Why is domestic travel so expensive???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Air travel should be expensive and discouraged. It’s terrible for the environment.

Translation: All you poors stop making reservations so that us high-class people can spread out more on the plane.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Air travel should be expensive and discouraged. It’s terrible for the environment.

+1. It is a luxury item and should be discouraged.

Travel should be greatly expanded. The more people travel and see even other states the better they will be. This bad for the environment stuff is nonsense.

But as for cost -- flights are and should be expensive. It is not cheap to fly people places. For years corporates have subsidized families on vacations by bying first or bus class or full cost tickets but no more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe this has been asked before, but I'm shocked at how expensive domestic flights are. I've been trying to book tix to national parks (Potential flying into Vegas, Fresno, or PHX) for Spring Break and tix are just insane. In fact, tix are more expensive for my family to travel than what I paid for our summer travel (Jul 23) overseas. Why can I get to London, Paris, or even CPT for less than Vegas or LA? It's a shame because I'd like to dedicate as much time to visiting the US as int'l destinations. The rate of domestic airfare does not make it easy, though.

Let's break it down, OP. Assume there are 200 seats on the plane, and that the seats sell for an average of 800 (which likely is high). That total revenue of $160,000. Now account for costs of jet fuel for a 2000 mile flight, labor costs (pilots, flight attendants), maintenance, airport costs (rent, gate agents, ticket agents, fuel for maintenance vehicles), and the 1000 or so other incremental costs that it takes to run an airline.

A PP had it right - flights probably should be more expensive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Air travel should be expensive and discouraged. It’s terrible for the environment.

Travel is also a huge driver of illness, but I guess that is no longer the moral high ground.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, it's when you travel, OP. This is the worst possible time to book travel to popular vacation destination for spring break dates. It's you and everyone else battling it out for tickets to the same few places.

If you want to travel more cheaply, you need to do the following:

- Book way in advance. I got tix to a popular European destination for summer 2023 but starting to stalk fares about 8 months out, and then snagging some for less than $600 a person about 6 months out. Research past ticket trends so you recognize a good price when you see one. Then either track fares on Google or set a reminder to check fares once a week. You will get great fares this way.

- Travel against trends. Instead of going to Phoenix or Vegas for spring break, go to Vancouver or Seattle. Florida in October. New Orleans in July. This isn't for everyone -- most people want to go places at peak season for weather reasons. We do that sometimes too, but for me it depends on the destination and I have a broader acceptance of rainy weather. I also don't mind very hot weather if I have plenty of indoor options. The bonus is that often these destinations are less crowded and touristy in the off season, which I appreciate.

- Get a card with miles and shop sales. We have a Southwest card for domestic travel and rarely pay for domestic flights (though I still shop deals for them because I want to maximize our points and usually the points charged mostly tracks ticket prices). When we do pay for domestic travel, I shop Southwest's sales (and bonus -- buying flights and other travel from them using our Southwest card gets us double points). Sometimes if I'm booking travel for something like Spring Break, I just go and see where the cheapest flights are and then pick the one that sounds most appealing.

- Be very flexible. Related to that last point. If I can't schedule a trip well in advance (like if we don't know if we'll have the time off or I just don't get it together in time), I'll shop last minute deals. Sometimes I score something great this way. If not, we'll just book something last minute in a nearby city and drive, or go to a drivable beach or something. We usually do 2 vacations a year planned well in advance, and everything else is flexible travel that we choose closer to the dates but we stay very flexible on destination. This has resulted in some fun trips to unexpected destinations. We had a great time in St. Louis a few years ago, and also did a trip to Detroit over a long weekend that was (1) practically free, and (2) surprisingly fun because actually Detroit has some really fun stuff for families. I would never plan a weekend in Detroit for the family 8 months out unless we were attending a family event or something, but we found crazy cheap fares last minute that we paid for with points, a really nice hotel for less than $100 a night that we partially paid for with rewards, and then found some last minute tickets to a Tigers game on StubHub. There's also a great museum. It was a perfect getaway and the only reason we did it is because we decided last minute it would be fun to fly somewhere the weekend before school started and I started poking around for deals.

I’ve been stalking tickets to Italy for over a year and have seen no change in prices. I finally purchased for $1,700 a person for this summer (1 stopover each way). Curious where you are going for $600?????

Flights to Italy are so expensive right now. All the European "musts" are pricy now -- London, Paris, Italy. Paris you can still find some cheap flights because they just have more flights in and out. Italy is the worst because there are so few direct flights. Spain and Portugal also have this problem -- trendy places to travel, popular for summer, but fewer direct flights than London or Paris.

You can find deals to Europe flying to Frankfurt, Brussels, Copenhagen. Sometimes Amsterdam, though that will be closer to what you pay for Paris, sometimes more. There are direct flights out of DC for all of these but because they aren't premier destinations, you'll find much cheaper fares. Actually, here's a travel hack for people who want to go to France: fly direct to Brussels, spend a couple days in Belgium (skip Antwerp, definitely do Bruges, hit up one of the monasteries for beer), then snag a train to Paris or the south of France through Lille. You could also potentially do Italy this way if you find somewhere to stop on the way south. Bonus -- your see more things and get off the beaten track a bit.

Flying direct to Rome is going to cost you an arm and a leg right now. Prices will come down eventually when something else becomes then "it" place to go. Right now people are catching up on Covid travel and also want easy destinations with less culture shock (people are tired). You have to learn how to move against the current if you want travel deals, but going to Italy in summer 2023 is not it.