The Flight Centre Travel Group Ltd (ASX: FLT) share price is in the red today.

Flight Centre shares are sliding 2.74% and are currently fetching $14.21. For perspective, the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) is down 1.07% at the time of writing.

Let's take a look at what might be weighing on the Flight Centre share price.

Travel chaos continues

Flight Centre is not the only ASX 200 travel share struggling today. The Qantas Airways Limited (ASX: QAN) share price is down 2.47%, while Webjet Limited (ASX: WEB) shares are falling 1.84%.

Australian airline shares are following in the footsteps of United States travel shares. United Airlines Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: UAL) shares dropped 2.38%, while Delta Air Lines Inc (NYSE: DAL) shares fell 2.77% and Southwest Airlines Co (NYSE: LUV) tumbled 5.16%.

There was flight cancellation chaos amid blizzards and winter storms. Southwest Airlines cancelled nearly 10,000 flights across the country in three days, Business Traveler USA reported.

Flight Centre has operations and offices globally, including in the United States.

The USA also announced overnight they will require negative COVID tests for travellers from China, including Hong Kong and Macau, The New York Times reported. Japan and Italy have also announced similar measures.

A decision on introducing a similar measure in Australia for travellers from China has yet to be made. Health Minister Mark Butler, in quotes cited by news.com.au, said:

The Australian government continues to monitor the global situation. Travel arrangements for Australians and visitors to the country remain unchanged.

Flight Centre is predicting continued momentum company-wide in FY23. In November, the company reported its cost margin is improving and tracking at 10% in the year to date. This is in line with the company's pre-COVID transformation target. The company is predicting more rapid improvement during the second half of the financial year.

Share price snapshot

The Flight Centre share price has descended 20.35% in the last year.

For perspective, the ASX 200 has shed 6.65% in the last year.

The post Why is the Flight Centre share price in the red today? appeared first on The Motley Fool Australia.

Qantas Airways Limited (ASX: QAN) shares are tracking higher today, up 7.37% to $5.47 apiece.

Qantas shares may be rising after US airline carrier Delta Air Lines Inc (NYSE: DAL) spurred a rally of US airline stocks overnight.

What's driving the Qantas share price higher?

Delta has made some bold and bullish projections about a rebound in summer travel. This sent airline share prices in the US higher overnight and Qantas appears to be following in their footsteps.

Bloomberg reported: "The carrier said strong summer bookings will help it offset fuel costs and a slow return of business travel."

From its earnings report yesterday, Delta remarked:

Domestic consumer revenues are exceeding 2019 levels and the recovery in business travel, revenue has accelerated as offices reopen and business travellers rebuild face-to-face relationships.

Demand for long-haul international is growing, as travel restrictions lift, led by the Transatlantic. To date, we have not seen an impact to travel demand from the conflict in Ukraine, but we, of course, are monitoring this closely. Nearly all European countries have now removed entry testing requirements for vaccinated customers.

We continue to join the rest of the US travel industry, in urging the US government to lift pre-departure testing requirements.

What else is happening with Qantas?

Earlier in the week, Qantas faced allegations from consumer advocacy group Choice relating to its flight credit policies.

In the past 12 months, the Qantas share price has grown by just 5%. However, it has spiked 11% in the past month.

The post Why is the Qantas share price flying 7% higher today? appeared first on The Motley Fool Australia.

Monday brought continued uncertainty to Wall Street, and major market benchmarks fell sharply as investors tried to figure out what the future might bring. Between soaring consumer prices, the prospect for rising interest rates, and energy markets facing another round of disruptions, market participants haven't had a clear course to follow. By 12:45 p.m. ET, that sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES: ^DJI) down 667 points to 32,948. The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) fell 95 points to 4,234, and the Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX: ^IXIC) dropped 282 points to 13,031.

It was nearly two years ago that Warren Buffett faced harsh criticism for choosing to sell out of airline stocks at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The removal of United Airlines Holdings (NASDAQ: UAL), Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV), Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL), and American Airlines Group (NASDAQ: AAL) from the list of holdings at Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B) struck many as being akin to panic selling, especially when airline shares moved sharply higher soon thereafter. Now, though, airlines are still struggling, and their path forward is far from certain. 

