Domestic air travel pricing

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quickymart

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#285937 26-May-2021 22:54

I know people can't really travel internationally anymore with coronavirus raging around the world, so I thought I'd head south over the July school holidays with family to see my family.

I last made this trip in 2016, so it's been a while. For 2 adults + 2 children, back then it was $664, which was reasonable enough.

Trying to book now and the same trip is over $1000! Holy Christ, I can't believe it! 18 months ago it would have cost way less than that!
This is on Air NZ - Jetstar is not much cheaper (and you don't get a bag), and looking around all the travel sites I can't seem to find anything remotely (what I would call) realistic pricing.

Even reducing it to one adult, the best I can find is around $800. Is this really meant to entice people to travel around New Zealand?

I can understand international travel would be costly now as hardly anyone is travelling compared to, say, late 2019, but would have thought domestic flights would be far, far, far cheaper than this. Granted it's the school holidays, but come on.

Edit: also, are airlines not doing child's fares anymore? The pricing for children and adults seems to be exactly the same; I remember children's fares also used to be cheaper.

I found a much better fare for the October school holidays (around $600 for 4), so I'll probably go with that.

CYaBro

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#2713454 27-May-2021 00:04

School holidays always costs more and july not too far away so any cheaper deals all probably gone a while ago.
We just booked a trip from Dunedin to Whangarei for the July holidays and came to around $1,400 for 4 of us!
Luckily we had credits and air dollars to use so had to pay nothing this time.

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Handle9

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#2713459 27-May-2021 00:46

Get used to it. International airfares will also be higher when travel resumes in earnest. There has been a lot of capacity taken out of the aviation sector with airlines being ruthless about staff, routes and aircraft.

Internationally airlines are starting to panic a little about staff - a lot have found other jobs and won't come back.

Jase2985

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#2713507 27-May-2021 06:24

a child still takes up a seat the same as an adult does. why should the fare be cheaper?

Its been significantly cheaper for us to fly into queenstown rent a car and drive to invercargill over flying into invercargill.

nztim

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#2713510 27-May-2021 06:36

Jase2985:
a child still takes up a seat the same as an adult does. why should the fare be cheaper?

Its been significantly cheaper for us to fly into queenstown rent a car and drive to invercargill over flying into invercargill.

Yes the child occupies the same seat , but things like airport fees for children are less sonthose savungs can be passed on to the ticket holder

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timmmay

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#2713523 27-May-2021 06:59

Book further in advance, and outside school holidays. We got a great deal right after the lockdowns finished, Wellington to Dunedin to Christchurch to Wellington around Christmas / New Year on Air NZ for about $1000. I think companies were hurting post lockdown so specials were good.

sbiddle

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#2713527 27-May-2021 07:31

quickymart:

I know people can't really travel internationally anymore with coronavirus raging around the world, so I thought I'd head south over the July school holidays with family to see my family.

I last made this trip in 2016, so it's been a while. For 2 adults + 2 children, back then it was $664, which was reasonable enough.

Trying to book now and the same trip is over $1000! Holy Christ, I can't believe it! 18 months ago it would have cost way less than that!
This is on Air NZ - Jetstar is not much cheaper (and you don't get a bag), and looking around all the travel sites I can't seem to find anything remotely (what I would call) realistic pricing.

Even reducing it to one adult, the best I can find is around $800. Is this really meant to entice people to travel around New Zealand?

I can understand international travel would be costly now as hardly anyone is travelling compared to, say, late 2019, but would have thought domestic flights would be far, far, far cheaper than this. Granted it's the school holidays, but come on.

Edit: also, are airlines not doing child's fares anymore? The pricing for children and adults seems to be exactly the same; I remember children's fares also used to be cheaper.

I found a much better fare for the October school holidays (around $600 for 4), so I'll probably go with that.

Sooooo many different issues in that to discuss.

Firstly the simple answer is that no, airfares have not changed significantly over the last 5 years. There is hard pricing data available to show that. Air NZ even cut a lot of domestic airfare prices in March this year. To add to that Air NZ like most other airlines are still losing significant amount of money every single day just operating.

The biggest issue is that most people don't understand how airline pricing works. You've got up to 4 different booking classes on each flight (and then 4 different combinations of fare basis) meaning there could mean that on a full A320 that there were up to 56 different fare price points that were paid. Typically speaking the further out you book, the better chance you have of picking up one of the lower priced fare buckets.

Most people also have zero understanding of how much it actually costs to fly a plane around, and the real world reality is that any ticket on a plane sold for under say $100 is being sold at a loss.

A lot of people have some crazy idea what because you can get a $49 seat on a main trunk jet flight that every seat on every domestic flight should be $49, and the downside of this is we have a huge fare range in NZ - if you look at flights between WLG and AKL for example they range between $49 and $376 because the higher priced fares are needed to effectively subsidise the lower cost seats. Entry level airfares in NZ are a bargain compared to so many other countries.

School holidays are always the worst time to fly - flights are guaranteed to be chokka so booking this close you're not going to be getting cheap fares as all the cheap fare buckets will be gone.

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sbiddle

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#2713528 27-May-2021 07:32

nztim:
Jase2985:

a child still takes up a seat the same as an adult does. why should the fare be cheaper?

Its been significantly cheaper for us to fly into queenstown rent a car and drive to invercargill over flying into invercargill.

Yes the child occupies the same seat , but things like airport fees for children are less sonthose savungs can be passed on to the ticket holder

Avsec screening costs along with all other charges are the same regardless of whether it's a child or an adult.

dafman

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#2713536 27-May-2021 08:04

Supply and demand. In fairness to the airlines, they have lost a bundle over last 18 months, so fully understand why they are setting ticket prices at the best price to match demand.