Airlines dealing with major staffing shortages are bracing for the busy Fourth of July travel weekend.

Some airlines have already had to cancel or delay flights.

Earlier this week, Delta's CEO apologized to its customers in advance and offered free flight changes for travelers this weekend.

Some airlines will offer travel vouchers or gift cards for passengers willing to be bumped on oversold flights, but what happened on one flight from Michigan to Minnesota this week, is almost unheard of.

According to passengers on the flight, Delta offered $10,000 for eight people to give up their seats on the plane.

Multiple passengers on social media confirmed it, saying it all started at the gate with an opening bid of $5,000.

When there weren’t any takers by the time boarding began, delta bumped the offer up to $7,500.

Once passengers were on board, a flight attendant announced they were still looking for volunteers, and offering $10,000 cash each.

They say it still took about 20 minutes before enough people decided to get up and take the offer.

Delta has not confirmed or denied the offer.

It was a fitting place for an industry in need of a miracle.

In October, Air Belgium moved two planes to Lourdes, the Catholic sanctuary in France, to park up for the winter.

The planes — both Airbus A340-300s, of which the airline only has four in total — have been parked at Tarbes-Lourdes-Pyrenees airport for long-term storage.

A spokesperson for Air Belgium blamed the "reduced demand and current operational restrictions due to COVID-19" and said the aircraft had been parked temporarily "to defer maintenance."

The airline is one of many struggling in the pandemic. Aviation has been particularly hard hit by COVID-19, with legal restrictions on travel joined by an unwillingness to fly by members of the public.

Looking at the third quarter of the year, the extent to which airlines have been crippled becomes clear. North American passenger jet arrivals dropped by 48% year-on-year, according to December figures released by aviation analytics company Cirium, while Latin America was barely better, at 46% down. Europe's numbers, meanwhile, have been devastated — over 70% down, year on year. Even in Asia Pacific -- which has controlled the pandemic better than other regions — arrivals are still over 30% lower now than they were this time last year.

Back at the end of October, figures were even more grim — international flights were down 75% year-on-year, according to Cirium (though domestic flights were better, down 36% globally). As the second wave of the pandemic has spread across the globe, airlines have taken drastic action to cut costs — from downsizing aircraft to retiring entire fleets and cutting routes.

Air Belgium's hail Mary at Lourdes isn't the only action the airline has taken. In the same month, it also paused the launch of a new route to Mauritius, and delayed the start of seasonal flights to Guadeloupe and Martinique.

It's just one of countless European airlines struggling in the pandemic. Air Baltic has flown this winter with planes only a third full. And figures from Europe's biggest airline conglomerate, IAG — which owns British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus and Vueling — shows that it was flying half-full planes over the peak summer period of July to September, despite having reduced capacity to just 21.4%. With just 10% of the normal demand, BA lost £13 million ($17 million) per day.

As a result, with revenue 83% down, the group slashed its winter schedule to just 30% of last year's capacity.

EasyJet, too, announced its first loss in 25 years in October, and cut flights to 20% capacity for the rest of 2020.

Even behemoth Singapore Airlines is suffering. Not only has it cut 4,300 jobs, but in September the airline admitted that it "expects to operate under 50% of [pre-COVID-19] capacity at the end of the financial year."

While American Airlines predicted this fall that its end-of-year capacity will be down 50% overall, with long-haul international capacity at just 25% of what it was last year.

IATA, the International Air Transport Association, has predicted that for 2021, European airlines will see an average load factor of 65%. It doesn't sound so bad, considering — until you take into account that airlines need to run on average at 70% to break even.

Related video: Could new electric 'air taxi' be the future of travel?

Those predictions, of course, were all made before the new variant of Covid-19 was discovered in the U.K., leading to destinations around the globe closing their borders to aircraft coming from the U.K. Even the U.S. — currently the global center of the pandemic — introduced a Christmas Eve rule that all passengers coming from the U.K. from now on must present a negative test before boarding.

Christmas was well and truly canceled for the aviation industry.

So what can we expect in the near future?

Flights to wherever are open

For the next few months, airlines are network-planning to "just fly to wherever they can," says Graham Dunn, executive editor of FlightGlobal.

