After two years of being unable to fly freely over Christmas and New Year, demand for holiday travel is sky high.
As the festive season rapidly approaches, people all over the country are preparing to pack their bags and travel to see family and friends.
But if you’re planning on taking a flight this Christmas, get ready to fork out a lot more money than you might be used to.
Thanks to COVID-19 restrictions throughout 2020 and 2021, many airlines were forced to cut back on staff and reduce their flight schedules. Now that restrictions are beginning to ease up again, and people are starting to travel more, airlines are struggling to keep up with the demand.
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Pent-up demand, reduced capacity and soaring fuel prices have all contributed to prices skyrocketing in recent months. And travellers have been warned not to expect prices to return to pre-COVID levels any time soon.
“It’s basically a ‘before COVID’ and ‘after COVID’ situation,” said tourism expert Dr David Beirman from University of Technology Sydney.
On the Melbourne to Sydney leg, the most popular domestic air travel route, prices have skyrocketed. It’s one of the world’s busiest, carrying 2.12 million passengers last year,
At the time of writing, the cheapest overnight return ticket from Melbourne to Sydney leaving on Monday 28 November was around $418, flying with Jetstar and Rex, with a one-way ticket costing $304.
If someone needed to fly out on Friday, the cheapest overnight return ticket was $492 with Jetstar.
Meanwhile, a Brisbane to Sydney overnight round-trip on Monday would cost $364 with Rex, and $288 one way.
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To fly from Brisbane to Cairns, the third-busiest domestic route, cost $762 return with Jetstar on those dates and $341 one way.
Some of the prices we’re seeing are more than triple pre-COVID levels.
“Between the early 1970s and 2019, airfares were going down year-by-year, particularly on those more competitive routes,” said Dr Beirman.
“For example, when I started in the travel industry in 1981, Sydney or Melbourne to Perth was about $1000 return. By 2019, it was pretty easy to get a return airfare to Perth for around $300. The same thing was happening in a lot of routes to Europe and Asia. COVID put the kybosh on a lot of that.”
Through 2020, 2021 and early 2022, there were so many restrictions put on airlines that they were “losing money hand over fist”.
Qantas lost about $7 billion in 2020–21, which was in line with many airlines around the world.
“Plus, most airlines shed a hell of a lot of staff,” Dr Beirman said.
“So once travel was able to be resumed in 2022, we’re seeing people who have been hanging out to travel for a long time queuing up. Airlines had to rehire staff, which caused a lot of problems in terms of quality of service.”
When air travel resumed earlier this year, some airlines were offering low fares to incentivise the market “but that was never going to last long”.
Airlines have had to offer higher wages to lure employees back, driving up costs along with higher fuel prices.
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“Plus, the fact that just about every airline was put heavily into debt, unsurprisingly airfares have gone up,” he said. “It is a global problem, not just an Australian thing.”
Being flexible on when you fly is critical to get the best deal.
Most travellers are going to want to fly a few days before the holiday and return a few days after. That means prices on those dates are going to be extremely high, capacity is going to sell out and airports are going to be chaotic.
Try changing the flight dates to a few days before the typical holiday season and return a few days later than normal.
Are you flying this holiday season? Let us know in the comments section below.
