They only have a few hours to wait.
The airlines have put themselves in order of battle to welcome on Monday vaccinated travelers from 33 countries, authorized to return to the United States after eighteen months of border closures.
Air France, British Airways, United Airlines… To cope, the companies which usually depend heavily on transatlantic and transpacific routes have added flights, chosen larger planes, made sure to have enough staff.
The announcement in mid-October of the lifting of restrictions by the White House, the seat of the US presidency, had been awaited for months by separated families, business travelers in a hurry to meet their clients, or ordinary tourists. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Washington, the American capital, had drastically limited passengers from these countries, including those in the Schengen area, the United Kingdom, China, India and Brazil.
Immediately, airline ticket reservations jumped.
British Airways has seen searches for flights and stays to certain American cities explode by 900% for the days leading up to Christmas compared to the week before the US government's announcement.
At American Airlines, the day after the announcement, reservations jumped 66% to the United Kingdom, 40% to Europe and 74% to Brazil.
For travelers arriving by plane, the requirement is more important than by land.
In addition to proof of vaccination and a test lasting less than three days, airlines must set up a contact tracing system.
Read alsoReopening of borders in the United States: an "explosion of joy" of French people 18 months away from their loved ones
For companies, "there is not a before / after November 8," notes an Air France spokesperson.
On the one hand, they filled their planes better, which for a long time traveled with many empty seats.
And they are gradually adding additional places.
The French company recently went from three flights a day between Paris and New York, its busiest route, to five.
On the route to Houston, it will replace the Airbus 330s with Boeing 777s, which offer more seats.
Air France plans to return by March 2022 to 90% of its pre-Covid capacity in the United States, against 65% in October.
A lack of employees in some companies
“This is excellent news for Air France, and more generally for the Air France-KLM group, since the North Atlantic is our main long-haul network. Before the Covid, it still represented 40% of our long-haul revenues across the entire group, explains Anne Rigail, the company's CEO. "We are not starting from scratch because we have never stopped serving the United States, including at the worst moment of the crisis", with "a lifeline" to the main cities, she recalls. The situation has improved in recent months and the summer has already been quite good, even if the planes were almost entirely filled with vaccinated Americans who came to visit Europe, with "just under 50% of the flights". The competition will be tough,the North Atlantic being "a very competitive axis" on which "all the competitors will also increase their capacities", she observes.
After probably a little hollow in January-February, companies expect an upturn in the spring and especially in the summer, traditionally the most profitable season. At United, the flight schedule to Latin America and its tourist destinations has already returned to 2019 levels, but its international schedule remains at only 63%. The American company is betting big on transatlantic flights: in the spring it will open new destinations (Jordan, Portugal, Norway, Spain), add flights to London (United Kingdom), Berlin (Germany), Dublin (Ireland), Milan (Italy), Munich (Germany) and Rome (Italy), and reopen links interrupted during the pandemic including Frankfurt (Germany), Nice and Zurich (Switzerland).
Traffic should also resume on the trans-Pacific side, but more slowly.
Singapore Airlines, which took advantage in October of the opening of a corridor for vaccinated passengers between Singapore and North America, still plans to return to 77% of its pre-Covid flights between the two zones in December, notably with the reopening of lines to Seattle and Vancouver (Canada).
Uncertainty around business travel
For Burkett Huey, air transport specialist at Morningstar, the companies have enough planes to cope with the influx of travelers: "A few large aircraft have indeed been withdrawn from the fleets in 2020 but nothing that completely changes the landscape". In terms of employees, on the other hand, there are more uncertainties, according to him. In the United States, where companies put in place large voluntary departure plans at the start of the pandemic, American and Southwest recently had to cancel thousands of flights due to lack of sufficient manpower to handle unusual disruptions.
The question remains above all of knowing when business travel, a cash cow for companies, will return to their pre-Covid levels.
And that could play on the proposed connections, he says.
For their transatlantic flights, airlines have so far favored a few key lines with wide-body aircraft to include the comfortable seats for business travelers.
They supplemented the journeys with domestic flights in the United States and Europe.
But with fewer business trips, they could offer more direct trips to tourists, using new planes that are smaller but now able to fly long distances, like the A321neo.