Beyond bargains: The brutal new reality of unpredictable domestic flight prices in Australia
Forget the ‘42 bucks’ Black Friday flight deals in this game of airport roulette, writes Rebecca Whitfield-Baker.
There are those of us who win the meat raffle, and those of us who don’t.
I’m talking about the individual we all know with the uncanny knack of being handed a prize-winning ticket, big or small, no matter the draw they enter.
I am categorically not one of those, what’s more I am the person who buys an item at full price only to have it go on sale the next day.
While it can be pesky, generally, I am not too fazed by it. I would rather shop when and where I want than hunt for a bargain or face a deal-seeking mass at a big sale.
This doesn’t mean I don’t love an unexpected windfall, when you learn at the checkout the item you’ve just purchased is less than the marked price, or you’ve gained a reward you hadn’t anticipated.
But I just can’t get excited by mega, hyped-up retail events such the recent Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales and fast-approaching Boxing Day. For me, the thought of swelling crowds at my local shopping centre is enough to keep me at home, serving up the kids a dinner of scramble eggs if the cupboards are bare.
I can think of nothing worse than lining up with a gazillion others the day after Christmas, waiting for the roller shutters to open to snag a bargain. I’d rather, instead, that the prices we are charged every day are appropriate and reasonable.
Sadly, these days, when it comes to domestic air fares, this isn’t the case – at least not in my experience.
Prices can vary dramatically on any given day and it can be a bit of a lucky dip in terms of what you’ll be charged on the day you need to fly.
Ahead of the Black Friday Sales a breakfast television reporter positively beamed as he told of “slashed airfares”.
“If you’ve been eyeing off booking your holiday, here’s your chance … major Aussie airlines are knocking hundreds off flights … getting in on the Black Friday bandwagon (offering) some domestic return flights for as low as 42 bucks,” he gushed.
In theory it sounds great but I suspect actually securing the surely-too-good-to-be-true fares may take a lot of patience – and more than a little bit of luck.
It’s all well and good if you’ve got endless flexibility in terms of when you fly, not so helpful when life demands you need to be in a certain place at a certain time.
As someone who’s found herself travelling regularly between Adelaide and Western Australia since July due to a loved-one’s illness, the contrasting costs of flights has left me mind-boggled – and my bank balance depleted.
On some occasions, the cheapest flight on offer across the airlines has been $1300 – and we’re not talking any fancy-pants, seat up the front of the plane but plain old economy (and one-way).
There are occasions when people don’t have the luxury of waiting for prices to come down, when they need to be interstate at short notice.
Pity the poor bugger who needs to travel with his family to Melbourne to welcome the arrival of a new baby or other family milestone, celebration or illness, when it coincides with the footy final – or a Coldplay concert.
On one recent return trip to Adelaide, stuck on the tarmac in Perth for several hours due to an “engineering issue”, I got talking to the young fellow in the seat next to me.
He was headed to Adelaide for work and told me he’d not been able to get a flight at all the day before and spent almost $1300 for the middle-of-the-plane seat on the “budget airline” we were on.
I remember a time when $99 flights between SA and WA were commonplace; in the past few months I’ve spent enough flying west to take myself and my favourite people around-the-world more than once.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate how lucky and privileged I am to get to be at my cherished relative’s bedside.
Still, there seems little rhyme or reason for some of the day-to-day price variation that’ll see you paying under $300 one day and more than three times this the next.
Google, “Why are domestic flights in Australia so expensive in 2025?” and you’ll get a range of explanations, such as “high operating costs, limited airline competition” and strong demand.
In August the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) pointed to the fact that while the number of passengers flying domestically had returned to pre-pandemic levels, “growth in the total number of seats provided by domestic airlines has not kept pace with traveller demand ... the lack of growth in seat capacity to meet rising demand has likely meant consumers are paying more than they would have in a more competitive, better-supplied market.”
All I know is that when it comes to booking flights within Australia right now, I’d welcome a bit of my mate’s meat raffle-winning luck.
Originally published as Beyond bargains: The brutal new reality of unpredictable domestic flight prices in Australia
Reality TV star shocks with surprise second marriage
