Airfare prices: Have they spiked ?

I just checked an airfare I checked last week. Boston to Paris r/t is now $732, a week ago it was $632. This is for early May, so they've gone up some. It's not hard to check any flight on Kayak.

It all depends in the end.

In January I bought a Premium Plus ticket on United for October IAD->LHR returning AMS->RIC, and got it on a dip at $1460. The price had been running about $1700. Now the same flight in Premium Plus is $3338. The economy ticket had been averaging $817 and had dipped to $790s and is now $934

I was also following IAD to LHR and back for the same October timeframe and economy is still running $750 and a Premium Plus ticket can be had from $2308 with connections through EWR.

Arlines can’t raise the prices too much since people will balk and not go. Additionally I’m thinking that due to potential consumer hesitancy about travel even modest price increases will turn people away.

Airlines hedge and prebuy fuel so it will be a few months before the impacts of the current mess get felt. They are probably waiting to see what's going to happen overall.

I think for the OP it's a combination of things
1. "Just over a month away"
2. Return flight sold out, that means for some reason demand is high for that route during that period... so the cheap fares probably have sold out.

To really compare you have to look at the fare codes to see if it's comparable.

In reaction to oil prices, gas stations raise prices immediately. This is because they charge based on their replacement costs. If they pay a buck, then they sell for a buck- ten. They run through that gas in a couple of days, then they have to buy the next tank at the new price— say a buck thirty-five— so they set their price up 35% almost instantly. Replacement cost forces their hand

Airlines hedge (some very little like United at close to zero, some quite a bit like Air France at close to all of it). Also, fuel is only a quarter to a third of costs. Revenue management algols take time to digest price increases and they consider lots of other factors like competition and demand, etc. Hence, you'd expect prices to rise after delay period— all other things being equal.

Note; all other things being equal is never true. Still, buying now locks in current pricing before the rise. (The chance they go down, well, it exists, but yeah, wow, wouldn’t that be nice surprise?)

So if oil prices stabilize at current 90ish level, normally you'd expect an uptick (all other things staying the same.) If they go back down to pre-war price, then back to previous trends. If oil goes up again from here, expect a drift upward.

Robin J Brooks, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, former Chief Economist at IIF and Chief FX Strategist at Goldman Sachs, has a decent substack on oil pricing right now. And if one could distill his expertise into a simple buy your ticket now or wait strategy, I am pretty sure it would be this: "I don't know.'

I could be misreading him though. His advice might really be more like "Heck, I really, really don't know what to tell you."

So, yeah. here is my advice: Wherever you travel, have a good time! Embrace the history, the culture, the food, and soak it all in!

Happy travels

EDIT: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/price-hikes-outlook-cuts-what-airlines-are-doing-fuel-costs-surge-2026-03-10

Last I looked at my booked Delta Comfort Extra (refundable) RT flights PHX-VCE-PHX for September the price jumped to $2900+ from the just shy of $1700 I paid in November. Prices were headed up to the mid $2400s before he-who-shall-not-be-named’s war.

Remember previous surcharges when oil prices skyrocketed? Instead of raising prices, companies added surcharges to cover some of their increased fuel expense.

3/21 EDIT: Curiosity got the better of me last night. If I bought my same flights now, they are $3200 and change. About $300 increase in 10 days. Up $1500 from the purchase price. Yikes!!

I posted last week a 1992.00 price for two tickets on Aer Lingus Chicago to Frankfurt round ticket in June back in August. I took it because United and American were at 2850.00. Checked back this morning and United and American, same tickets, dates and route at 4200.00 Nothing to say.

As the plane fills the remaining seats sell for more. Looks like all the 'cheap seats' are gone

Hard to discern how much affect is oil prices and how much is the 'normal' changes based on supply v. demand.

So, I have 2 trips (in the next 2 months) already reserved and purchased. Will the airline send me an invoice due to fuel prices increases?

So, I have 2 trips (in the next 2 months) already reserved and purchased. Will the airline send me an invoice due to fuel prices increases?

