We are going to talk about something that has nothing to do with Mickey Mouse and everything to do with your Disney trip this summer.
Jet fuel. Specifically, the fact that there is not enough of it, it costs dramatically more than it did six months ago, and the people absorbing that cost most directly right now are families trying to fly to a theme park vacation.
Here is what is going on and why it matters to you.
The U.S. and Israeli military campaign against Iran has triggered what experts are calling the worst aviation fuel crisis in history. The cost of U.S. jet fuel is up approximately 50 percent since the conflict began, according to the Argus U.S. Jet Fuel Index. Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, surged roughly 50 percent before pulling back partially. Average U.S. gas prices are running about 35 percent higher than they were in late February. Iran’s foreign affairs minister announced this week that the Strait of Hormuz is open again following a ceasefire, and oil prices dropped around 10 percent on the news, which is genuinely good.
The bad news is that the experts say it does not matter as much as you might hope.
“The reality is that this is not a days or weeks issue. It’s a months and a years issue,” said Richard Mann, president of aviation consulting firm R.W. Mann & Co. “There will be some disruption. There is just a question of how much.”
John Gradek, an aviation management lecturer at McGill University, put it even more bluntly when he told CBC News that we are in the midst of the worst crisis aviation has ever seen, and that even with the strait reopening, restoring the region’s refining capacity could take years. “And without fuel, you can’t fly,” Gradek said, per The Washington Post.Â
Cool. Great. Very reassuring.
What This Actually Looks Like for Air Travel Right Now
The International Energy Agency warned this week that Europe has roughly six weeks of jet fuel supply on hand. European airlines are staring down the possibility of widespread cancellations during the exact weeks when their flights are normally packed solid with summer holidaymakers. Some 25 to 30 percent of Europe’s jet fuel supply was blocked when Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, and even with passage reopening, the supply chain does not snap back overnight.
American carriers are in better shape than their European counterparts. The United States produces and exports jet fuel, which provides some domestic insulation from a crisis rooted in Middle East supply chains. For travelers flying within the U.S., things are less chaotic than what is happening overseas.
Less chaotic, though, is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.
U.S. airlines have raised fares on affected routes by 10 to 50 percent, according to Dan Bubb, commercial aviation expert and professor at UNLV. Airlines that already sold tickets at pre-crisis prices cannot charge those passengers more for the seat itself, so they are making it up in other ways. Baggage fees and seat selection charges have risen across Delta, American, Southwest, Alaska, and Hawaiian Airlines in recent weeks. Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, called those increases “fuel surcharges by other names” and added the detail that stings most: once those rates go up, “they rarely come back down.”
Air Canada has suspended six routes because jet fuel prices doubled and made those flights economically unviable. WestJet cut capacity by one percent in April and three percent in May. These are not small carriers quietly trimming the edges. This is the industry adjusting to a cost structure that changed dramatically in a very short period of time.
Here Is Where the Disney Connection Gets Very Real
Dan Bubb said he is most worried about recreational travelers and families on summer vacation. “It’s going to affect everyone,” he said. “All of this is so interconnected. There’s going to be a cascading effect.”
A cascading effect on a Disney vacation looks like this.
The airfare is more expensive than it was six months ago. The baggage fees are higher than they were when you originally looked at this trip. The seat selection charges, if you are flying on a basic economy fare, are part of the new normal at several carriers. And every dollar that gets absorbed by the flight portion of the trip is a dollar that is not going toward a dining reservation at a Disney restaurant, an extra Lightning Lane booking, a piece of merchandise the kids have been talking about, or an additional park day.
Disney food is genuinely one of the great joys of a Walt Disney World vacation, and we say this as a site that has eaten our way through more festival booths and signature restaurants than we can count. The EPCOT International Flower and Garden Festival outdoor kitchen booths are open right now and they are excellent. Dining at Be Our Guest or Oga’s Cantina or Toledo is the kind of thing that turns a theme park trip into something you talk about for years. That is what gets cut when the travel budget balloons before you ever reach the gate.
Stephen Rooney, lead economist at Tourism Economics, wrote that jet fuel typically makes up 25 to 35 percent of an airline’s operating cost and that higher prices will deter some travelers. His broader assessment is that overall air travel demand will hold up, but that the most price-sensitive travelers will feel this most directly. Disney families tend to be committed and resilient planners, but committed does not mean the budget is infinite.
What to Do About It Before Your Trip
If you have airfare already booked, your base ticket price is likely locked. What is not locked is the baggage fee structure, which has changed at most major carriers since earlier this year. Pull up your airline’s current policy before you pack. The difference between what you budgeted for bags when you originally planned this trip and what it actually costs now can be meaningful on a round-trip family itinerary with checked luggage.
If you have not booked airfare yet and your Disney trip is this summer, the expert consensus is not encouraging for the wait-and-see approach. Mann’s framing that this resolves over months and years rather than days and weeks suggests that summer prices are not coming down before summer arrives. If you have points or miles available on your airline of choice, this is a reasonable moment to use them.
The ceasefire and the reopening of the strait are real developments and the oil price drop that followed is real. But Gradek’s warning about refining capacity and Mann’s months-and-years timeline both say the same thing: do not plan your summer trip around a rapid return to normal, because the experts do not see one coming.
Genuinely, go check your airline’s baggage fees right now before you do anything else. If you booked your Disney flights more than a month ago, there is a real chance the fee structure has changed and you do not know it yet. That is a five-minute check that could save you a genuinely unpleasant surprise at the airport. And if you want to put the travel savings somewhere better, our dining guide for Walt Disney World has every restaurant worth booking this season. Start there.
