If traveling more and paying less for flights is on your New Year’s resolution list — you’re in luck. A new analysis from discount flight booking site Going.com, shared withTravel + Leisure, revealed that airfare has dipped below pre-pandemic prices and also dropped 24 percent from the May 2022 peak of airfares. The company provided evidence of the international fares dropping such as flights to Paris for $387 and to New Zealand for $686 round-trip. “2023 has been a return to normalcy when it comes to flight prices, while 2024 is expected to just be normal. The peak of flight prices in May of 2022 have disappeared,” Going.com’s Katy Nastro shared in a statement to T+L.“Looking forward, we don't anticipate any major swings in demand outside of typical peak seasons like the summer or the winter holidays like we saw in the last 18 months where post-pandemic pent up travel demand drove prices upwards.” Naylor analyzed the average price of airfare and tracked a downward trend for 13 of the last 18 months, and that prices are currently down 12 percent from the same time last year. Economists cite less people traveling for leisure, and a lack of business travel as reasons for the lower airfares. “It’s a combination of less business travel, as we haven’t seen the rebound to pre-pandemic levels, lower fuel prices, and more capacity as more planes have come online,” KPMG’s Chief Economist Diane Swonk told T+L in an interview. Southwest Airlines recently described the current level of business travelers flying as “below historical levels” during their October 2023 earnings call. In addition to airfares trending down, car rental prices dropped 10.1 percent over the last year, according to the recent Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index Report.
United's bold expansion plan: Onboard the airline's inaugural flight to New Zealand's South Island
11.12.2023 - 15:23 / thepointsguy.com
Disclosure: TPG accepted a comped round-trip ticket from United for the SFO-CHC flight to get access to the events and executives on board. TPG paid $574.67 for a positioning flight to SFO and for other associated costs, such as hotel and ground transportation.
United Airlines launched its new thrice-weekly service to Christchurch, New Zealand, on Friday, becoming the only carrier to connect the United States directly to the largest city of the country's South Island.
At first glance, Christchurch is a bizarre dot for United to put on its map. With a population under a half-million, New Zealand's second-biggest city is a third the size of Auckland, which has traditionally served as the primary Kiwi hub for long-haul flyers.
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The city is still remembered for the 2011 earthquake that damaged thousands of buildings and killed 185 residents. More than a decade later, there are still signs of the city's rebuilding, with construction zones scattered about and empty lots still awaiting development under the region's reconstruction down. Yet the city is alive and vibrant, with a thriving local scene and access to adventures across the South Island.
More notably, the city is the latest example of United's long-term international strategy, a plan to build the post-pandemic airline around global long-haul travel. Incidentally, Christchurch now becomes the airline's southern-most destination, according to United Capt. Mark Champion.
As for its increasingly global ambitions, the airline is taking a two-prong approach. First, it's adding more connections from its hubs to popular tried-and-tested destinations — for instance, the airline's newly announced service from San Francisco to Rome, a city it already serves daily during the summer from its Newark, Chicago and Washington hubs.
Second, the airline is adding smaller locales across the world to its route network, including some cities that might not seem obvious obvious additions. Among these are routes that may not have tremendous nonstop business travel demand, but which have potential with leisure travelers and VFR passengers — VFR, shorthand in airline business lingo for "visiting friends and relatives," is a subset of leisure that is generally more price-conscious. Recent examples include Manila in the Philippines; Amman, Jordan; and Accra, Ghana.
Of those smaller destinations, United has also shown itself willing to be patient and work to develop new markets, promoting tourism, advertising routes and giving them time to develop. Of all the new routes added since the pandemic, the airline has only canceled one — to Bergen, Norway. Other routes that have been added, or are about
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