Aurélien Fleurot // Photo credit: Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP 7:13 a.m., April 5, 2024
Corsica, Greece, Italy... With the return of spring, many travelers are tempted to go abroad to enjoy the sun. And while tourism professionals were hoping for a reduction in plane ticket prices for 2024, this is not the case. The trend has been increasing since the resumption of air traffic post-Covid, and this should last.
Ready to repay, traffic which had not yet fully resumed, lack of staff or planes... The reasons for the increase in ticket prices have been numerous over the past 2 or 3 years. And the latest one of course has been inflation, but it hasn't been fully passed on.
“The companies still tended to try to limit the increases as much as possible in 2023 since tourism was back and they wanted to fill their planes,” underlines Guillaume Rostand, spokesperson for the flight comparator Liligo. “So one of the factors that causes prices to increase is that in fact, companies are making the increases that they could or should have made last year,” he continues.
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Prices that are moving upwards in the future
Especially since the demand is still there, people wanting to travel even if they pay the price. And as companies see expense items piling up, lowering prices is not really on the agenda, explains Didier Bréchemier, aviation specialist at the Roland Berger firm.
“With taxes linked to the environment, this means higher costs. And with the use of “green oils”, which we call SAF and which will have a higher price than conventional fuel, the trend on The medium and long term for air transport should be a continuous increase in ticket prices, with cycles,” he assures.
Air France, for example, estimates the additional cost linked to biofuels at one billion euros by 2030, without forgetting changes in the price of oil which represents between 30 and 40% of the price of a ticket, depending on the duration of the flight.