Apr. 25—The cost of flying is ready for takeoff, and there are few indications that the trend will curtail any time soon as high fuel prices, pilot shortages and booming demand push ticket prices to new highs.
According to travel website Hopper, the average cost of airfare for U.S. travelers in April rose to $330 for a single domestic round-trip ticket—a 40-percent increase from prices in early January and the highest figure the company has recorded since it began collecting cost data. Meanwhile, international travel has returned to pre-pandemic prices of about $810 per round-trip.
Hopper's projections expect prices to increase a further 10 percent by the end of May, with average domestic round-trip fares topping out at about $360 before taking a dip as travel demand decreases with the arrival of fall. In the meantime, air carriers are excitedly eyeing the current "strong revenue environment" brought about by high fuel prices, the lifting COVID-19 mandates and increased labor costs spurred on by a shortage of pilots in the United States.
"The short way to say it is we are seeing a lot of strength in the fare environment with customers who frankly value the quality of product that we have and are willing to pay us to fly," said American Aline CEO Vasu Raja during an April earnings call. "So we're encouraged by that and we see those trends going forward into the summer."
One trend likely here to stay for in the near-term is a paucity of available pilots for hire in the U.S. market.
As reported by ABC News' Sam Sweeney, U.S. airliners are looking to add 13,000 pilots to their ranks in 2022 in the hopes of meeting flight schedule demands. Between 5,000 and 7,000 pilots are typically given credentials on a yearly basis, according to United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, making such employment targets all but unattainable in the near term.
"The pilot shortage for the industry is real and most airlines are simply not going to be able to realize their capacity plan because there simply aren't enough pilots, at least not for the next five-plus years," Kirby told ABC News. "The other really large airlines will also probably be able to attract enough pilots, but for anyone else, I just don't think it's mathematically possible to meet the pilot demand for the capacity plans that are out there."
___
(c)2022 the Houston Chronicle
Visit the Houston Chronicle at www.chron.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
