When the flight costs as much as the vacation itself?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think we've all been very spoiled by cheap airfares over the past 30 years. I think this is the new normal, OP. I would probably gamble and wait a few more days to see if the prices drop in earlier Jan. But, in reality, I think you are just stuck with the high fares.

Spirit going into bankruptcy hurts, but low cost carriers entering markets and depressing prices is a cyclical occurrence that has happened since deregulation

Sort of but some things may be here to stay. The military isn’t training pilots for free anymore so airlines have to build that into their cost now and pay more to attract more pilots. Gas prices are the big question….with Russia such a mess and who the f knows about the Middle East it’s unclear if those prices will meaningfully decrease but I guess trumps drill baby drill may offset all that at least for the short term. Plus a lot of the equipment is aging and will need replacing and Boeing is obviously not in a good place to do that efficiently. We might see a little dip in prices in the near term but I think long term we will see a return to more realistic pricing for airlines where middle class families are jetting off for every school break. But probably not as bad as the 70s, when air travel was basically only for the rich.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is where credit card points come in the most handy and have the most value... get a travel credit card and save up the points! (and hope Congress doesn't pass the bill threatening to strip those benefits)

We use one, but I’ve only accrued $500 since summer, when we used them.

It sounds like you're not maximizing it... most travel credit cards are best used with mile transfers. Which one do you have? What are their travel partners?
What is the conversion?

Chase. We earn 1-2% based on where we spend. We make around $50 a month, on average. It’s not the best reward but the card is dirt cheap. We’ve been debating opening an airline rewards Amex.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a budget traveler this is often my experience, flights are the most expensive part! It's definitely shaping our choices this year.

It’s crazy. We definitely don’t want to pass up the trip but I’m having major sticker shock.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is where credit card points come in the most handy and have the most value... get a travel credit card and save up the points! (and hope Congress doesn't pass the bill threatening to strip those benefits)

We use one, but I’ve only accrued $500 since summer, when we used them.

It sounds like you're not maximizing it... most travel credit cards are best used with mile transfers. Which one do you have? What are their travel partners?
What is the conversion?

Chase. We earn 1-2% based on where we spend. We make around $50 a month, on average. It’s not the best reward but the card is dirt cheap. We’ve been debating opening an airline rewards Amex.

I find that I get more value using chase points for hotels ( I transfer 1:1 for Hyatt) and we have a Hilton Amex. The result is that we basically never pay for hotels so airfare is the main expense. My thinking on this is that there are usually at least a dozen hotels available in any city that would work but the same is not always true for flights. A

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is where credit card points come in the most handy and have the most value... get a travel credit card and save up the points! (and hope Congress doesn't pass the bill threatening to strip those benefits)

We use one, but I’ve only accrued $500 since summer, when we used them.

It sounds like you're not maximizing it... most travel credit cards are best used with mile transfers. Which one do you have? What are their travel partners?
What is the conversion?

Chase. We earn 1-2% based on where we spend. We make around $50 a month, on average. It’s not the best reward but the card is dirt cheap. We’ve been debating opening an airline rewards Amex.

I find that I get more value using chase points for hotels ( I transfer 1:1 for Hyatt) and we have a Hilton Amex. The result is that we basically never pay for hotels so airfare is the main expense. My thinking on this is that there are usually at least a dozen hotels available in any city that would work but the same is not always true for flights. A

This particular Chase card just reimburses the $ amount on whatever, whether it be hotel or airfare, so it doesn’t matter. It’s like putting it all in a mixing bowl and then removing $X.00 out of the bowl.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think we've all been very spoiled by cheap airfares over the past 30 years. I think this is the new normal, OP. I would probably gamble and wait a few more days to see if the prices drop in earlier Jan. But, in reality, I think you are just stuck with the high fares.

Spirit going into bankruptcy hurts, but low cost carriers entering markets and depressing prices is a cyclical occurrence that has happened since deregulation

Sort of but some things may be here to stay. The military isn’t training pilots for free anymore so airlines have to build that into their cost now and pay more to attract more pilots. Gas prices are the big question….with Russia such a mess and who the f knows about the Middle East it’s unclear if those prices will meaningfully decrease but I guess trumps drill baby drill may offset all that at least for the short term. Plus a lot of the equipment is aging and will need replacing and Boeing is obviously not in a good place to do that efficiently. We might see a little dip in prices in the near term but I think long term we will see a return to more realistic pricing for airlines where middle class families are jetting off for every school break. But probably not as bad as the 70s, when air travel was basically only for the rich.

Embraer is moving to longer range planes and the Chinese have to enter the market in a real way. Companies will try to fill available runway slots and you can offer cheap flights from east coast cities to Florida. The low cost carriers get into trouble when they expand too much- not all of them can transition into national carriers like Jet Blue and Southwest

[Anonymous]

Yes, flights have been expensive since 2022.

[Anonymous]

We look for less expensive flights first, and then build our vacations around them. With international flights, though the flight often does indeed cost as much as the hotel if it's an AI.

[Anonymous]

I don't understand why OP thinks airfare and a resort should have complementary pricing. They are entirely different industries functioning out of different countries and tax systems

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why OP thinks airfare and a resort should have complementary pricing. They are entirely different industries functioning out of different countries and tax systems

I don’t know what sort of places you stay, but lodging is usually the bulk of my vacation spending. Even at $500 a night, that’s $3500. No way I’d ever pay $3500 for my family to fly somewhere unless it was to someplace like Japan or Australia.

[Anonymous]

Buy a refundable ticket so if prices go down you can rebook

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why OP thinks airfare and a resort should have complementary pricing. They are entirely different industries functioning out of different countries and tax systems

I don’t know what sort of places you stay, but lodging is usually the bulk of my vacation spending. Even at $500 a night, that’s $3500. No way I’d ever pay $3500 for my family to fly somewhere unless it was to someplace like Japan or Australia.

$3500 for a family of four is not a lot for flights especially if you are flying international or to someplace like Hawaii or Alaska.

[Anonymous]

I just checked and our flights to London last year were more than double the cost of the hotel (4 tickets in premium economy) versus a Marriott residence for 8 nights.

Hawaii would have been pretty close to equal except we got 3 tickets for free.

Our tickets to Rome were about 3 times as much as lodging (4 united economy plus seats compared to a 2 bedroom vrbo in the historic center of Rome).

So airfare costing more than lodging does not seem at all weird to me!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why OP thinks airfare and a resort should have complementary pricing. They are entirely different industries functioning out of different countries and tax systems

I don’t know what sort of places you stay, but lodging is usually the bulk of my vacation spending. Even at $500 a night, that’s $3500. No way I’d ever pay $3500 for my family to fly somewhere unless it was to someplace like Japan or Australia.

We've had to fly to NZ/Australia a lot for family reasons, so the airfare has always been the biggest chunk of our costs.

[Anonymous]

Flights are a huge expense. I always check now to get a ballpark price on flights before I fully book a trip. We're going to Bermuda for 6 days and the very nice resort is $4500. The flights for 4 of us will be $2800. That's a lot of money considering it's a 3 hour flight and such a short part of the trip. But, we decided it was what we wanted to do and how we wanted to spend the brief vacation window we have this year.