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spike

james.zeng

Member
Chinese
It is from one artical which talking about the tips how to get your home for the holidays with less stress and time to spare by air.
One sentence is like this:

"as US air travel spikes, overseas travel plunges and airlines are desperate to fill seats on these flights".
What is it mean "spikes" here? Thanks!​
Last edited:
Please edit your post to use appropriate capitalization before we answer -- this is an English forum, not a text message.
Imagine a graph, showing the fluctuation in travel over time. Sudden rises followed by sudden falls will appear in the graph as sharp upward points. These are spikes. The verb "to spike" means to rise and fall suddenly.

(However, I'm not sure that it is correctly used here, where it seems to describe a rise only, without necessarily a following fall.)
Thanks, Keith! You are right, it is like the ascending line in a Graph.
"spike" is also a volleyball term. It's something you do when are at the peak (pinnacle) of your movement.

I agree with Keith, but also share his reservation about the usage of "spike" here. Do you have a source text, james?
Thanks for your comments, Perpend. I can't find the source text, just have the below sentence! Hope it works!

"These tips should get you home for the holidays with less stress and time to spare. But we’ve saved the biggest holiday travel secret for last: as US air travel spikes, overseas travel plunges and airlines are desperate to fill seats on these flights. Incredibly, at this time of year a flight from New York to Des Moines, Iowa costs about the same, if not less, than a flight from New York to Paris – about $600. So next year, ditch the dysfunctional family get-together, save some dough and carve your dinde à Paris."
Imagine a graph, showing the fluctuation in travel over time. Sudden rises followed by sudden falls will appear in the graph as sharp upward points. These are spikes. The verb "to spike" means to rise and fall suddenly.

(However, I'm not sure that it is correctly used here, where it seems to describe a rise only, without necessarily a following fall.)

Thanks for your comments, Perpend. I can't find the source text, just have the below sentence! Hope it works!

"These tips should get you home for the holidays with less stress and time to spare. But we’ve saved the biggest holiday travel secret for last: as US air travel spikes, overseas travel plunges and airlines are desperate to fill seats on these flights. Incredibly, at this time of year a flight from New York to Des Moines, Iowa costs about the same, if not less, than a flight from New York to Paris – about $600. So next year, ditch the dysfunctional family get-together, save some dough and carve your dinde à Paris."

It's a seasonal rise; air travel will drop again at the end of the season.
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