations including Orlando, Las Vegas and Honolulu.
00:35Paul Charles is the chief executive of travel consultancy, the PC Agency.
00:41It's astonishing to see the numbers of people who are travelling.
00:44The numbers are up around 5 to 10% higher than the previous record of people travelling just before Covid started,
00:53so way back in 2019.
00:55And really there are two factors that are at play here.
00:59First of all, more of us want to travel to see family and friends.
01:03Since Covid, things have changed. We don't want to be kept at bay.
01:08We don't want to stay put around this time of year.
01:11We want to be going to visit family and friends much more than we used to.
01:15And the second factor is really that we're into experiences much more.
01:20We're prepared to use any disposable income that we have to, rather than buy clothes as we might have done much more in the past,
01:28to actually travel much more and see destinations that we've never seen before or that we want to go back to.
01:35Yeah, and which destinations then are seeing the highest demand?
01:38And why do you think those ones are so popular?
01:42Well, certainly out of the UK, then many people wish to travel to places like Amsterdam or Barcelona or southern Spain.
01:51They are eternally popular, and even more so this Christmas and New Year period.
01:57In terms of beyond Europe, then we're still looking at many popular locations like Bangkok, Singapore,
02:07certainly Sydney, which there isn't that much airlift to, but every flight is full if you can get on one,
02:13and then into the Americas as well, and as popular as ever as Chicago, New York and Los Angeles at this time of year.
02:21This is an industry that has seen challenges, primarily with the pandemic in recent years,
02:26but there are also economic concerns and climate change.
02:30So how is the industry buffering that trend then?
02:35There are many headwinds, as there are in quite a few sectors, but certainly in the aviation sector,
02:40you've got a combination, obviously, of a generation, a younger generation,
02:45which wants to see much more progress towards sustainable aviation and cleaner aircraft, as well as cleaner airports.
02:52And we're starting to see that with the likes of the 787 from Boeing, the A350 from Airbus,
02:58these newer generation aircraft, which are far less fuel hungry. They're far more fuel efficient.
03:06So sustainability is one of the things the industry is starting to tackle.
03:11Then, of course, the other main issue at the moment in the sector is really around availability of staff.
03:18The fact that airlines can't get enough engineers or maintenance workers all over the world, not just in Europe, but everywhere.
03:26They're finding it difficult to hire enough maintenance crew as their own air fleets get bigger.
03:32And that's what's really slowing down growth, ironically, even though we're seeing demand shooting ever higher.
03:39Yeah, interesting stuff. I mean, for the future then, what does the future hold?
03:43I mean, we've seen driverless cars, haven't we? What about pilots, for example? Will we see driverless planes?
03:50I don't think we're going to see driverless planes. But what we will see, and in fact are starting to see, are electric aircraft.
03:58And these are planes which are literally flying by battery power.
04:02There are trials taking place in Scandinavia of aircraft carrying around 30 to 60 people by electric plane.
04:10And I reckon within 10 to 20 years, certainly, we'll all be flying in some way, even if it's short haul only on electric planes.