Cost of airfares

With airfares the highest they’ve been in a decade, summer’s travel options are increasingly limited.

Demand is oustripping capacity, contributing to high airfares. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Damian Shaw

As the summer holidays approach and I contemplate my travel options for the festive season, I confess to feeling a little deflated. Unless my lottery numbers come in, the closest I’ll get to an airport will be picking up my son this weekend after his Schoolies blow-out on the Gold Coast.

It cost almost $700 to fly him up there and back, an extraordinary amount for a flight that lasts 80 minutes – that’s $4.40 for every 60 seconds in the air. If you were to apply that equation to a 24-hour flight to London, you’d be paying $6300. Which is pretty much spot on if you fly premium economy to Old Blighty.

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It’s been a decade since the cost of air travel was this high. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s quarterly report into airline competition, released in September, painted a stark picture. According to the ACCC, the cheapest economy fares jumped 56 per cent between April and August this year. Business class tickets also rose, by 17 per cent from June to August.

Why are Aussies, the great travellers of the world, in such a dire predicament, our wings clipped, our travel itches unscratched? The reasons are manifold and the pandemic’s effects far-reaching. Staff shortages, from the ground to the air, continue to plague airlines. We simply don’t have enough planes flying and demand from travel-hungry consumers is outstripping capacity. Thanks to our extended border closure, the rest of the world got the jump on Australia in terms of restarting travel and reviving airline routes. To a certain extent we missed the boat, and with fuel prices now at eye-watering levels, international carriers are unlikely to want to send more planes to a country at the bottom of the earth, especially those giant A380s. According to the International Air Transport Association, aviation fuel costs almost 40 per cent more in our region than it did a year ago. In Europe, the figure is more than 60 per cent. Thanks, Putin.

And on top of all that, airlines collectively lost an estimated $US200bn during the pandemic, and customers are literally paying the price. Having been spoiled by cheap airfares for decades, we are having to narrow our horizons.

I will find plenty of other ways to spend my $4.40 these holidays, and the pleasure will last longer than 60 seconds. I can drive to a beach on $4.40 worth of fuel, as long as I leave the diesel beast behind and take the putt-putt. I can buy my favourite ice cream (a Weis mango bar, in case you’re wondering) for the same amount. There’s bound to be plenty of acceptable bottles of rose that would equate to $4.40 a glass. And the view from my deck, with its gorgeous gums, cheeky kookaburras and resident bearded dragons, is free. Simple pleasures.