But for traditional and low-cost carriers, that means different things, he says, with traditional airlines concentrating on their big routes from hub airports, while low-cost airlines will be opening up the map wherever it's allowed.

"It's been interesting to see that when [budget] carriers have brought traffic back, they've tried to bring back more network than frequency, and kept the routes going where they could," he says.

"So I think you'll still see that point-to-point traffic continuing on low-cost carriers."

Conversely, he thinks traditional airlines will get more hub-based for now, with companies ditching regional routes as they try to make the money spinners productive.

"I think those secondary international routes, especially on long haul, won't be coming back [in the short to medium term]. You're much more likely to fly London Heathrow to New York JFK than Gatwick to a secondary U.S. airport," he says.

And instead of sitting pretty on a Dreamliner or an A380, expect to be on a smaller plane, in order for the airline to break even.

"In the short term, it'll be slightly smaller aircraft, slightly less frequency and traditional major hubs, rather than point to point," says Dunn.

Carbon footprints up in the air

Could those smaller aircraft spell good news for the planet?

There's one major positive that we've been able to take from the pandemic: the break that we've given the environment with our reduced flying patterns.

With the climate crisis spiraling out of control, the dip in aviation has given the planet a break for the past nine months.

And you'd think that the retirement of widebody planes and increased use of smaller aircraft for longer flights, plus routes being cut to hub airports, rather than having feeder flights from regional airports, would mean that those who are flying at the moment are at least flying greener.

But don't get too smug: That's not necessarily the case, says Ascanio Vitale, an engineer and environmentalist. His website, Flyzen, aims to be a more accurate kind of carbon calculator, taking more factors into account than most current software.

"You'd hope that we'd be flying greener at the moment, but it can be counter-intuitive," he says.

"It's not just what plane is being used, or the route, it depends on the traffic.

"The first thing you have to do [to reduce carbon footprints] is increase the load factor."

That means that if a smaller plane is being used to fly a long haul route at the moment, "for sure that's more efficient," he says.

But whether that actually cuts the passengers' carbon footprint depends how full those planes are.

If they've been filled to the gills, then indeed, it's more efficient overall. If, though, they're still half empty, the passengers' carbon footprint goes up — and will be higher than what it might have been a year ago, in a bigger, older — but, crucially, fuller — plane.

"It's not about efficiency, it's about impact," he says. "If there are half the amount of flights there were this time last year, but there's a 70% drop in passengers, the impact of these passengers is more.

"And if the airline switches to a plane with fewer seats to fill them more easily, even if it's full, it'll end up less efficient [than a full, larger plane]."

In short?

"We're polluting less at the moment overall, because the number of flights is reduced, and fewer people are traveling. But the single traveler is polluting more than before."

The good and bad news on fares

Thinking about returning to the skies in 2021? You might assume that the lack of demand will mean lower fares, with airlines slashing prices to encourage passengers back on board.

And if you want to splash out for your first post-pandemic trip and book a better-distanced seat in business class, you'd assume the decline in business travelers, and the swift, successful adoption of video conferencing, would see business class fares dive, too.

The bad news? According to travel booking app, Hopper, that's not the case. Business class fares in the United States are, on average, pricing 70% higher than 2020 fares for March 2021 departures. Economy fares are up 18% year on year for the same period.

The good? That may not stay the same.

There's been a "precipitous drop" in business class demand, says a Hopper spokesperson, with bookings down 20% this fall. That has translated into lower fares, too.

So for now, the airlines have raised their 2021 prices to make up for the lack of demand. But if demand stays low, expect them to fall. Your spring bargain may yet not be a pipe dream.

Graham Dunn thinks that we can expect to see better pricing in the near future on the big routes, since traditional carriers will be fighting for passengers on their normal moneymakers. And if you look a little further into the future, he thinks the bargains will be back across the board.

"You'll have airports looking for traffic, so they might be trying to make attractive offers to get airlines back in," he says, adding that if countries' vaccination programs are making progress by the summer, we'll start seeing more point to point flights, rather than routing via hubs.

New airlines?

The past year has been devastating for the aviation industry, with airline closures left, right and center.

