United Airlines is expecting its busiest spring break ever, with more than 24 million passengers expected to fly on the carrier between March 10 and April 27, 2025.
Spring Break Bonanza For United Airlines, With Record Traffic Expected in 2025
United shared some interesting stats and figures with Live And Let’s Fly that breaks down where the demand lies. Let’s take a look:
- The 24 million passengers expected to fly with United between March 10 – April 27 represents a 5% increase over the same period in 2024
- United will operate more than 4,500 flights per day on average during this period
- The week of March 10th will be the busiest with more than 500,000 people expected to fly United every day
- As United says, “This is the equivalent of more than the entire population of Miami getting on a plane every day.” (hopefully not like this couple...)
- United’s top three spring break destinations include:
- Orlando, Florida (MCO)
- Las Vegas, Nevada (LAS)
- Cancun, Mexico (CUN)
- These three were also at the top in 2024
- But an increase in Spring Breakers are picking snow instead of sun this year
- United is seeing a more than 20% increase in bookings to Bishop/Mammoth, California and a 10% increase to Vail and Steamboat, Colorado (compared to 2024)
- International bookings are up 8% compared to last year
- Behind Cancun, London (LHR) and Frankfurt (FRA) are the top international destinations
- United attributes this to connection options on Lufthansa from Frankfurt to other cities in Europe
- Behind Cancun, London (LHR) and Frankfurt (FRA) are the top international destinations
- Orlando, Florida; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Cancun, Mexico are on the two days leading up to Coachella (April 9 and 10, 2025 versus April 10 and 11, 2024)
- Gen Z is heading for the beach with Cancun, Orlando, and Honolulu (HNL) among the age group’s top destinations
Will It Last?
Airline stocks have had a rough week due to tariff concerns and I cannot be the only one wondering whether President Trump’s pivot away from Europe and toward Russia will result in dampened demand for European travel this summer, particularly with trips originating in Europe.
Anecdotally, we’ve had clients at Award Expert cancel trips to the USA over President Trump’s actions toward Ukraine and I do wonder whether that will depress the rosy transatlantic projections at United and other US carriers.
Whatever summer may look like, it does appear that spring break will be very solid…
CONCLUSION
United expects record-breaking spring break travel this year, with the top destinations again including Orlando,
Las Vegas, and Cancun. But more folks are choosing snow over sun this year and European bookings have been healthy too. With economic tradewinds and political uncertainty, I do wonder whether this surge in travel will continue unabated.
“ Anecdotally, we’ve had clients at Award Expert cancel trips to the USA over President Trump’s actions toward Ukraine and I do wonder whether that will depress the rosy transatlantic projections at United and other US carriers”
So some of your negativity towards Trump is based on his decisions hurting your wallet. Certainly fair and understandable but remember what John F Kennedy said when the Democratic Party wasn’t all about handouts and supporting freaks, but was for the working class.
Dave, I usually do pretty well in recessions…as travel becomes cheaper and there are more deals to be had. Recessions do not hurt my rich clients. None of my animosity toward Trump is related to my consulting business. But yes, I believe in JFK’s “ask not” speech, which is why I don’t support Trump’s tariffs, Ukraine policy, tax cuts, blind cuts to the federal bureaucracy, and other moves that will implode the economy. America leads and the economy grows when we are a force for democratic norms around the world and when we embrace free trade and innovation.
That’s so funny that they had to clarify “ppl aren’t actually going to Frankfurt itself, they’re just connecting to Lufthansa flights elsewhere” LOL
And Frankfurt is such a beautiful city…a destination in itself.
I’m predicting that international travel is going to be gutted in the coming months and years. Why would anyone want to travel to the U.S. now from Europe as an example, or most certainly Canada? Further, Americans will quickly learn that they in turn are not very welcome anywhere in the world.
So you think that Europeans will paint all Americans with the same brush when only a third of the American population voted for a failed businessman who assaults women and worships the leader of an enemy nation? Only 31.78 percent of Americans voted for Trump. 30.84 voted for Harris. 1.06 percent voted third party. 36.33 percent did not vote. Add it up! More Americans voted for someone other than the man who pardoned thugs who beat, pepper sprayed, and assaulted police officers during the attack on our country’s Democracy.
Wow Joe, you must be physically and emotionally drained after that rant. So much perspiration that your shirt is probably turning pink from the dye running out of your hair.
