Before, air travel had certain rhythms. Business travelers flew out on Monday mornings and back on Thursday evenings, filling pricier seats. Come summer, price conscious leisure travelers took to the skies. Crowds flew for Thanksgiving, Labor Day, and Christmas, and to specific destinations for events—sports championships, music festivals, fashion weeks. Decades of historical data plugged into complex mathematical models helped airlines determine schedules and prices. Then came the pandemic. “All of the history, all of the old practices that airlines used to follow to decide what was scheduled to fly and what prices to charge, had to be thrown …
