Let's be honest, the first half of 2026 was a stress test. A war in Iran sent jet fuel prices soaring. Spirit Airlines went out of business overnight, the first major domestic airline in more than a decade to collapse under financial problems. And this weekend, a record July 4 crowd met an air traffic system running about 1,500 controllers short. 

I can't wait for the second half.

Our consumer advocacy team handled 5,932 cases from January through the July Fourth weekend, an 81 percent increase over the same period last year. That's a new record.

When the number of people who need a consumer advocate nearly doubles in a year, it means the system is failing—and threatening to turn into a full-blown customer service recession. Companies have cut the cost of taking care of you and they're betting you won't push back.

So what should you should expect for the second half of 2026?

The FAA says it needs 12,563 certified controllers to be fully staffed. As of April it had about 11,000, with 4,000 more in a training pipeline that can take more than two years per controller. That target is itself a retreat: the agency's previous plans called for 14,633 controllers, and in May it cut the goal by about 2,000, saying modern scheduling tools would allow fewer controllers to keep the skies safe. (The controllers' union disagrees with the new model, of course.) The shortage is starting to feel real. Flights to and from Las Vegas were delayed an average of three hours one weekend last month because of what the FAA called "staffing shortages." And I can see it in my mailbag: Airlines hold 3 of my top 10 spots on my list of most complained-about companies.

My prediction: Airlines will quietly trim their November and December schedules at controller-constrained hubs by Labor Day. Fares on the surviving flights will soar. The Thanksgiving meltdown story gets an October preview this year. But don't worry, we'll be there to help you if it does.

Your move: Book the first flight of the day, never the last. Treat any connection under 90 minutes as a gamble. 

Yes, the Department of Transportation's automatic refund rule still stands: when your flight is canceled or significantly changed and you decline the alternative, the airline must refund you automatically, in cash or your original payment form. But how much longer will the rule apply? In December, the department paused enforcement for flights that are renumbered rather than canceled, and said the earliest it would decide on a rule redefining a "canceled flight" is June 30, 2026. That date just passed. The rewrite is happening as you read this. It follows November's withdrawal of the proposed rule requiring airlines to pay cash compensation for delays they cause; 15 senators introduced legislation in December to reinstate it.

My prediction: The new definition of a canceled flight will be narrower than the old one, and airlines will get better at engineering disruptions that fall just outside it. I'll be monitoring this situation closely.

Your move: Memorize the thresholds that still protect you: three hours domestic, six hours international. Ask for cash instead of a voucher, always. Screenshot your original booking. If your flight number changes, compare every detail against what you bought. The airline might be trying to squirm out of its obligations to pay you by simply switching flight numbers.

Sure, forecasters expect a quieter Atlantic hurricane season: a 55 percent chance of below-normal activity and 8 to 14 named storms, driven by a developing El Niño. But that doesn't mean the storms won't be a problem. Tropical Storm Arthur showed up June 17 and created major disruptions in the Southeast. Remember, it takes just one hurricane to ruin your entire vacation.

My prediction: The weather forecast lulls travelers into skipping insurance. The complaints that follow won't be about the weather, but the fine print on their airline tickets.

Your move: Buy travel insurance the day you make your first trip deposit. Once a storm has a name, it's a foreseeable event and no new policy will cover it. For August-through-October trips to Florida, the Gulf Coast or the Caribbean, a reliable policy is a must.

The machinery arrived this spring: Sabre, PayPal and MindTrip announced an end-to-end AI booking pipeline connecting conversational AI to more than 420 airlines and 2 million hotels, with payment handled inside the chat. The travelers didn't: only 2 percent of leisure travelers say they'd let AI book on their behalf, and no one has answered the basic question of who pays when it gets a booking wrong. The underlying technology remains painfully half-baked. OpenAI pulled its in-chat checkout in March after users proved willing to ask for ideas but unwilling to hand over a credit card. My caseload previews the accountability mess: Booking.com, Airbnb and Expedia together account for more than 300 cases this year, many triggered by an AI that just went in the wrong direction. 

My prediction: The fastest-growing category of cases in the second half of 2026 will be AI bookings where customer service simply failed. If I had to guess, I'd say they'll follow a script: the airline blames the platform, the platform blames the AI, and the AI has absolutely no clue about what happened. There is no DOT rule and no U.S. case law that assigns responsibility when the AI runs amok.

Your move: Let early adopters run the beta test. If you use an AI to book, treat it like a third-party booking site, then add a step: confirm the reservation directly with the airline or hotel, under your own name, before you consider it real.

Since Jan. 1, foreign visitors 16 and older have had to pay a $100 per-person surcharge on top of standard entrance fees at 11 of the most visited national parks. A nonresident annual pass costs $250, versus $80 for U.S. residents. The government projected more than $90 million in new revenue. There was no reliable baseline data on international visitation before the fee took effect. In Yosemite, the number of foreign tourists, who account for about a quarter of all visits, dropped 9 percent from 2024, and a car with four of them now pays $435 at the gate.

My prediction: The first hard numbers arrive this fall and will probably show international visitors routing around the surcharged parks. The loudest protests won't come from tourists. They'll come from the gateway towns whose economies depend on them. The surcharge may survive 2026, but I doubt these fees will expand.

Your move: Hosting visitors from abroad? State parks and national monuments deliver comparable scenery without the fees.

Here's the engine of the customer service recession. Companies are racing to put AI between you and a human, and it's not working. A majority of companies in a recent poll (74 percent) have had to shut down or roll back an AI customer service agent, and nearly one in five consumers who used AI for customer service saw no benefit at all, according to a recent survey. As one researcher put it, companies are deploying AI to cut costs rather than solve problems, and customers can tell the difference. Automation isn't without consequences. Air Canada was held liable for a refund policy its chatbot invented. More than half of consumers (56 percent) simply stop doing business with the company. The rest write to me. And that, my friends, is what an 81 percent case surge looks like from the inside.

My prediction: By December, at least one major U.S. travel company reverses course and restores human agents as a selling point, the way Klarna rehired customer service staff after its AI-first push produced lower-quality results. Cynical prediction: "Talk to a person" becomes a premium feature, reserved for elite-level loyalty program members. 

Your move: When you hit the bot wall, stop. Write a brief, polite email to an executive contact instead. My team maintains contacts for about 1,800 companies at elliott.org. Judging by this year's numbers, you may need them.

The customer service recession isn't a slump companies are suffering. It's one they're administering, because they're betting that you won't fight back. The 5,876 people who reached us in the first half of this year are the ones who refused to take that bet. The second half of 2026 belongs to consumers who know their rights, verify everything and keep their receipts. My team and I will be here if you need help.

Many thanks to David Klein, the mid-century artist known for painting the TWA travel posters, who inspired today's illustrations. His art reflects an optimism about the jet age that, despite all the current problems, we share.

What do you expect for the rest of 2026? Our comments are open.