While airlines such as United Airlines Holdings and Air India have ordered or want to order hundreds of planes from Boeing and Airbus, supply chain disruptions mean that these planes will probably not be delivered until years later.
All this means that the high airfares that people have been complaining bitterly about for the past few months are likely to escalate further, while Ajay Awtaney, founder of LiveFromALounge.com, a website designed for air travelers, said that people got used to low fares during the pandemic, and the reopening of China will make the situation worse, adding that it is not just a shortage of planes, but other factors such as oil prices will also contribute to the increase. Awtaney said that an airline making money in a particular region may have the financial muscle to lower fares, but this will cause other carriers to stumble, leading to even higher fares in the long run.
However, the most popular single-aisle models from aircraft manufacturing giants Boeing and Airbus, which largely duopolize the supply of passenger aircraft, are sold out until at least 2029.
As people once again eagerly turn to airplanes to travel and carriers look to replace their aging fleets, demand from airlines is compounded by supply chain challenges, including everything from sourcing necessary components to labor shortages. Thousands of planes are also contributing to the shortage, with carriers storing them in deserts around the world, unsure when demand will return as travel collapses and countries close their borders in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Hundreds of them have not been brought back into the fleet, either because they have not been used for a long time and need heavy maintenance, or because airlines plan to phase them out and do not include them back into their schedules.
