Melburnian1
Enthusiast
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2013
- Posts
- 24,673
"Best discount" and "restricted economy" air fares are probably mainly used by leisure travellers who accept a lower fare in return for non-refundable and/or very costly to change, if one can at all ticket conditions.
A minority of business travellers may be savvy enough (and sufficiently certain of their plans) to also snap these up.
With the domestic airline capacity wars a thing of the past, these two categories of air fares appear to be continuing a steady rise:
Domestic Air Fares
AFFer JohnK is one regular traveller who continually confirms this on the BNE - SYD run.
I don't travel every week like he does, but when booking, it appears MEL - SYD Y "discount" fares on VA for instance have also risen a few per cent even a few weeks out and avoiding travelling on a Friday afternoon or evening, Sunday arvo or Monday morning when demand is at its highest. .
Is this also your experience?
The risk for QF and VA with their very high fixed costs, and at lower price points JQ and TT, is that by continually increasing air fares above CPI (or when discounts are offered, not offering these for all but a very small number of seats per flight) is that with the Australian (and various State) economies showing some signs of recession, the air fare rises may partly injure the golden goose.
Airlines will claim with their sophisticated algorithms and yield management experience (they know, for instance, three weeks out how many seats were sold on flight 111 this time last year, so can easily compare that to sales this year) they will never be caught out.
For their shareholders' sakes, one hopes demand doesn't collapse or at the very least even decrease somewhat due to the huge possibility of a change of Federal government with a high tax, demand sapping agenda. A four per cent drop in seats sold (especially if true for both Y and J travel) can make a lot of difference to airlines' profits if they also have to reverse the price increases and sell seats at lower fares due to try to get people travelling.
J seats are a small minority on every domestic flight but the BITRE index suggests these have dropped between April 2018 and April 2019. I don't know if Easter Sunday being 21 April this year compared to 1 April in 2018 has influenced the air fare index for J, or for Y.
A minority of business travellers may be savvy enough (and sufficiently certain of their plans) to also snap these up.
With the domestic airline capacity wars a thing of the past, these two categories of air fares appear to be continuing a steady rise:
Domestic Air Fares
AFFer JohnK is one regular traveller who continually confirms this on the BNE - SYD run.
I don't travel every week like he does, but when booking, it appears MEL - SYD Y "discount" fares on VA for instance have also risen a few per cent even a few weeks out and avoiding travelling on a Friday afternoon or evening, Sunday arvo or Monday morning when demand is at its highest. .
Is this also your experience?
The risk for QF and VA with their very high fixed costs, and at lower price points JQ and TT, is that by continually increasing air fares above CPI (or when discounts are offered, not offering these for all but a very small number of seats per flight) is that with the Australian (and various State) economies showing some signs of recession, the air fare rises may partly injure the golden goose.
Airlines will claim with their sophisticated algorithms and yield management experience (they know, for instance, three weeks out how many seats were sold on flight 111 this time last year, so can easily compare that to sales this year) they will never be caught out.
For their shareholders' sakes, one hopes demand doesn't collapse or at the very least even decrease somewhat due to the huge possibility of a change of Federal government with a high tax, demand sapping agenda. A four per cent drop in seats sold (especially if true for both Y and J travel) can make a lot of difference to airlines' profits if they also have to reverse the price increases and sell seats at lower fares due to try to get people travelling.
J seats are a small minority on every domestic flight but the BITRE index suggests these have dropped between April 2018 and April 2019. I don't know if Easter Sunday being 21 April this year compared to 1 April in 2018 has influenced the air fare index for J, or for Y.
