United Airlines Shares Where People Are Flocking To For Spring Break

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
• 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.