Americans are planning fall travel despite higher costs ahead

Financial worries may have bumped the pandemic as a top concern for travelers, but close to two-thirds of Americans still plan to hop on at least one overnight leisure trip in the upcoming three months — which includes the holiday season. Of those travelers, nearly half are planning to visit friends and relatives.

“Despite the challenges facing our industry, the outlook for fall looks stable,” said Erin Francis-Cummings, chief executive officer of Destination Analysts, in a livestreamed presentation of the latest quarterly State of the American Traveler report released Tuesday. The pre-holiday report and survey spans data collected from July through most of September.

A whopping 80% of US travelers confirm that they are excited about future trips, according to the report, with nearly a third saying they will take more leisure vacations in the next 12 months, compared to a year earlier.

That’s not to say that inflation hasn’t

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New airliner ‘Overture’ hopes to usher in new era of supersonic travel

The world hasn’t seen commercial supersonic travel in nearly 20 years since the Concorde was retired in 2003, but all that is about to change with the development of a new, environmentally friendly airliner.

Meet Overture – the world’s fastest airliner that was developed by Denver-based Supersonic Boom.

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With 26 million hours of designing and testing, Overture will run on 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) as it flies at Mach 1.7 over the ocean, shuttling between 68-80 passengers up to nearly 5,000 miles.

The updated design features four engines that will keep weight and temperature balanced, which will also lower the size requirements of the wing-mounted engines.

Boom says that

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Tips for Finding the Best Flight Deal, According to a Frequent Flyer

  • Whenever my five-person family travels, we try to save as much money as possible on flights.
  • I use the Google Flights “explore” feature to browse deals for a variety of dates and destinations.
  • Some airlines also offer cheaper rates at airport ticket counters than they do online.

Since my family of five plans on taking 22 trips this year, we have to stick to our budget.

One of the ways we save money is by finding great flight deals, so I’ve developed some tried-and-true strategies to make sure we book the least expensive fares possible.

Here’s how I found the most affordable flight options.

Try searching for deals on Google Flights

I’ve found almost all of our air-travel deals using Google Flights. The online flight-booking service is such a simple tool, but it allows us to find some great ticket prices.

Thanks to inexpensive rates we found

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tropical island getaways to ‘moderate’ risk category

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(CNN) — The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday moved three tropical island getaways and one Middle Eastern nation into its “moderate” risk category for Covid-19. There were no new additions to its “high” risk category this week.

The four new places now at “moderate” risk, or Level 2, are:• Fiji (in the South Pacific)
• Kuwait (Middle East)
• Saint Kitts and Nevis (Caribbean)
• Sint Maarten (Caribbean)

Previously, Dutch Sint Maarten had been listed as “Unknown,” which happens when the CDC doesn’t have enough data to make a risk assessment. The other three places dropped down from “high” risk, or Level 3.

Just over half

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