But that doesn't necessarily mean reduced competition long term. In fact, it might be that the pandemic helps launch new airlines.

Airlines planning to launch in 2021 include Flyr, in Norway, and Pacifika Air, in New Zealand. LIFT just launched in South Africa, and there are so many putative airlines in the works in Iceland that artist Oddur Eysteinn Friðriksson launched a fake brand, Mom Air, to make a point about their nebulous plans.

But despite how desperate the industry looks now, Graham Dunn thinks that new airlines may well emerge post-pandemic. After all, he says, this summer's rise in European travel when restrictions were eased shows that the passengers are there — "you see the demand when routes come back."

And, he says, the budget airlines' point to point flying created entirely new markets, purely by offering lower fares. Never thought of going to Bratislava before? Have Ryanair dangle a $10 ticket in front of you, and you're on your way to the airport.

So if airports feeling the pinch start making it cheap for airlines to fly there, he says, it's perfectly possible we'll see those new airlines. What's more, with the airline failures of this year, and, potentially, more to come before the end of the pandemic, there will be plenty of spare aircraft hanging around and qualified crew to work on them. For those with the funds and the chutzpah to launch an airline, it could be a very good time to do so.

That won't be immediate. Dunn's betting on summer 2022. But he says that "there will be aircraft available, and financing, and [remaining] airlines will be retrenching their networks, and what tends to happen is that a new player comes in and seizes the opportunity." Although fares won't be lower in the short term, he says, he thinks they will dip within a year.

Ascanio Vitale agrees, reluctantly, but he urges us all to think more carefully about our flying habits once we take to the skies again.

"We've been polluting less this year because fewer people have been traveling and the airlines are getting rid of their old planes, but that isn't enough," he says.

"Aviation has a huge carbon footprint, and the trend to cap emissions is so slow, bland and unambitious that it won't make the industry sustainable.

"The pandemic has taught us that we should consume less, but I don't think people understood, because they're just waiting to go back to normal."

JetBlue announced that they are changing up its ticket prices and restrictions.

In a move to compete with discount airlines like Spirit, Allegiant, and Frontier, JetBlue announced in a blog post that beginning July 20, anyone traveling in Basic Blue won't be able to store anything in the overhead bin space.

Instead, they'll have to store a bag underneath their seat. This comes as the company starts offering cheaper basic economy tickets as the travel industry reels from the coronavirus pandemic.

The company added that they would offer overhead bin space for one carry-on bag to anyone who purchased Blue, Blue Extra, or Mint business class.

JetBlue stated they were also eliminating change and cancel fees on Blue, Blue Extra, Blue Plus, and Mint fares.

You can also purchase overhead bin space for one carry-on bag on Basic Blue, the company said.

JetBlue stated that if they run out of bin space, they'll offer customers who purchased the bin space a $25 credit good for travel on JetBlue for a year.

CLEVELAND — If you don't know what you're looking at as you drive around Springfield-Beckley Municipal Airport in Springfield, Ohio, it's easy to miss the fact that you're looking at what could be the future of transportation.

Some of that future is already operating in a converted bus. Other parts are still being built just a few hundred feet away from the airport's runways. When entrepreneurs and researchers come to fly their crafts, they sometimes work off folding tables in the middle of a massive grass field.

In the last few weeks, the United States has seen two private companies fly their billionaire owners to the edge of space, inspiring some Americans about the next generation of space travel. Others are frustrated about the resources those trips take.

But space travel is still years away, especially for anyone who can't shell out millions to pay for it.

The work being done in Ohio is well within the earth's atmosphere but beyond what most people might realize is already possible.

Patrick Semansky/AP and Mark J. Terrill/AP

Our Future Vehicles

You'd be forgiven for thinking some of the experimental aircraft looks like person-sized toys in the pictures and video that have been circulating so far.

"We make a personal aerial vehicle," said LIFT Aircraft's Director of Business Development, Kevin Rustagi. "This is a very small aircraft. People say it's like you're sitting in a flying drone."

Eventually, Americans might use vehicles like LIFTs to make short trips through the air to the store or to run other errands. For now, the company is focusing on making them for first responders to use to save lives. Rustagi says most people can train pretty quickly to fly it well.

