Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
5
Airline Tickets
The age of cheap flights is over, as oil prices rise and airlines reduce capacity, cut routes, and raise fares.
It is becoming harder to find the cheap flight deals that a few years ago let you jet off to some exotic loc-
ation on a whim for relatively cheap.
But if you are going to be traveling around the world, or even if you just want to go to Paris for a few
weeks, you are going to need to find a way to fly cheap. The more you pay for a flight, the less you'll have to
travel with day to day, and the less likely you will be to go on a trip. The most common reason I hear for why
people don't take a vacation? “I can't afford the plane ticket!”
Since I want you to afford that plane ticket and head off to somewhere amazing, I'm going to lay out the
best ways to fly around the world and score cheap flights.
But before we get into the particulars, let's talk about why flights are expensive. If you've been flying for
at least the past few years, you might have noticed ticket prices, even the cheapest ones, seem to be going as
high as the planes you'll be flying. Save some flash sale or price war, consumers are paying a lot more than
they used to.
Why is that? Ticket prices are high today for a number of reasons. For starters, the industry has consolid-
ated a lot over the last few years. Thanks to bankruptcies and mergers, there are now only three major airlines
in the United States. In Canada, you only have two. In Europe, Air France-KLM and Lufthansa control the
bulk of the market. As airlines have partnered up, merged, or gone bankrupt, there is little incentive or need
to create low fares to win your business.
Second, the price of airline fuel has increased tremendously. Back in 1996, airline fuel cost 55 cents per
gallon. As of May 2014, it was $2.88 per gallon. Airlines can't absorb all that increase, so they pass some of
that on to the consumer, leading to higher fares.
Additionally, airline taxes and security fees have also increased, adding hundreds of dollars onto your
base fare.
Moreover, following 9/11 and the recession, demand fell; to compensate, airlines reduced both the number
of routes they offered and the frequency of their flights. They did this to save money and fly fuller planes.
Fuller planes mean more passenger revenue and fewer costs for the airline. It's why if you live far from a ma-
jor city you've seen fares go up and the number of flights go down. Planes fly close to full now and airlines
are quite happy about that.
Why Do Prices Fluctuate?
Prices go up and down for many reasons. No one can really predict when or if a price is going to go up or
down. Only the airline knows that. But there are four major things that drive prices: competition, supply, de-
mand, and oil prices.
