In comes the holiday season and sky high plane ticket prices.
Key Details
- Plane ticket prices have reached higher than pre-pandemic prices soaring high right before one of the most traveled holidays—Thanksgiving.
- A round-trip domestic flight ticket for the week leading to the Thanksgiving holiday costs $398, up 30% from 2021 and 33% from 2019 prices, according to data from Hopper Inc.
- There are many reasons for the jump in ticket prices, but the main reasons are overall inflation, rise in jet fuel price, labor costs, and high travel demand.
- And because of the high demand, the price increase is likely to remain high as people feel the need to travel.
Why it’s news
Thanksgiving is one of the most traveled holidays as many people travel by car or plane to go visit family.
This year the cost to take a plane ride has risen considerably reaching past pre-pandemic levels. Prices have risen from 30% last year and 33% from 2019 for a domestic round-trip flight.
Some of the main reasons for the expensive flights are overall inflation, rise in jet fuel price, labor costs, and high travel demand.
The price for jet fuel has risen almost 90% since 2019 and economist Hayley Berg says and around 10% of that is tacked on to ticket prices.
This holiday season is one of the biggest since the pandemic as it is the first year that nearly all travel bans have been lifted causing demand to soar and with that so does ticket prices.
Between November 23 and November 27, around 4.5 million people are expected to fly for Thanksgiving this year, reaching 8% higher than last year, according to travel group AAA.
Many Americans have tightened their budget as inflation has caused prices for many things to take off considerably, but traveling for family is one of the things many people are willing to splurge on.
“All of the research that we have done, and we have seen coming from other industry leaders, is that families are trading out expenses on consumer goods for expenses on travel as they tighten their budget,” says Berg.
