Airfares going up!

[letsgo39]

Flights that I booked 2 weeks ago on Delta for June 2011 have really increased in price.I needed 4 tickets,2 from ORD to BCN and the other 2 from BNA to BCN.I wanted to meet my son and grandson in Atlanta and do the transatlantic together. I would normally not book this early but when I checked the connecting flight from ATL to BCN 2 weeks ago it looked like someone had booked a large block of seats and the flight was about 60% full. I knew that there was going to be 3 large ships, 7000 people leaving on cruises the same weekend out of Barcelona so I panicked and went ahead and booked all the tickets.I was pretty sure I paid to much but just didn't want to deal with the stress any longer. Now when I go back and look the ORD to BCN went up about $260.00 pp and the BNA to BCN increased about $310.00 pp!!:eek:

 

I have never seen airfare this high this early and we have gone to Europe every year for the last 7 years. What is going on? Have the airlines really cancelled that many flights?

[kenish]

Good to hear you locked in a good price. If you read through older threads on this board, or over at Tripadvisor and Flyertalk, yes fares and add-on fees have sharply increased. Compared to even 2-3 years ago there are fewer airlines flying due to mergers and bankruptcies. And airlines have dropped routes and parked about 20% of their capacity in the desert until the economy picks up to bring fares to a more realistic and profitable level.

 

FYI, your accounting for 3 ships / 7000 pax is a good thing to consider. But if you saw the seat situation on the airline's website, be aware it's a very inaccurate tool for a variety of reasons (also discussed in the mentioned forums).

[SwKnight]

It's just that the USA (and most other countries central banksters) are printing so much that the PER DOLLAR value is dropping faster than the old 2% a year that it USED to drop. Now they are printing 50% a year extra with the new administration. I'm glad they have a lot of trees.

 

When I was a kid you could buy 3 candy bars at SAV-ON Drugs in California - for JUST a SILVER dime; now it costs about $3.00 plus tax for the same type bars. Gold was $35.00 an ounce then; now it costs about $1350.00 an ounce. That silver dime, well it's now worth about $1.50. The extra $1.50 is MORE profit to cover overhead.

 

That mixed with the fact of harassment and TOTAL (nude type) screening at the airports (I hope you are not famous and they sell your picture) will actually hurt business. I just checked Vacations to go discount cruise prices and see that those prices are dropping to hard-to-get-to areas in the globe. People do NOT want to fly with those prices rising and poor cruise ships have a NEED for ready passengers - so their prices are getting adjusted.

 

And frankly the civil serpents kinda like to bite before they shoot you in your birthday suit. :eek:

 

Having a pragmatic bit of humor, sadly.

[6rugrats]

Airfares have actually gone down overall since the 1960s, when all airfare was controlled by regulation.

[parody]

Airfares have actually gone down overall since the 1960s, when all airfare was controlled by regulation.

 

While that is basically true, average real air fares in the first quarter of the year have increased slightly from 2009 to 2010 according to BTS (see Table 1).

[fbgd]

The cheaper fares have just sold out in your case, simple really.

 

Although you probably don't realise it there are dozens of fares selling on flights at a given time each with a different price. Most economy passengers are just after the cheapest fare, and in your case your purchase reduced the number of cheap seats available. No real indication of the cost of plane tickets overall or anything so dramatic...