‘Cheap’ Flights Aren’t That Cheap Anymore: How to Save on Airfare
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Here's your Money Briefing from Monday, October 31st. I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. If you've looked into booking a flight lately, you know the cost of airfare has gone up by a lot. You might think to broaden your search to include some of the discount carriers. Unfortunately, those cheap flights aren't all that cheap anymore either.
We've all seen, you know, the ads or the emails, you know, offering $19 on Spirit or Frontier or $29 or $39. First of all, that's each way. But also, you know, as most people are aware, these airlines charge extra for absolutely everything, including, you know, a bottle of water on the flights. So you really have to do the math now, even more so than in the past.
Dawn Gilbertson writes the WSJ's Carry On Travel column. On today's show, she'll run through steps people often overlook to save on airfares and those fees. That's after the break.
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Why are leisure airfares rising more than 40% year‑over‑year?
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It's a lot more expensive to fly now than it was a year ago. So how can you ensure those friendly skies are a little more friendly to your wallet? To find out, I'm joined by the Wall Street Journal's carry-on columnist, Dawn Gilbertson. Dawn, thank you very much for being with us.
Thanks so much for having me.
So Dawn, airfares for leisure travel were up nearly 43% in September from a year ago and up 0.8% just from August. What's been driving these fares higher?
Well, number one is this insatiable travel demand. You know, anybody who's been to an airport in September or October knows, you know, it doesn't look exactly like summer, but it's certainly not as slow as it typically is. So people are just still traveling like bonkers. I mean, anybody who's like priced airline tickets recently, I just booked a ticket to San Francisco from Phoenix, which is a very short hop. And the round trip ticket is $650. You know, like I said, for a very, very short flight. I talked to a traveler who his wife couldn't go with him to Vegas for a freelance gig because the ticket from Chicago to Las Vegas was $900 in October.
$900? That seems like a lot for this time of year.
It is, but here's one of the things driving it. You know, in addition to people are still willing to pay this and people still have this insatiable demand, we still have not as many flights as we did before the pandemic. And then there's also, you know, a labor shortage that has airlines not offering as many flights as they might like to offer, which obviously pushes fares higher.
Yeah, you mentioned pent up demand a moment ago. So if some of this is due to pent up demand, wouldn't that mean that things might, you know, level out a bit sometime soon?
Well, you would think so. And as a traveler, you would hope so. But, you know, the United Airlines CEO, Scott Kirby, was pretty emphatic about this point on the airline's earnings calls. And he said, it's not pent up demand. This is the new normal. And the reasons he cited were a big factor was the number of people who have flexible work arrangements now.
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