Melissa: Finally after almost two years of an international travel ban, the Biden administration is opening up travel into the US for tourists from more than 30 countries. We're going to start to see our friends, families and other visitors from South Africa, Brazil, the UK, just all over. That is if they can get a flight because just as holiday travel ramps up and international visitors return, US travellers are experiencing a wave of flight cancellations and delays. Cancellations that have cost airlines tens of millions and caused travelers plenty of headaches.

After mass cancellations last month, American Airlines offered flight attendants as much as triple their pay to work holiday trips so what is flying going to be like this holiday season? Joining me now is Leslie Josephs, airline reporter for CNBC. Thanks for coming back on, Leslie.

Leslie Josephs: Thanks for having me.

Melissa: All right. The big news is that the US ended this 20 month pandemic travel ban on Monday, but what does that mean?

Leslie Josephs: Early in the pandemic, then President Donald Trump had barred people from various countries. It started with China. It was later expanded to most of the EU, most of Europe, the UK, where people who are non citizens were barred from coming into the United States. It was right when COVID was declared a pandemic and borders were closing up all around the world. President Joe Biden earlier this year, shortly after taking office expanded that to include South Africa, some other countries as well and it's been in place for about 20 months now.

Now, the US has replaced those. The blanket ban was 33 countries in total, with a bunch of other restrictions and rules. You have to be vaccinated if you're a non-citizen coming in to visit and you still have to show a negative COVID test. Though there are some exemptions, people under 18, for example.

Melissa: What I heard you say was, if you're a non citizen, you have to show your vaccination. Can you fly internationally as a US citizen who is unvaccinated?

Leslie Josephs: You can. It depends. Every country is different. International travel and COVID has become extremely complicated. There's a patchwork of rules all around the world. We have paper vaccine certificates, some are digital, and every country really varies. European countries, for example, in the spring, one by one, Croatia started, we saw Greece, Italy, Spain start to open up their doors to international travel including US citizens with some rules. You either have to show that you're fully vaccinated, or you have to take a negative COVID test or a combination of the two but the US didn't reciprocate that.

The Europe-US travel of Europeans coming here which, of course, New York City is a really big deal, big spenders, especially around the holidays, they were not allowed to come in even though the EU and airlines and hotel companies have been lobbying the Biden administration very hard for the government to lift those rules.

Melissa: Now, what about our pilots, flight attendants, baggage handlers, are they vaccinated?

Leslie Josephs: It depends. Airlines most of them are federal contractors and under some new Biden administration rules, federal contractors need to ensure that their staff is fully vaccinated. United Airlines is an outlier, they have the strictest mandate, and they put this in even a month before the Biden administration announced that there would be those requirements and they said you have to either be vaccinated, get an exemption for religious for medical reasons or you will be fired. They have 67,000 US employees and more than 97% of them are vaccinated.

Other airlines, we're seeing American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, they have been pushing their staff to be vaccinated. One thing that they have in their favour, to be fully vaccinated, it's two weeks after your last shot, if you're getting the two dose course, it would have fallen on November 24th to meet a government deadline of December 8th. That's right before Thanksgiving, that's the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and probably one of the worst days to be at the airport in general. Now they have a little bit of a reprieve and that's been pushed back to January 4th so they have until after the holidays to make sure that those workers are vaccinated. We're talking more than 150,000 people.

Melissa: Let's talk a little bit about the delays and cancellations. What is going on?

Leslie Josephs: Last year, airlines were begging and pleading with their employees to take buyouts, early retirement packages, unpaid leave so that they could cut their labour expenses which is usually their largest expense. Travel demand had almost completely dried up last year and they were just desperate to get rid of as many workers as possible. Fast forward to the spring when vaccines are readily available, travel demand goes up, people are cooped up in their houses, they already built their deck last summer and did their TYI projects and they're ready to get out, and travel demand just soared.

Many of the airlines did not have the numbers of people that they needed to handle that demand. It doesn't mean that there's no pilot for your plane, but what it does mean and this is what we've seen with Spirit Airlines recently, Southwest Airlines, American Airlines just over Halloween is that when there's a disruption, let's say like a few hours of weather, that means that that plane and the crew onboard is not getting to their next destination. It tends to cascade throughout the whole system and ends up with thousands of cancellations that have cost them. Southwest lost $75 million, Spirit cost them 50 million. It gets very costly and they've really struggled to keep a lid on those things and they're hoping that it doesn't happen over the holidays when they really get a surge in travelers.

Melissa: It's an interesting point. Basically, it took away the margin of error so that even any little bump makes that big difference?

Leslie Josephs: Right. Some workgroups that calls out-- Sick calls had gone up, fatigue calls. Some of the unions at Southwest had said that they were just absolutely exhausted. The airlines have been trying to balance it to varying degrees of success. The fact that travel demand is going up, capture every dollar you can, but some of them flew more than they were able to handle.

Melissa: Now, what will that mean for pricing? Should travelers be expecting to pay very high prices to travel this holiday?

Leslie Josephs: Prices are going up, and you should expect peak period prices. Think of maybe the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, coming back on the Sunday, those are usually the two busiest days when people are off from work. I would just avoid those days if you can and if you have the luxury of having remote work, do the Monday to Monday or Tuesday to Tuesday or something along those lines and stay away from the crowds. The prices are going up. We not only have more people travelling because it's the holidays but business travel is starting to trickle back and now we have international. It's just those three things happening at once.

There are still a lot of deals out there, corporate travelers are not there in the 2019 numbers and some analysts think it'll be more than a year before we get back to that if we ever get back to that, thanks to Zoom and other telecommuting software.

Melissa: Actually, that's a good point. Can we just stick on that for one second? Do we ever expect businesses to pay those kinds of short-term first-class prices ever again, given that we've moved into this digital age of being able to have so much of our workforce and work-life happen via the Zooms?

Leslie Josephs: The airlines and the hotels hope they will but it's yet to be seen. I think a lot of companies saw already how much money they could save by not putting people out on the road so there are certain meetings that they might pick out. We could do this team meeting or something like that remotely, but one place that we've heard is more difficult to replace is going out and finding new business, deal-making, visiting with clients that has more of a human element where you really want to connect with another person.

There are some trips that just might go to the wayside. Even the CEO of Delta said one thing going to London for a meeting and coming back that thing might go away. Also, companies are trying to reduce their carbon footprint, and reducing the number of flights that your employees are going on is one way to do that.

Melissa: Last question here. Let's say you're looking to make a career change, is this the time to try to break into becoming a flight attendant.

Leslie Josephs: Flight attendants, they are getting a ton of applications and airlines they're all staffing up right now. The acceptance rate is very low, but it's a job-seekers market in airlines both for pilots, flight attendants, ramp workers, you name it. If you ever had a desire to work at the airport, you could probably walk in and get a job within a day. Flight attendants, that group is probably one of the most selective in terms of number of applicants versus acceptance rate. Delta likes to say they have a lower acceptance rate than Harvard.

Melissa: I appreciate that. I do have very good experiences with flight attendants on Delta and perhaps that is because it's harder to get into Harvard. Leslie Josephs is an airline reporter at CNBC. Thank you so much for talking with The Takeaway.

Leslie Josephs: My pleasure.

Melissa: Everybody, we want to hear from you about your air travel experiences. Have you had recent flight delays or cancellations? Are you nervous about upcoming holiday travel? Share your stories with us by calling 877-869-8253, or record a voice memo maybe while you're stuck in the airport and email it to us at takeawaycallers@gmail.com.

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