Thinking of flying for the holidays this year? Expect to pay more for airfare than at any other time in recent years.
Thanksgiving airfare prices are currently averaging $281 round trip, up 25% from last year, according to travel booking group Hopper. For Christmas travel, airfare prices are averaging $435 round trip, up 55% from last year and 19% higher than in 2019
Those are the highest levels in at least five years, according to the website.
What's the cause? It's not just inflation, even though that's been at a 40-year high for most of 2022, and has pushed the price of goods and services up across the board. Look to the airlines. While carriers have rebuilt much of their passenger capacity as the Covid-19 pandemic ebbs, they still only have about 87% of the available seats they had in 2019, according to Hayley Berg, economist at Hopper.
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"So you're still missing 15% of the flights and seats that would be otherwise taking off," Berg said.
At the same time, the demand for flights has continued to surge as households book travel that was waylaid by the pandemic. On its quarterly earnings call Friday, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said demand for air travel "remains very strong."
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