Flight numbers down, air fares up, reveals European aviation report

Plane Talk: Tickets cost 15 per cent more in July 2022 than they did three years earlier

On course: a Ryanair flight from London Stansted to Marrakech (Simon Calder)

Compared with October 2021, international travel is in pretty good shape this month. Some strict Covid rules still apply – keeping China off limits to tourists, and this week forcing an “Inca cruise” to bypass Peru. But bear in mind a year ago Peru was on the UK “red list”, requiring returning holidaymakers to enter hotel quarantine at a cost of £2,285 for solo travellers.

The summer of 2022 was supposed to be the big bounce back, with holidaymakers making up for lost sunshine and families previously separated by distance and coronavirus travel restrictions getting together.

As you’re probably well aware, the peak months were reduced to chaos in some locations, with British Airways taking tens of thousands of flights out of its London Heathrow schedules and easyJet cancelling hundreds more at short notice at its main hub, London Gatwick.

Airlines and airports have descended into acrimony, with the long-suffering passenger caught in the middle (or, more likely, queuing for hours or wondering where their baggage might be).

Now some numbers add arithmetical evidence to the anecdotal tales. Eurocontrol has revealed its snapshot of the summer in its new forecast update for 2022-28. The top line: flight movements down, air fares up. But the numbers are worth digging deeper.

Up to April 2022, air fares were not significantly up in real terms on three years earlier, before the coronavirus pandemic. Then, says Eurocontrol: “Air ticket prices started to increase since May 2022.” By July, ticket prices were running at 15 per cent (plus inflation) above the rates in 2019.

Something else happened in May. Flight movements reached 86 per cent of 2019 levels that month, and have stayed uncannily close to that percentage ever since. In August aviation briefly reached 88 per cent, but has now settled at 87 per cent – representing one flight in eight being cut.

One compelling reason why airlines really don’t want to add too much capacity: “Jet fuel prices plunged at the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak” – from 50c per litre to just 15c by April 2020.

“With the restart of demand, prices recorded a rapid surge up to a record price of around €1 per litre in June 2022,” says Eurocontrol.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has severely distorted flying patterns, too. With much Europe-Asia air traffic concentrated in southeast Europe, overflights of Hungary (for example) have increased by 30 per cent while 38 per cent fewer planes are flying over Poland.

Concerningly, Eurocontrol’s forecasts assume restrictions on Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian and Moldovan airspace will “remain until the end of the horizon” in 2028.

The baseline (or mid-range) prediction also assumes weak growth, high inflation and a “significant number” of nations in recession next year.

Airlines will be uncomfortable with Eurocontrol’s assumption that some business travel will be “partly replaced by digital alternatives”. Cheeringly for the green lobby, “growing environmental concerns in some European states” will limit the number of flights.

Eurocontrol forecasts flights will finally return to pre-pandemic levels in 2025, and rise slowly to 7 per cent higher by 2028. For an industry accustomed to a steady 4-5 per cent annual rise, that is a dismal performance – which translates to a continuation of less choice and higher fares than you and I might like.

And that is without the parting thought from the forecasters of unquantifiable threats: “Terrorist attacks, bans of one country on another one, wars and natural disasters.”

Happy travels.