Can we get reactions to comments in this page because this deserved a massive LOL!
Bitter is much more accurate than Angry I would say….
We support Trump. He won a mandate.
If you dont like it then leave.
@AndyS: He certainly won, but that’s a wide definition of “mandate” when he did not even win a majority of the popular vote…
I’ll be in Yurop in 3 weeks and I’ll let you know if rampant xenophobia against Americans is present (I have doubts, they love our tips)
I sure hope your right, we have enough libs I this country to deal with, we don’t need those morons coming here from the outside.
In my day, we DROVE to Florida…and no one had ever heard of Cancun.
Back then, students didn’t had the $460 (1978) to fly down to Florida which is like $2,338 today.
Gen X, Y & Z never had it soooo good!!!
If Gen Z is flying to Orlando to go to the beach, they may want to consider taking a geography class before the Dept. of Education gets gutted. Jokes aside, it surprises me that Gen Z gets a call out for Orlando. If you don’t have kids or aren’t attending a convention, why exactly would you be going there?
They might be destined for Port Canaveral for cruises.
I consider this a public service, so I know where NOT to travel too during that time. Que the drunken in flight stories, cops being called to the gate for a disturbance, someone puking or shitting themselves on the plane.
I have two European trips set up for this year and our repudiation of Ukraine in favor of the country that invaded them as a pure land grab, combined with our sudden penchant for turning our loyal allies into adversaries makes me wonder what blowback I’ll get for being American. The toughest part is trying to explain our actions as somehow being sane.
Do you voluntarily pay reparations to black people too?
Like I said earlier, I’ll find out in a few weeks whether this xenophobia is actually real or just Reddit/Bluesky lies propagated by cucks on social media.
I saw “people” last night which is about the war. It was a hard watch. Painful, but relatively accurate based upon documented war crimes reported.
A forced peace, similar to Minsk, just means another war in another few years at most, perhaps even during Trump’s term.
I read a Lithuanian’s joke about how Russians treated the occupied during the cold war: A man is walking down the street in Vilnius and a Russian asks him if he has a light (meaning, that he’ll grab his cigarette lighter). The man replies he doesn’t smoke so he doesn’t have one and the Russian punches him in the face. “That is for your ugly hat.”
I wonder if that’s literally what happened with the kerfuffle about the suit. Was Trump/Vance looking to pick a fight so they could justify what they were going to do anyway? I’m reminded of the confrontation between Michael Corleone and Moe Green in Godfather.
It was all part of the setup to attack Zelensky. Neither Trump nor Vance are bright enough to say what they did off the cuff. Trump is like a broken record, just rambling on and on his greatest hits for the past 9 years. The entire attack was clearly orchestrated and choreographed by the Putin supporters in Trump’s inner circle like Stephen Miller. They are doing all they can to run the US and it’s economy straight into the ground.
Where and when has Trump ever created anything that has succeeded? It’s all about the grift and bullying. It’s never about an original idea or creating something new.
Everything and anything that gets near to Trump either dies or implodes. This will not end well.
Ukraine is and has always been Russian.
There is no such thing as a “ukrainian”
Z
@AndyS: Tens of mllions of Ukrainians would disagree.
So what part of all the comments have anything to do with the article? The opinion on politics is suffocating. Just stick to travel.
Most people will continue to travel. As long as they can afford it. It is our nature to continue on as normal until confronted by a harsh reality check. I would worry about the future embassy state department cuts if you choose to explore distant locations. Be prepared to take care of yourself. And yeah, some of our allies will think of the present administration as a judas.
Europeans will continue to be polite to visiting Americans and happily take the cash off those unaffected by the campaign promises broken…the wealthy Americans. Data will soon reflect how many foreigners are choosing not to travel to America on their principals. You can say you don’t care, but you would need to know how much inbound tourism contributes to the US economy. This political period will cost America dearly.
Having said that, I think we need to look at point of sale and the US3 have a high dependency on US travelers with foreign carriers skewed to their home markets. The foreign carriers will feel the boycott hardest, particularly Air Canada and European carriers. But they have other locations to pivot. US3 will feel it in the price conscience. With much of the summer prebooked, the hit will be felt in late Spring and autumn lulls. But the US3 will always have to deal with the views of US politics as seen by the rest of the world. America pays.
“we’ve had clients at Award Expert cancel trips to the USA over President Trump’s actions toward Ukraine”
Haha good, keep out of our country liberal trash.