Why domestic flights are so expensive?

15 comments

1. Lots of taxes and fees.

2. I’d assume fuel prices are a huge factor right now

3. Ryanair is the cheapest, but it’s not really €25. EVERYTHING is an extra charge, much like Spirit or Frontier. I just took Ryanair a month or so ago and for both of us roundtrip on a less than 2 hour flight it was 400.

4. That €25 fare is probably on Ryanair which is like Spirit here. Spirit has cheap fares too. There’s also greater distances involved. London to Amsterdam is about 1 hour flight. That’s the same flight time as Orlando to Atlanta, 1 state away. Orlando to NYC is almost 3 hours. More distance equals more fuel needed and higher operating costs in general like flight crew wages and more frequent maintenance.

5. If you’re flying from one hub to another hub, airfare really isn’t that bad.

   The problem for many of us is we don’t live near hub airports and flying in and out of non-hub airports gets expensive. My last time to Boston from IND cost nearly as much as my flight to Barcelona from Chicago.

   Also RynaAir makes money by flying into non-primary airports. Their “Paris” flight is into an airport over an hour away from Paris by shuttle. And if you get a really early or really late flight into “Paris”, which is cheapest for RyanAir, you’ll be paying a hefty taxi fare to get into town. So you need to be careful with them because often, what you pay in transit will cancel out your savings on the flight.

6. Our airline hub system and that it is on average a greater distance to travel between the big cities here.

7. Flight prices can vary, but generally speaking they’re not expensive and one of the few things that’s consistently been going down in price over time

8. Domestic flights can be 1000 bucks or more if you aren’t going to hubs.

9. You can get cheap flights in the US on carriers like Allegiant and Spirit.

   On the flipside if you’re flying say British Airways in Europe, the flights are as expensive as US domestic.

   If you’re curious how ultra low cost carriers can be so cheap, I believe Wendover has a good video on this on YouTube. But it includes stuff like using secondary airports that might be more out of the way but have far less expensive landing fees. They might use exclusively *one* type of aircraft which makes maintenance and training far more simple, but at the expense of flexibility in routes. And the base fare includes basically *nothing* and you will be upcharged for all sorts of stuff.

10. So that 25 is actually JUST the tax. What’s happening is they’re selling an empty flight at just the cost of yhe tax, so they can the plane back to a hub, and not lose money.

    Not all flights are that price.

    I dont know why we dont do that here though. Maybe not enough empty flights?

    Source: have lived in the UK, and flown Ryanair.

11. A flight from NYC to LA is approximately the same distance as London to Baghdad. Or Lisbon to Moscow. I suspect you will not flights of that distance for $25 in Europe either.

12. European modes of travel like that are subsidized out the fucking ass.

13. Because you touch yourself at night

14. Prices vary. I flew from Boston to Orlando for $75 round trip earlier this year.

15. Prices vary quite a bit depending on route and how full a flight might be. Last minute deals are really cheap. And you have to consider some airlines might not have direct flights from your location, and you have to change planes somewhere.