2023-06-10 08:43:00
The high prices of plane tickets are likely to settle in the long term, despite the recent drop in oil prices, agree to say professionals and experts in the aviation sector.
In 2022, the gradual return of travel demand after the lifting of travel restrictions linked to Covid-19 in several regions of the world had already given the signal for higher prices. But this year, while airlines expect to return to almost the number of pre-crisis passengers, the waltz of labels is reaching its climax.
In France in April, it was necessary to pay on average 32.6% more than four years earlier for the same journey by plane, according to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. This increase even reached 51% to fly to Asia-Pacific. In the United States, the plane ticket price index published by the Federal Reserve of Saint-Louis shows an increase of 11% between April 2019 and April 2023.
And this, although kerosene prices have experienced a lull, after the peak reached in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in early 2022. The International Air Transport Association (Iata) estimates that they will go down to $98.5 a barrel this year, from $135.6 last year.
Representing between 25 and 30% of airline costs, fuel normally has a significant effect on ticket prices, both upwards and downwards. However, the decline is long overdue.
Beyond fuel, “labour costs, other supply chain costs (…) are higher or are increasing,” observed at the start of the week in Istanbul Marie Owens Thomsen, chief economist of Iata.
“Companies need to find a way to cover these costs or they will start losing money again”, when they are barely back in the green and have to repay the colossal debts contracted during Covid-19, a- she added during the general assembly of her association which federates 300 air carriers from all over the world.
Shortages and inflation
The main subject, for Vik Krishnan, specialist in the air sector at the consulting firm McKinsey, is now “less in the price of oil than in the fact that there are not enough plane seats available. , and too many people who want to sit there”.
Despite their sometimes full order books until the end of the decade, aircraft manufacturers are struggling to meet their delivery targets due to shortages of parts or materials from their suppliers.
In addition, there is the subject of “labour costs, many companies have had to renegotiate their salary agreements with their pilots and cabin crew upwards”, observes Geoffrey Weston, consultant at the consulting firm Bain & Company. . This is also the case for ground operations companies which “had to pay much higher salaries when leaving the Covid” to baggage handlers or mechanics, according to him.
“There are not many factors that will lower ticket prices,” summarizes Pascal Fabre, specialist in the air sector at AlixPartners. These fares do not appear to have dented travel demand so far. “With my counterparts, we all have the same impression, it remains very strong, despite the macroeconomic” headwinds, says Carlos Muñoz, CEO of the Spanish low-cost company Volotea.
And while the aviation sector will have to invest hundreds, even trillions of dollars to hope to achieve its decarbonization objective by 2050, between new planes and renewable fuels, Marie Owens Thomsen, from Iata, does not see no respite for consumers.
“Costs are expected to increase until these solutions become commercially viable and produced at scale,” she says. At what deadline? “I can’t say precisely, but I would be tempted to say 2040.”
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