No

But they will pass a collection plate at the gate so they can buy the last 500 gallons they need to get to the destination. :-)

I purchased Air France tickets for end of September returning November 1 outbound to CDG ,,return from Vienna $3300 ( two -passengers , premium seats ) just looked online - $5000 now

It depends - based on routes and how you book your tickets and if you have the time and fortitude to jump through some hoops for cheap flights. I am on the lookout for business class tickets and since I do multiple trips every year I have reversed my direction of travel - i.e. I book Europe/N Africa - USA - Europe/N Africa. This requires a one way to position yourself but works for people who do multiple trips a year to Europe.

Last Friday I bought ARN(Stockholm)-IST-ORD (Chicago) and returning DEN-IST-Tunis. I paid around $2,280 each for Business class tickets. I couldn't get the flights into DEN since Turkish only flies 3-4 times a week and the business class tickets seem to sell out. I'll just buy a cheap ORD-DEN flight on UA to get home. So, a little extra hop needed but was able to get relatively cheap tickets for Business class on a great airline. For comparison, I am finding the following flights in Business class this morning for $2,066 for the exact same days I purchased last week
ARN-IST-ORD and return from Houston to Tunis (IAH-IST-TUN) Almost no business class available on the DEN flight, hence looked at returning from IAH. There are other city combinations that are only a few hundred $s more.

My flight has increased by $342, which I can still live with were it to be purchased today, given the same variables, dep time, trip duration, Basic Economy , etc.

On Dec 2, 2025 I bought the r/t SFO to CDG overnight non-stop flight on United in Basic Economy given its pros and cons (hardly any pros to speak of), dep. May 26, 2026 returning July 30, 9 weeks total.

I checked today the price difference since that purchase.

That same flight today is priced at $1,472 , same trip duration. That saved amount of $342 will still be spent anyway in the course of the trip, still to have it at one's disposal is better than wasting it on the flight's cost.

I bought Premium tickets several months ago for September travel -- United/Swiss, Peoria to Zurich via Chicago -- and paid a bit over $2K apiece. I was pretty horrified, but we paid to get the exact dates we wanted, the convenience of flying out of our small airport and direct flights from ORD to Zurich. I've continued tracking the price and not once has it gone below what I paid, mostly fluctuating between $3K to more than $4K apiece. Today running about $3,250. Tomorrow it might be $5,000. Not sure how much fuel is playing into it, but I'm guessing it's not going down to where I pulled the trigger.

What does "spiked" mean? If the ticket went up 6% since last year and inflation was 3% did the ticket price spike?

i just checked the prices for a trip I have to take back the US in July and they are about what I paid last July. Might be 3 or maybe 5% higher. But there are so many variables I really cant compare the two costs: day of week going and day of week coming, how far in advance I purchased it last time. Over the years I have signed up for notices when flights change prices and over the course of a year the prices bounce all over the place. So maybe last year i hit it lucky and this year I didnt? Google says they price is average for the trip. My gut feeling which isnt worth anything is that things are 5 or 6% more expensive than more or less a similar situation and timing and dates and luck in buying last year. If I were correct is that a "spike"?

For the sake of analysis it has the be the same flight on the same day. Any increase in price that would cause a reasonable person to think, “that’s a lot more money”. Not talking single digit percent increases.

One more data point.

Purchased RT DEN-IST-ATH in economy for a hiking trip in Greece on Turkish Airlines for $623 - this is for the early part of Sept (1-13).
Ticket purchased on Jan 6. Price is exactly the same today.

In fact, I'm finding lots of 600$ tickets to Eastern Europe and even some to Scandinavia for early Sept from DEN. Tickets are even cheaper out of Chicago (around $603).

Arnold those going to the tourist hotspots will always suffer more exploitation than those doing Europe's back doors (Eastern Europe). I found tickets from Budapest to DC for about the same as I paid last year.

A price spike is a sudden, extreme, and rapid upward or downward
movement in an asset's price within a very short timeframe. Often
visualized as a tall, thin candle on a chart, it signifies intense,
short-lived volatility, usually triggered by unexpected news, earnings
reports, or rapid shifts in supply/demand.

Adding a data point - while some airfares are definitely going up due to fuel prices, I'm seeing others come down.

The business class ticket I bought almost two weeks ago is now down by $200 and is selling for $2,080. I continue to see lots of cheap airfares in Sept and Oct in the mid 600s RT in economy to Europe. Some of these are on Turkish which means no bag fees but you will pay to select your seats.

Business and First Class seats are a lot more stable in terms of pricing, and there are current sales out there for such seats (even in peak summer travel times).

It's the Economy and Premium Economy stuff that is more volatile, more apt to shift right now. While some gateway cities may see some drops (e.g. Denver), others are seeing rises - especially the higher-volume gateways (NYC, Chicago, Boston, IAD) where supply is dropping so it's possible to increase fares. And the fares that will get the highest markup? Economy and Premium Economy.

I did just check the latest fare on a ticket I bought during the recent BA/AA Business and First Class sale, and the fare is up about 35% from what I paid (on a mixed r/t ticket from JFK to GVA - First to GVA, Business back to JFK). The same route in Premium Economy went up 40%, so... it's happening, perhaps not on every route.

Airlines are using a combination of cutting flights, raising prices, and instituting fuel surcharges in response to the rise in jet fuel prices. Jet fuel prices have risen from $85 a barrel to $200 a barrel. Cutting flights/routes decreases supply while demand remains high. Economics makes it clear that prices will have to adjust for the financial stability of the airlines.

Yes. Looking for a flight to PR and it went from 400 to 600 after the Iran war started. I probably will just bite the bullet as it’s going to get worse instead of better.

Common sense tends to make me think prices are up. Buy there are so many forces at play that I am not going to pretend to understand....

I just checked BUD to IAH RT for a week in July. I can do it for $1.068.00. ... well, that's good. Google flights says that the average is $900 to $1400 for the route. Another graph shows, for the route, thr rates are the lowest in over 60 days.

Airlines buy their fuel in advance at an agreed rate so that they are not subjected to fluctuations. Of course, once that period has elapsed they then have to negotiate at the current rates. Therefore flight fares will reflect the price an airline is currently paying for fuel so I expect prices not to be impacted too much until further down the line when airlines will need to renegotiate prices.

JC, yes, they might bump a few cents in now to possition themselves down the line. Who knows. The point really is that there are so many factors affecting price and every airline is going to address those factors differently and choose or not choose to take this or that risk based on a larger business plan. Who the heck am I to make a prediction? Impossible. I, and most of us, have a better chance of predicting the outcome of the next elections in France.

Then there is the "how do you know". Well last year I bought a ticket from JFK to LHR and it was $200 less; that means nothing. Everyone for S&G's should pick a flight from their home town airport to some place in Europe that they love. For the date of the flight pick something at least 9 months out. A Christmas market trip. Then have Google Flights track the prices for you. Watch it as it goes up and down daily, sometimes by hundreds of dollars. When you select that flight GoogleFlights will show you the cost changes over the last 10 to 60 days depending on the flight. Here is an example where the price to Europe for the Christmas markets has gone down in the last two months.

JC, yes, they might bump a few cents in now to possition themselves down the line. Who knows. The point really is that there are so many factors affecting price and every airline is going to address those factors differently and choose or not choose to take this or that risk based on a larger business plan.

I think this is the crux of challenge. With dynamic pricing everywhere in travel - airfares, hotels, cruises, trains, car rentals, whatever - folks can be seeing "spikes" when gasoline, diesel, oil, etc is low, high, or normal. If some folks are stretched financially, they may cut back on non-essentials, and what does that do? It changes the pricing dynamics of those non-essentials, and all of a sudden, a price is LOWER for a moment, but then folks notice, jump in, and the pricing dynamics kick it up HIGHER. The airlines, in this case, are pricing their product to sell at 100% capacity (and probably well over that percentage in most cases). If a flight is NOT approaching their threshold for occupancy, they can cut the pricing or they can, in many cases, "cancel" a flight and move folks automatically to other relatively comparable flights they have. For fuel pricing, they can often consolidate flights to their newest and/or most fuel efficient planes, and idle others - cutting capacity, but also minimizing fuel price impacts. But they have a bunch of tools they can use, and all aimed at maximizing their revenue/profit/shareholder value/market share/whatever.

Like you write, there are so many variables in any moment that a clear picture of the INDIVIDUAL impact of these things will be scattershot from "I paid way more than I expected" to "I found a great deal". It will come out in the OVERALL numbers - but even those will be pulling from a variety of data points that don't create an easy A+B-C=D equation, but rather one of those big chalkboard ones that make many folks' eyes glaze over.

Common sense leads us to think, "higher fuel" leads to "higher prices" but that's really only true in less complex situations. With all the variables, these changes take awhile to be distributed across massive economies. Winners and losers (and simple spectators) will emerge, but even then, definitively showing an A -> B (eg. higher oil prices -> higher airfares) will remain arguable.

I just looked at one of my husband's flights for this summer. We booked it at 62,500 points and now it is 57,500 points. I will definitelly be calling on that!

I called Alaska and without batting an eye, they put the miles back into my husbands account:)

Excellent. And oil prices are down a little today.

Excellent. And oil prices are down a little today.

Drat - Back up! Not that it matters, but at some point, it might.

Yup, WTI Crude is pushing $100 again. My 401(k) says thank you.

Yup, WTI Crude is pushing $100 again. My 401(k) says thank you.

Sadly (but I'm not retired) my diversified 401(k) and other investments feel otherwise :(

And, as an active regional traveller, filling the tank on my truck and pulling my trailer starts to fell "ugh", but if it was just the gas prices, I'd shrug that off with no real lasting bad taste. However, coupled with the "it comes from all directions" scattershot hitting my discretionary spending, travel - local, national, and international - gets the squeeze. Is it flights that prove the "squeeze"? Sometimes. But the many components that make up travel all seem to be open for unpleasant swings, and I'm starting to feel the pinch despite an unfair starting advantage to most folks around the world. If it's popping up on my radar regularly, it must be driving a great deal of folks to rethink not just discretionary spending, but even essential spending.

Coming back to airfares, like I've written, the dynamic pricing will take care of the airlines hitting their profit numbers especially after they mitigate things as much as they can with idling inefficient planes (fewer low hanging fruits all the time, though), consolidation of flights, staffing tweaks, and other stuff. We'll pay what we pay for flights - supply & demand will mostly set the price - and we'll see over the next few weeks how quickly prices across travel change, and flights prices may be better if a large swath of the public are using their discretionary money to pay for non-discretionary overruns. Demand goes down, and those who can swoop in can be winners. Sure, it may create ripple effects down the line, but that too will have winners and losers, and I'm still hoping to win more than I lose, and my guess is most folks on the RS forums are positioned to win as well.

My retirement is tied up in West Texas Intermediate, Goats and an Iranian Pistachio Farm owned by a friend; so until the world changes a bit, I am forced to live and travel around Europe. I guess I should have invested in some of that electronic stuff, but I dont buy what i dont understand. Fortunately my Windows 95 and Netscape do fine with this site. But some day I am going to be in for a world of hurt.

But it is outstanding news that we now have an expert in the airline business among us. As I noted above there are so many variables that can impact a ticket price that it would take a guy like you to come up with definitive prediction. My best guess was to just carry-on and hope for the best.

My best guess was to just carry-on and hope for the best.

Always the best approach! "Hopes" (and "dreams") can really make this stuff work out for the best - and that's my professional opinion, so you can bank on it!

I thought it was a good pun

I got invited on a trip to Armenia and Georgia in September. I checked the flights today. According to Google the Budapest to Tbilisi leg is well below average at about 200€ and the Yerevan to Budapest return was dead center on average at about 300€ for the cheapest cabin. To those you have to add 60€ for seats (or let Turkish Air assign them for free). Carry-on and a checked bag come with the ticket. But not refundable. For that it’s about 275€ more. So, if I do this, do I feel lucky or do I spend 275€ to maybe not lose 560€ or do I self-insure?

I thought it was a good pun

It was, but also now I'm triggered regarding luggage costs! And how that plays into my formula for airfare costs and ways to hide rising costs!!!

The new generation gets triggered easily. My culture triggered invoves firearms.

So far, I have purchased

• Budapest to Rome and back in April at what Google says is the low end of average. But I just bought the a week ago. So not much advance purchase. No checked bags.
• Budapest to Podgorica and back in June for what Google says is below average, but I got those a month ago. No checked bags.

I have priced as part of planning for

• Budapest to Chisinau (Odesa) and back for July. Currently Google says they are on the low side of average. No checked bags.
• Budapest to IAD and back in August which Google says are at the low end of average. Checked bag comes with it. Probably wont use it.
• Budapest to Tbilisi and Yerevan to Budapest for September which combined are below average according to Google. Checked bag comes with it. Probably wont use it.