News Forum - Why your flights are getting more expensive, not cheaper

[Thaiger]

There’s a short term situation and a longer term evolution that will both make your flights more expensive than they were in the past. If we briefly look back at the past 65 years of world aviation, there has been a slow, incremental decrease in passenger seat prices on aircraft. That was until the start of 2020. For the modern era (despite the jet-powered de Havilland Comet being launched in the UK five 5 earlier) the first commercially successful passenger jet was the Boeing 707 which first flew with paying customers in 1957. It revolutionised the way we fly. And […]

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[Fanta]

You seen how much a plane costs? $250 million bucks minimum and that’s before the running costs! $US1 million bucks a month just to lease it. I don’t complain about paying $200 an hour to travel at 800km/h. Cheap!!! 

[HolyCowCm]

4 minutes ago, Fanta said:

You seen how much a plane costs? $250 million bucks minimum and that’s before the running costs! $US1 million bucks a month just to lease it. I don’t complain about paying $200 an hour to travel at 800km/h. Cheap!!! 

$200 per hour only if I am flying in business. Then for me it is ok.

[Cabra]

27 minutes ago, Fanta said:

You seen how much a plane costs? $250 million bucks minimum and that’s before the running costs! $US1 million bucks a month just to lease it. I don’t complain about paying $200 an hour to travel at 800km/h. Cheap!!! 

Yes  On short haul less than 3 hours it's almost justifiable... But long haul of 12 plus hours, $2400 each way just isn't within reach for a lot of people anymore (at least not more than once a year and certainly not for the typical 2 week holiday abroad for a family of 4). Maybe $1200 each way, I can swallow. Airlines typically win on volume and if they think they can make it work flying just those who can afford the current prices, we are going to see a contraction in the industry that will helps no one. It certainly won't help the international tourist industry to rebound. 

[Saunk]

Love Tim's articles but this one is completely hyperbolic.  Economies and industries go through periods of upheaval and adjustments, things will normalize in time.  We are headed towards a global recession with inflation and supply chain issues so of course things are bad and will get worse in the short term...but in the long term, things have a way of finding an equilibrium.  

I've personally never paid for a long haul flight and never plan to.  Have my flights to Thailand booked for August.  Total cost: $4,500.  Amount I paid: $18.

[Grumpish]

OK, I have been out of the airline industry for over twenty years now, but back then if you had a 70-80% economy load at a typical spread of fares then everything else was pure profit. The trick was managing the capacity and revenue by managing the spread of fares, only releasing a limited number of cheap fares unless the flight wasn't filling up (I used to support the pricing and capacity management systems that enabled this). I think that what we are seeing now with airfares is that the airlines are operating with reduced schedules and higher load factors, so don't see the need to offer the cheaper fares - maybe we won't see a return to the low prices of the last four or five years, but for but I think that they will drop quite a lot once the airlines start  to operate fuller schedules (and fuel prices drop). 

[MrNovax]

Dont need an article, its the same reason almost everything is going up in price, the creation of new money,  Absent that everything would be going down in price. 

[rtclaus]

11 hours ago, Saunk said:

Love Tim's articles but this one is completely hyperbolic.  Economies and industries go through periods of upheaval and adjustments, things will normalize in time.  We are headed towards a global recession with inflation and supply chain issues so of course things are bad and will get worse in the short term...but in the long term, things have a way of finding an equilibrium.  

I've personally never paid for a long haul flight and never plan to.  Have my flights to Thailand booked for August.  Total cost: $4,500.  Amount I paid: $18.

Care to elaborate on how you only paid $18 ?

[Saunk]

On 6/21/2022 at 6:12 PM, rtclaus said:

Care to elaborate on how you only paid $18 ?

Airline credit card points.