NORTH DAKOTA (KXNET) — Summer travel is heating up in North Dakota, and the travel industry is getting back to seeing pre-pandemic numbers.

Expedia’s latest travel forecast shows flight searches up 25% for June through August travel, compared to the same time last year.

Also, more people are looking for destinations overseas in both Europe and Asia.

People are not just searching for tickets; they’re buying them too. Delta Air Lines reported record advance bookings for the summer across the country.

The cost of air travel is definitely not going down, but the federal government is trying to fix this by providing more direct routes in the sky.

“As we move from more of the blue routes to the green routes, which is more direct routing that involves fewer hops from one radio beacon to the next and more pass that use GPS,” said Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, “That means a more direct path. That in turn means less time up in the air for the same segment, which means lower costs.”

North Dakota lies in many of those blue routes. So, the Department of Transportation will try to make our flights more direct from our state to our airline destinations.