What to Expect from the 2022 Summer Travel Season

When Katie Knox, of East Lansing, Mich., booked a flight to Paris to visit her boyfriend over the holidays, she locked in a low fare on budget airline Frenchbee. But then her boyfriend tested positive for COVID-19 only days ahead of her planned departure, delaying her trip by 10 days. She changed her flight, but her sad saga was just beginning. Her Delta Airlines flight from Detroit to Newark, N.J., where she was connecting with her flight to Paris, was canceled, thanks to COVID-related staff shortages.

Knox had to wait a day to get another flight to Newark. She spent the night in a Detroit airport hotel and decided to book a new flight with Swiss Air from New York to Copenhagen, where her boyfriend was traveling to be with his family. She received a credit for her Frenchbee flight and booked a return flight home on Iceland Air. But that flight was canceled because of severe weather in Reykjavik. She opted for a refund instead of a new flight—but because she had booked the flight on travel aggregator Gotogate, she had to spend 10 hours on the phone, on hold and on multiple calls, trying