Will summer flight prices to Europe finally drop? Here's what to expect

16.02.2024 - 13:55 / thepointsguy.com / Scott Kirby / Andrew Nocella / Helane Becker / Airlines

It's only February, but signs are already clear: It's going to be another summer of groundbreaking travel demand.

What's less clear is what travelers can expect to pay this year.

Airfares surged in 2022 and 2023 as countries reopened for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and as Americans indulged in "revenge travel," spending savings and banked time off to splurge on postponed trips. During that time, airfares surged from pandemic lows to record highs.

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Europe, in particular, saw an explosion in demand from the U.S., with fares rising to match.

As we head into another busy travel season, one big question that remains is whether travel demand will normalize or if what we used to call revenge travel is actually the new normal.

On that front, opinions are split.

Toward the end of last year, some analysts began to wonder if airlines had overcommitted to the transatlantic market, adding too many seats to try and meet the revenge travel-era demand. That would mean supply would outpace demand, which could result in lower fares (i.e., bad news for the airlines but a welcome relief for consumers).

"We are concerned by the substantial increases we are seeing in international capacity between the US and Europe for summer 2024," analyst Helane Becker of TD Cowen wrote in a research note Nov. 30. "We believe an overcapacity situation is developing in the North Atlantic that is likely [to] lead to lower air fares."

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"We continue to believe that the North Atlantic air fares seen in 2Q23 are not sustainable," Becker added in the note. "We think the capacity will be absorbed in July and August, but at lower air fares than what we saw in 2023."

Airline executives, however, refuted the idea.

"I think that demand is normalized," United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told TPG in December. "This is the new normal."

United executives repeated the sentiment during the airline's fourth-quarter earnings call in January.

"Bookings and yields for transatlantic flying in early 2024 are also strong, and we expect these trends to continue into the second and third quarters," Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella said. "We remain focused on slow growth across the Atlantic for 2024."

"We expect a really strong summer across the Atlantic," he added. "Our capacity is not growing materially, and we think that's going to really allow us to get all of the capacity we've added over the last few years to be mature and incredibly and solidly profitable in 2024."

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"We have pretty good visibility on the early bookings for