The fall, rise, and fall of airline stocks

Before the pandemic began, investors were generally well disposed to airline stocks. An impressive run of profitable years had suggested that the industry had finally found a business model that would work.

The pandemic put a stop to that optimism. Shares of airline stocks plunged 50% to 60% or more from the beginning of 2020 over the course of three months. Most airlines used bailouts to help them survive financially.

But the development and distribution of effective vaccines seemed to put an end point on the trouble for airlines. By spring of 2021, Southwest shares were back above pre-pandemic levels, while other major airlines had trimmed their losses substantially.

Now, though, airlines appear to be back in dire straits. United is down more than 60% from where it started 2020, while American has fallen by more than half. Delta and Southwest are down about 45% and 30%, respectively. Today alone, the four stocks are down between 7% and 11%.

New challenges in the skies

Problems are lining up for airlines in new and troubling combinations:

• Traffic volumes had only begun to get back to pre-pandemic levels, as pent-up demand for travel largely overcame lingering worries about new COVID-19 variants. Prospects for broader global reopening had looked better. Yet with geopolitical risks having entered the picture, those favorable trends might well reverse themselves.
• One thing that had kept airlines as healthy as they were at the beginning of the pandemic was that energy prices fell to levels not seen in decades. In two years, energy prices returned to more normal levels. Now, the possibility of oil market disruptions related to Russia and its attack on Ukraine have sent oil prices to their highest levels in more than a decade. With jet fuel being a major cost for airlines, the news wasn't welcome.

Buffett's sale hinged on the idea that the industry might never look the same as it did before the pandemic. With new communication methods making in-person travel less vital, even a partial reduction in demand would require a dramatic response from airlines. Indeed, with much weaker balance sheets for many airlines and the prospects of renewed bailout support seeming dimmer, Buffett's concerns might well turn out to have been correct.

Know your thesis

Buffett thinks long term, and it's always premature to judge long-term decisions based on how stocks move in a month, quarter, or even year. Airlines might well turn out OK from here, but it's clear that they've faced many of the ongoing uncertainties that prompted Buffett to seek greener pastures elsewhere. 

This article was originally published on Fool.com. All figures quoted in US dollars unless otherwise stated.

The post Could Warren Buffett's airline sales turn out to be right after all? appeared first on The Motley Fool Australia.

When COVID-19 morphed from a concerning new virus into a global pandemic in February 2020, S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) shares took a beating like never before.

Indeed the 33% selloff the market endured in a period of just 1 month (21 February through to 20 March) ranks as the most ferocious and rapid bear market in ASX 200 history.

While no shares were entirely spared in the initial wave of panic selling, ASX 200 travel shares took some of the heaviest losses.

ASX 200 travel shares smashed by border closures

When domestic and international air travel ground to a virtual standstill the Qantas Airways Ltd (ASX: QAN) share price plummeted 64%. The Sydney Airport (ASX: SYD) was also ravaged, losing 42% in that same month.

While both Sydney Airport and Qantas have regained much of those losses, the 2 ASX 200 travel shares remain well below their early pre-pandemic levels as they await the return of high-volume air traffic.

At the current $5.96 per share, Sydney Airport's share price is down 34% from where it was trading on 27 December 2019.

Qantas, currently at $5.11 per share, is down 30% since that same date.

With those figures in mind, shareholders and investors sitting on the sidelines are eagerly waiting for travellers' pent-up demand to be let off the leash.

The travel bug unleashed

Max Levchin is the CEO of United States' based payments company Affirm Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: AFRM).

As Bloomberg reports, Affirm Holdings has been "striking partnerships in industries where he expects consumer demand to bounce back post-pandemic".

These include US listed travel shares American Airlines Group Inc (NASDAQ: AAL) Delta Air Lines Inc (NYSE: DAL).

Why?

Levchin says as travel option reopen he expects:

[A] quarter, or maybe a year, of unstoppable desire to not be in the same city or same four walls… Everyone wants to go to Miami right now, and it's a pretty good preview of what's going to happen – you'll see a good amount of travel, experience buying, all sorts of fun stuff is coming our way.

Of course, that unstoppable pent-up demand for travel won't last forever.

As Levchin says, "The question is, how long will it take for people to say, 'OK, I've got the travel bug out of the way?"

The post ASX 200 travel shares poised to see pent up travel demand unleashed appeared first on The Motley Fool Australia.