LIFT

"So you could see any paramedic or EMT, he or she would be able to become a pilot and be able to respond immediately to an accident site if it's up to 15 miles away," Rustagi said.

Testing for the Future

Figuring out how aircraft, uncrewed vehicles or something like a flying car can navigate the skies is a long process with an intimidating obstacle course of safety rules and regulations.

The key to making crewless flights profitable is to fly long distances safely without someone watching from the ground or a chase plane in the air.

Springfield Assistant City Manager and Director of Economic Development Tom Franzen says developers are close to figuring out how to make that happen safely.

Kevin Barry

“The technology’s here,” Franzen said. "I think it's really more of the legal framework, the airspace approvals, the FAA guidance that will have to catch up that makes it something we see every day."

Navigating the obstacle course of rules and regulations is the hard part, especially for companies like LIFT that are trying to break into the personal and unmanned flight spaces.

That's why the Ohio Department of Transportation's initiatives FlyOhio and DriveOhio are trying to lay some of the groundwork for those companies.

"The key to that is making sure that ground and air are working together," said DriveOhio Communications and Policy Managing Director Luke Stedke. "At DriveOhio/FlyOhio we're talking about cutting red tape, so the more that we can do to clear the table for these companies to come here and develop, the better it's going to be for all of us."

Kevin Barry

The key is that Springfield-Beckley Municipal Airport. The state already has special permission from the FAA to fly unmanned and experimental aircraft up to 10,000 feet in the air and 225 square miles, giving companies like LIFT a large playground to refine their technology and vehicles.

"I think it's important for the companies that are trying to prove out their product," Franzen said.

One of the most important pieces of proving the product is a converted bus that sits in the middle of the airfield. "SkyVision" is the connection between drone operators and more traditional aircraft while the drones figure out how to fly safely around more conventional air traffic.

Kevin Barry

SkyVision is similar to Air Traffic Control for airplanes in the sense that it tracks uncrewed vehicles and communicates with the operators. It's staffed by former Air Traffic Controllers like Rich Fox, who is quick to point out that he cannot order drones to move in the same way he could tell pilots to change their path in the past. Instead, he helps drone operators have situational awareness for what their craft is near and how they might move away from it.

That work keeps everyone safe but also offers a glimpse into the future to see how drones and traditional aircraft can co-exist.

"By using the same equipment, the same radar feeds the Air Traffic Controllers use, enabled us to get approval by the FAA because they were comfortable with seeing their own equipment," Fox said.

The Payoff

Everyone agrees the key to making the research and development possible in Springfield is the long list of local, state, and federal agencies that have partnered up over the last decade to help cut through red tape. "The feedback we've gotten is: no other state has got it together in terms of that collaborative environment like Ohio does," said Dayton Development Coalition Executive Vice President for Aerospace and Defense Elaine Bryant.

In the same way, the work is being funded through private and public investment because much of the work originated through the Department of Defense and the nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Kevin Barry

Air Force Lieutenant Colonial Dan Kimball says the technology will eventually touch all of our lives, whether military or civilian.

"The commercial side is driving this just as much as the military," Kimball said. "Think about all these unmanned drone delivery systems. Amazon, Kroger, anything where you can unmanned deliver something is going to be a huge asset for the commercial industry."

This spring, Ohio joined NASA's campaign to spark innovative ways to move things and people through the air. Long before NASA formally recognized it, though, Ohio was making serious progress not only with experimentation but by building the infrastructure to support future projects.

Kevin Barry

BETA Technologies is already building a rapid charge station/vertiport structure for aerial vehicles with training and office families feet away.

But the next race worth winning is to be the place where companies like LIFT and BETA come to mass-produce their vehicles once the demand for them justifies large investment in manufacturing facilities. The hope is that the relationships built now during the research and development phase will eventually lead to large investments later.

"After the research, development, and testing, you can go to prototyping and then to manufacturing, and I think Ohio really provides that complete solution," Franzen said.

BETA Technologies

That would be a huge economic boom for the region and the entire state of Ohio, but Bryant also points out this is about national security too. Car manufacturers across the Midwest shut down for weeks because of a global semiconductor shortage.

