Get here for $304
Lower fuel prices and higher capacity are finally bringing down airfares…on some routes at least.
If you even halfway watch the financial news now and then, or buy gasoline for a car, you know that the price of oil is way down from a few years ago. Besides this making it cheaper to generate electricity or take a road trip, it also means the price of jet fuel is down. For most airlines, fuel is one of their biggest expenses on every flight.
This doesn’t mean the airlines are passing any of these savings on to passengers unless they have to. The most rapacious of them still have the audacity to put surcharges on top their prices. In the case of British Airways, this even applies to those (not) free frequent flyer miles cash-ins. They just changed the name from “fuel surcharges” to “carrier imposed surcharge.” They might as well just call it what it is: “our way to pick your pocket no matter what.”
Here’s a maddening rundown from a few months back from the BBC .
Thankfully, on competitive routes the marketplace will eventually determine how much the carriers can get away with and fares will come down when they need to. Many routes within the USA are going for less than $300 now.
Flight Prices Down by 9% This Summer
According to the predictive airfare site Hopper, prices in the summer of 2016 should be down 9% on average compared to last year. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s $36 on a $400 ticket, which will buy you about 36 beers in Nicaragua. That’s the average though and some combinations will be a lot cheaper than that.
Hopper is predicting drops of more than 25% in international destinations such as Tokyo, London, Mexico City, Panama City, Santiago, Los Cabos, and both cities in Brazil.
I got a ticket myself for $300 to Mexico City in mid-June. I’ve seen some crazy cheap fares on routes where a budget carrier is in the mix, such as many of the cities in Colombia and Central America.
Some Random Bargain Routes to Give you a Taste
I played around researched on Google Flights for a while to give you a taste of some of the best flight deals this summer and came up with a lot of winners. These may change by the time you look them up, but they’ll give you an idea of what’s out there. These are all round-trip flights for a one-week trip leaving July 1, which is potentially the busiest week of the summer for U.S. departures.
Tampa – Merida (Mex) – $295
Tampa – San Jose (Costa Rica) – $304
Chicago – Seoul $581
Chicago – Lima $542
New York – Toronto $254
New York – Dublin $797
New York – Galapagos $950
Los Angeles – Manila $799
Toronto – Miami $309
Toronto – Rome $783
Dallas – Mexico City $278
Dallas – Medellin $507
A few trends I’ve noticed to keep in mind: 1) Europe flights haven’t come down a whole lot on the legacy carriers, especially if you’re not on the east coast. So check the secondary carriers like Norwegian Air, Air Berlin, and Edelweiss. 2) Flights to points in Africa are still very expensive overall, as in often more than $1,500 from almost anywhere in the USA or Canada. You might want to combine it with Europe and book two flights. 3) There still aren’t many sub-$1,000 flights to New Zealand or Australia.
That Google Flights screen is a goldmine of info, but it hogs a lot of computer resources/bandwidth and it has trouble with multi-carrier fares. It’s often faster to check here with Vayama once you’ve narrowed things down:
