When did air travel become cheap?

Average ticket prices have been steadily decreasing since 1980. In fact, tickets are close to their lowest prices ever. But from 1950 to 1980, flying was different. Before 1978, fares and routes in the US were closely regulated by the federal government, and many routes had fixed minimum prices.



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But falling fares in the 1970s allowed many more people to fly and undermined the exclusivity of jet travel. Sweeping cultural changes in the 1960s and 1970s reshaped the airline industry. More people began to fly, and air travel became less exclusive. Between 1955 and 1972, passenger numbers more than quadrupled.

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Average U.S. airfares are more than 6.5% lower in September 2023 than they were in September 2019, meaning prices aren't just lower than they were last year, but even lower than what they were pre-pandemic.

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Flights in the 1970s may well have been a lot more expensive, but passengers also got much more in terms of service. As airlines didn't set their own rates, they were guaranteed profits. As a result, with the money travelers paid, airlines were able to offer crystal glasses, complimentary champagne, and real cutlery.

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“There's still a lot of pent-up demand for travel going back to the pandemic,” explains Kayak's UK country manager, Evan Day. “And that demand - combined with rising inflation and high fuel costs - has kept flight prices high.”

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The demand for flights is greater than ever, with many airlines reporting record booking volume since the beginning of the year. BUT... inflation remains high, the price of oil is dropping but jet fuel is still a huge expence, and airlines are still staffing up.

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Aviation's 'golden age': The 1950s and 1960s have now nostalgically become known as air travel's golden age. First class on a Pan Am flight: Not many could afford to sample the luxury on board. The most likely frequent flier was a white, male businessman traveling on his company's expense account.

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So what's creating such horrid air travel vibes? One possibility is that there are more travelers now than in 2019, but fewer commercial aircraft are flying, meaning passengers have fewer chances to reroute or get on the next flight when delays happen, leaving them stuck in limbo longer.

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Americans were wild about aviation in the 1920s and '30s, the period between the two world wars that came to be known as the Golden Age of Flight. Air races and daring record-setting flights dominated the news. Airplanes evolved from wood-and-fabric biplanes to streamlined metal monoplanes.

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This high demand is one factor driving the rising costs, with passengers willing to pay higher prices and many airlines still not back to running their pre-pandemic number of flights. Mr Boland said huge demand for holidays have combined with inflationary pressure to create a “perfect storm of spiralling costs.”

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In the U.K., there are lots of airlines that operate cheap domestic flights. These airlines include easyJet, which is a low-cost carrier and one of the most popular affordable airlines in the U.K., as well as Ryanair, and Loganair (Scotland).

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The average seat pitch — the distance between seats that we commonly refer to as legroom — in the 1970s was 34 inches. This number, as opposed to the 32 or even 28 inches offered by some airlines today, aligned perfectly with the windows of a plane, so that each row was sandwiched exactly between two windows.

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Airlines are also facing the reality of not having enough pilots and flight attendants to run their flights, as well as higher labor costs. All of these forces have combined to create rising ticket prices.

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