"We want to make sure that manufacturing is done with U.S. sources, U.S. products, U.S. chips, U.S. security because that's how we're going to secure that long-term security against our adversaries," Bryant said.

At the turn of the 20th Century, the Wright Brothers tinkered with early airplane prototypes just down the road at their bike shop in Dayton. More than a century later, the tinkering looks a lot different, but the underlying purpose of the work is the same: The skies aren't the limit; they're just what's next.

"You look at the traffic, and everybody is stuck on the very, very expensive road which cost billions of dollars to make and all sorts of greenhouse emissions to build, and then you look up at the sky, and you see nothing," Rustagi said. "Totally open skies."

This story was originally published by Kevin Barry on Scripps station WEWS in Cleveland.

Whether it was people spending more time looking skyward during the pandemic, the effect of its decreased pollution and visibility, or a Pentagon investigation announced this summer, more people reported UFO sightings in 2020.

According to the National UFO Reporting Center, sightings increased by 1,000 over the year nationally, with 7,200 total calls about UFOs. Calls to their hotline in New York state alone doubled in 2020.

In Michigan, Bill Konkolesky, state director of the Mutual UFO Network, says their office got about 233 calls in 2020, up from about 200 the previous year. But before you get too excited, Konkolesky says he’s not really in the business of mystery.

“Even on a bad year, we can identify about 85% of what comes into us, most years closer to 95%,” he said. “Our credibility is on the line. We’re in it for the truth of what may be out there.”

Konkolesky says different types of aircraft, celestial objects like bright stars and planets, weather phenomena, drones and satellites are the typical culprits.

“I don’t think the increase in sightings has anything to do with that small percentage that fall into the anomalous category,” he said. “I think it’s all explainable.”

Konkolesky says about a third of calls to their branch of MUFO last year turned out to be Space-X Star Link satellites, launched into near orbit to improve internet connection worldwide. The satellites take on eerie formations when visible: Space-X Sky Link Video

“When you see these satellites, they travel in a chain,” said Konkolesky. “You’ll see several satellites flying in a row, and they look pretty spooky when you see them.”

The influx of calls may also have something to do with renewed interest and renewed legitimacy in the topic of UFOs in the form of a Pentagon investigation, announced last summer. The Department of Defense also recently commented on a series of declassified videos taken by Navy pilots, who were confused over an unidentified object they spotted mid-air.

“They’re seeing things they can’t identify either,” said Konkolesky. “It takes sort of the giggle factor away from discussing the topic.”

While he waits anxiously for the Pentagon report, reportedly due out sometime next month, Konkolesky says he doesn’t want to burst anyone’s bubble. He’s still excited at the prospect of one day discovering new life in the universe.

“It’s thrilling to be on that cutting edge,” he said, “to be living in an age where we discover that there is intelligent life in outer space.”

If you want to report any sightings to MUFON, click here.

To see national reports of UFOs, check UFO Stalker here.

The National UFO Reporting Center also catalogs sightings by month here.

This story was originally published by Doug Reardon at WXMI.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screened fewer passengers Monday than it had in the past 10 years, a spokesperson says.

According to TSA public affairs spokesperson Lisa Farbstein, department officers screened 154,080 people at checkpoints across the country on Monday. On the same date in 2019, TSA screened 2.3 million people.

The numbers highlight just how badly the coronavirus pandemic has crippled the airline industry. Three of the U.S.' largest airliners —

American,

Delta

and

United

— have seen significant reductions in their stock prices. United has seen nearly a 50 percent drop in its stock price in the past month, and American Airlines has lost nearly 30 percent.

All three airlines have said they are cutting back on staffing due to the crisis.

Delta

said Sunday that more than 20,000 employees have volunteered to take short-term unpaid leaves of absences.

The CARES Act — the coronavirus stimulus package signed into law by President Donald Trump on Friday — allocates up to $58 billion in financial relief for airlines. On Monday,

Reuters

reported that American Airlines would seek up to $12 billion in federal funding, including $6 billion in payroll grants and $6 billion in loans. American has more employees than any other U.S. airlines.