Airfares to many popular destinations have recently dropped to their lowest levels in months, providing relief to consumers frustrated with high prices for all types of goods and services.
Earlier this month, the average price of a domestic flight for Thanksgiving fell about 9% compared to last year. And flights around Christmas were about 18% cheaper, according to Hopper, a booking and price tracking app. Kayak, the travel search engine, analyzed a broader range of dates around the holidays and found that domestic flight prices dropped about 18% for Thanksgiving and 23% for Christmas.
Domestic ticket prices fell during the summer, and international travel promotions, especially to Europe, have become more common recently.
Airlines are cutting their fares to try to get more people to book tickets, as demand is decreasing or when they face stiffer competition. There’s no doubt that competition has intensified on some routes, but travel experts say it’s unclear if demand is actually weakening.
Record Number of Travelers for Thanksgiving
This year’s Thanksgiving is expected to set a record for air travel, with nearly 30 million passengers projected, according to Airlines for America, an industry group. That would be about 9% more than last year and 6% more than in 2019, before the pandemic.
For the largest U.S. airlines, good times have continued, fueled particularly by the growing demand for international travel. But smaller and low-cost carriers have begun to struggle. Several reported disappointing financial results for the three months ending in September. Executives from these airlines stated that demand is weakening, fares are falling, and costs remain high. They also say that bad weather and a lack of air traffic controllers have made flights more difficult.
Source: The New York Times