A website that searches and alerts for super cheap flights has made predictions about the price of flights in the long and short term.
Dollar Flight Club, a website that searches & gives alerts for cheap flights, has predicted that flights will be significantly cheaper in the near future. That will then be followed by a trend of higher prices.
The website analyzed trends in aviation from 9/11 and the Great Recession. During both of those times in our history, demand for flights significantly decreased. To survive, airlines cut costs, decreased the number of routes they offered and lowered the frequency of flights.
After the 9/11 terror attacks, prices for flights dropped 18% from September through December 2001. However, prices slowly had risen 25% by 2003. Similarly, airfare prices dropped 21% during the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009, but by 2012, they were 24% higher.
Using the above pattern and the 2019 benchmark for prices, Dollar Flight Club predicts prices for flights will go down by 35% in 2021 but up 27% through 2025.
DFC has made a few other predictions based on past history:
- Two big airlines will merge (in 2000 there were 9 large airlines. By 2011, there were only 5)
- Low fare carriers such as Spirit, Frontier and Allegiant will fail and be swallowed by the remaining larger carriers.
- Bag fees and miscellaneous charges (think fees for snack & drinks, ticket changes fees, choosing your seats, etc.) could go up, as an attempt to recoup more money.
- Airlines will decrease their number of flights and routes, probably by somewhere around 30% or more (this would follow the same pattern after the Great Recession, during which time flights were decreased by 14%). This could especially impact smaller or short-haul markets. If that was that case, increased use of bus and train for transportation might be seen.
- There will be fewer flight delays and cancellations (well duh, of course – there will be less flights to cancel or delay)
- We may see an increase in code sharing.
Predictions are only those – predictions. But still…IF they were to happen? Although I would love to see prices go down, having fewer options for flights wouldn’t be good. Of course, paying more for bags, choosing seats, etc. would eat up anything we saved on the flights. And although we don’t use ultra-low-cost carriers very often, lots of people do; it’s a shame if they were gone.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
#stayhealthy #staysafe #washyourhands
Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and get emailed notifications of when we post. Or maybe you’d like to join our Facebook group – we have 13,000+ members and we talk and ask questions about travel (including Disney parks), creative ways to earn frequent flyer miles and hotel points, how to save money on or for your trips, get access to travel articles you may not see otherwise, etc. Whether you’ve read our posts before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!
This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
