Flights Are Cheap, So Why Aren’t We Flying?

by Robert McGarvey

Shut my mouth: I would have sworn that it is high prices that are persuading many of us to fly less these days but turns out fares – at least for domestic travel – just may qualify as cheap. A recent story in SFGate reported: “The post-pandemic travel boom is slowing down, and flight prices are falling along with it.”

I am not talking international travel. It is expensive. Per Google’s Bard, “international flights are 30% more expensive than last year. The average international ticket price is $1,368. The average ticket to Europe is around $1,100, and the average ticket to Asia is over $1,800.”

That 30% bump in cost is why this year I am not planning an international holiday. It’s just too expensive.

Domestic is an entirely different matter. The SFGate piece pointed out that while many of us believe domestic airfares are at high marks, we are very wrong. Kind of sort of.

Per SFGate, NerdWallet travel expert Sally French wrote in an email “In 2023, airfares are about 19% lower than a decade ago.”

But that is where the kind of sort kicks in. We are not exactly comparing apples to apples and that is because of the rise of ultra discount, no frills tickets that do not include such basics as a carryon bag or seat selection. Personally I do not even notice those fares – there are levels of misery I will not endure when traveling – but those numbers just might skew the whole equation.

Google Bard tells me the average cost of a roundtrip domestic flight in 2013 was $383.32. In Q1 2023 the average cost was $382. In that period cumulative inflation bumped prices up by 25% so today’s price rolled back to 2013 translates into around $290 – which indeed puts a sharp point on the question of why many of us are doing our best to avoid domestic air travel these days. Even when we ignore super discount fares, ticket prices today are low. That is fact.

So why aren’t we flying?

But maybe that question isn’t so hard to parse. The reality is that today’s domestic travel is for masochists and suckers. As Joe Brancatelli wrote in a September 9 eblast to members of JoeSentMe, “Today has been a horror show: FlightStats.com has registered more than 1,300 cancellations as of 11pm ET….Delays and cancellation have plagued all the major airports in the Northeast: New York/Kennedy lost 12% of its slate of flights and about a third of the rest have been delayed. That’s a lot of unhappy international flyers.”

The worse news is that eblast wasn’t an anomaly. Brancatelli has sent out similar on numerous occasions this year and, boiled down, the message is unpack, stay home, and if you gotta go, maybe drive because domestic air has become a brutal game where there are no winners, at least not among those of us who fly commercial carriers.

Private plane flights, not surprisingly, now make up about 25% of US flights and growth is steady, year in, year out. But for many of us – definitely me – private planes are out of budget.

Face reality: we are not flying commercial not because the fares are too high but because the experience too often is terrible. When the choice is between navigating the crowds at EWR and getting turned away from too crowded clubs and sitting on a plane where all too often irrational violence erupts or sitting at one’s desk in a comfy chair and chatting via Zoom, you know what wins.

It’s not even a close choice anymore.

As Whizy Kim wrote in Vox, “For travelers, taking to the skies feels like it has reached a nadir. Not only were there bigger crowds and more delays to contend with at airports, but when delays happened, they caused more stress than usual.”

When I hear “we’ll fly again because face to face is better,” I know I am dealing with a broken record. Sure, face to face has advantages – but do they outweigh the suffering involved in getting there? Lately the answer of many of us is a resounding no. That’s not likely to change until carriers recognize their need to change and to improve the entire flight experience, on the ground and inflight.

I’m not holding my breath.