Are airline ticket prices high?  That’s a hard question to answer.  I suspect it depends on the class of travel and the advance purchase state of your ticket.  And a lot of other things.  They’re not higher than they were 30 years ago.  But even to me, an airline enthusiast, they seem a bit high right now.  Or, more accurately, the general airline ticket seems to be of low value to me right now.  You don’t get much for what you pay. 

When I was searching for some unrelated information on the web recently, I happend to run across an image of a Braniff International Ad from 1980.   I hope this LINK works.  Notice the airfares listed?   Tampa to DFW is $112 one way.  Tampa to Seattle is just $159.50 each way.  

Those might even strike us as reasonable advance purchase economy fares today.  But this was 1980.  A dollar was worth quite a bit in those days.   A Big Mac hamburger sold for about a dollar in 1980.  Today, a Big Mac is considerably over $3.00. 

But those airline fares don’t appear to have changed much, do they?  Let’s keep in mind that 1980 was a bad year for airlines and a particularly bad year for Braniff.  Fares were low (relatively speaking) because deregulation had just occurred and airlines were scrambling for market share.  Even at those low prices, not a lot of people were buying.  That would come later.  However, I’ll also point out that the “value” of an airine ticket in those days was far higher than it is today.   You got a meal, free beverages, no bag fees, a comfortable seat pitch and flight attendants who appeared to enjoy their job. 

The next time you purchase an airline ticket, think about those prices.   Keeping those prices low has meant trimming costs every year.  Yes, airline tickets are cheap today Hughes Air.  Yes, airlines would love for them to go up a bit.  I’m agnostic on the idea that airlines need to earn more money on each ticket.  Maybe they do.  Or maybe we’ve preserved the airline industry too much by permitting multiple bankruptcies and government cover.   If anything, I’m tempted to argue that we need less regulation and more competition in that business than ever before.

Filed under: Airline History by ajax
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