Are the Good Times Ending for Cheap Flights?
Photo Credit: U.S. airlines have put a lot of cheap seats in the market in recent years, but most are slowing growth to try to improve pricing power. Pictured are seats on a United Airlines jet. United Airlines / United Airlines
Skift Take
Airline passengers never know how good they have it until it's too late. Airfares are going up, and passengers are going to remember 2016-17 as the glory years for fare bargains. Of course, at the time, they didn't think so.
Recently I asked a U.S. airline executive whether these are the best economic times in history.
He laughed. Someday, he said, we may look back and think so. But now that we're in it, he said, it's difficult to have perspective. Because investors always demand higher profit and better margins, few executives can stop to enjoy the moment.
Passengers have a similar inability to embrace good times. For the past three years, many have complained about onerous fees and high fares. That's true in some smaller and less competitive markets, like Knoxville, Tennessee, or Salina, Kansas. But between big cities, fares have been cheap, often as low as $39 or $49 each way for short-haul travel. Passengers have even scored deals on last-minute fares.
We're seeing less discounting now, and I suspect passengers will soon realize how good they had it in 2016 and 2017, when fuel was cheap and established airlines fought to keep customers from defecting to ultra-low-cost competition.
As I wrot
