Why Have Air Fares Increased So Much?

[bad company]

Mrs BC and I have been looking at booking flights to Australia or New Zealand next January. We’ve done this several times before always flying business class with British Airways, Qantas or Malaysian.

This time the return air fare has risen to £12 - 14,000 for the 2 of us in business.

WTF is going on?

[marksx]

Fuel price increase and recovery from COVID.

[thebraketester]

bad company said:

Mrs BC and I have been looking at booking flights to Australia or New Zealand next January. We’ve done this several times before always flying business class with British Airways, Qantas or Malaysian.

This time the return air fare has risen to £12 - 14,000 for the 2 of us in business.

WTF is going on?

Will you fly economy instead as a result?

[bad company]

thebraketester said:

bad company said:

Mrs BC and I have been looking at booking flights to Australia or New Zealand next January. We’ve done this several times before always flying business class with British Airways, Qantas or Malaysian.

This time the return air fare has risen to £12 - 14,000 for the 2 of us in business.

WTF is going on?

Will you fly economy instead as a result?

No. If I can’t afford business class I’d prefer not to go.

[eliot]

bad company said:

thebraketester said:

bad company said:

Mrs BC and I have been looking at booking flights to Australia or New Zealand next January. We’ve done this several times before always flying business class with British Airways, Qantas or Malaysian.

This time the return air fare has risen to £12 - 14,000 for the 2 of us in business.

WTF is going on?

Will you fly economy instead as a result?

No. If I can’t afford business class I’d prefer not to go.

I took my family of 4 to oz in 2019 in prem/ec via singapore airlines for 8k
Just checked the other day and for the two of us going business class was about almost 15k.

And now premium was 7k for two of us.

so it’s doubled in price in just a few years - I need to scatter my brothers ashes as he died during covid and he had a direct cremation with no ceremony - we wanted to go business to make the flight more bearable and as a little treat - but not for 15k

[CoolHands]

Probably half of it is taxes these days

[GT03ROB]

Prices have generally doubled post Cv19, in some cases more.

It would seem as world travel recovered post CV19, prices got jacked up due to demand while not all destinations were available, Airline saw flights were still full & have kept the fares there ever since. Flights are still busy to full.

[Mark V GTD]

I’m part way through a BC flight from Asia to London. £1,100 one way.

[Alorotom]

Flights to the far east and Australasia seem to have been hiked the most - London to Bangkok could easily be obtained for £4-500 pre-covid, non-stop. Now it’s £1000+ with stops. Flight schedules and routes still haven’t fully recovered though so that’s something to bear in mind.

US routes (in the main) have mostly settled back down - I did Gatwick to Tampa return for 3 a couple of weeks ago for £272 return per person with Virgin, non-stop.

[Griffith4ever]

LHR BKK, 2020 £3800 BC for two. I'm now looking at PE £3200. BC is coming in at around £6000

:-(

[captain_cynic]

bad company said:

Mrs BC and I have been looking at booking flights to Australia or New Zealand next January. We’ve done this several times before always flying business class with British Airways, Qantas or Malaysian.

This time the return air fare has risen to £12 - 14,000 for the 2 of us in business.

WTF is going on?

It's Australia.

Air fares have increased a little since the end of CV19 but I'm only paying 10-20% more to go to the Americas compared to 2019 prices and can still get to a log of Europe for £100 or less.

However Australia has nearly doubled. I've been looking for flights back and you can barely get an economy class ticket for less than £1000. Flight volumes are way down. SQ used to do 4-5 daily flights from SIN to PER but now do about 2 and one of those might be using Scoot metal.

I'm guessing taxes and fees have risen significantly on the Australian side. Australia has always been surrounded by a price dialation field (a mysterious field that makes everything in Australia more expensive and delays release by at least six months) but that usually only affects people already in Oz.

[Monkeylegend]

The last time we went to Oz to see family the return flights were £750 each economy and £1200ish for premium economy.

How times have changed, just glad we have no reason to want to go anymore.

[bad company]

Alorotom said:

Flights to the far east and Australasia seem to have been hiked the most - London to Bangkok could easily be obtained for £4-500 pre-covid, non-stop. Now it’s £1000+ with stops. Flight schedules and routes still haven’t fully recovered though so that’s something to bear in mind.

US routes (in the main) have mostly settled back down - I did Gatwick to Tampa return for 3 a couple of weeks ago for £272 return per person with Virgin, non-stop.

Yes, we’re finding that. We travel regularly to visit family in the USA and the fares aren’t too bad.

We’re looking at booking for January/February next year so will hold on for a while to see if the fares come down. Otherwise we’ll consider alternatives.

[J210]

we have some rewards flights booked only economy. im not a powerful built director. This is the taxes

Base Fare
USD 0.00
Carrier-imposed Surcharge (YQ)
GBP 90.00
United States - Passenger Civil Aviation Security Service Fee (AY)
GBP 4.60
United Kingdom - Air Passenger Duty (APD) (GB)
GBP 87.00
United Kingdom - Passenger Service Charge (UB)
GBP 55.81
United States - Transportation Tax (US)
GBP 34.40
United States - Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Fee (APHIS User Fee - Passengers (XA)
GBP 3.10
United States - Immigration and Naturalization Fee(Immigration User Fee) (XY)
GBP 5.70
United States - Custom User Fee (YC)
GBP 5.30
Total Amount
GBP 285.91

[Truckosaurus]

Also, Australia had some of the strictest Covid restrictions, with not even most citizens being allowed to come into the country so there must be a huge amount of pent up demand on that route.

[mikiec]

bad company said:

Mrs BC and I have been looking at booking flights to Australia or New Zealand next January. We’ve done this several times before always flying business class with British Airways, Qantas or Malaysian.

This time the return air fare has risen to £12 - 14,000 for the 2 of us in business.

WTF is going on?

How are you searching? A quick look on google explore says you can get their late Jan for £7000ish(for 2) with Singapore airlines

[MrBig]

bad company said:

Mrs BC and I have been looking at booking flights to Australia or New Zealand next January. We’ve done this several times before always flying business class with British Airways, Qantas or Malaysian.

This time the return air fare has risen to £12 - 14,000 for the 2 of us in business.

WTF is going on?

Are those actual fares, or are they just holding numbers because they haven't got round to pricing them correctly yet. If you look at the same flights for say October/November of this year are they just as ludicrous or are they more sensible?

[eliot]

mikiec said:

How are you searching? A quick look on google explore says you can get their late Jan for £7000ish(for 2) with Singapore airlines

On Singapore's website to LHR to Brisbane they are all around £7k per adult in BC.

[sjg]

I generally keep an eye on NZ flights but even before covid they'd just about doubled in a decade.

Remember January is peak summer holiday season for AU/NZ, schools break up before Christmas and they don't go back until late Jan. You can get cheaper if you travel right after Christmas (we flew boxing day) or put off until Feb.

Generally though fewer flights on fewer routes (Air NZ dropped their LHR-LAX-AKL one), since covid they'd rather have full planes at high prices than run more and have to discount to fill them.

[djc206]

Asiana had some good fares recently. Around £3k BC return to Sydney. There don’t seem to be any good ex EU fares any more. Previously we’ve gone from Oslo and Stockholm and saved a pretty penny but nothing is coming up on google flights.