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No matter what strategies you use to try to score the lowest airfares, one thing is for sure: The cost of flying has gone up. In fact, a new report released today by Adobe Analytics shows Americans have spent $11 billion more on domestic flights to date this year, compared to the same pre-pandemic period in 2019.
Domestic flight prices in October were 24 percent higher than in 2019. Travelers spent a total of $7.7 billion on domestic airfares last month, which is a 15 percent jump from October 2019. For its study, Adobe analyzed data from more than 150 billion web visits and consumer transactions from six of 10 U.S. airlines.
While bookings for domestic flights in 2022 have seen a small uptick of five percent, the data clearly illustrates that travelers are spending more on each flight: Through October 17, U.S. travelers spent a total of $76 billion on domestic flights, compared to $65 billion in 2019.
And consumers are starting to take note. Experts say soaring airfares are beginning to curb demand from travelers. “While overall demand has been strong, rising prices have naturally cooled spend a bit,” says Vivek Pandya, Adobe Digital Insights' lead analyst. Earlier this year, travelers kept booking flights despite smaller price increases, according to Pandya, but that's changing now. "When fuel and flight prices began to rise, demand cooled slightly and lowered pent-up consumer demand,” Pandya says.
As a result, last-minute bookings continue to be a rising trend, as consumers are likely waiting to see how prices fluctuate. That’s already seemingly true for Thanksgiving travel. Usually around 70 percent of flights for Thanksgiving are booked by the end of October, but those figures are currently down seven percent compared to 2019.
“We think that people have been waiting until Halloween is over, to see how prices are trending before they pull the trigger on Thanksgiving travel,” Pandya says. Despite the drop in average bookings, the amount spent so far on Thanksgiving flights is up by three percent, indicating prices are definitely elevated. For the Christmas travel period, domestic bookings for December are currently down 17 percent and spend is down 12 percent compared to 2019.
That said, there are some hopeful signs that travelers might start to feel relief from ever-rising prices. In September 2022, for example, average airfares were actually lower than in September 2019, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Statistics. “No question, there are plenty of expensive fares out there now, but there are far more cheap fares available now than there were in, say, May," says Scott Keyes of Scott’s Cheap Flights.
While bargain-hunting travelers might be holding off on booking, hoping for a better holiday travel deal, Keyes says those stellar down-to-the-wire prices that were available last year were likely a pandemic trend that won't be repeated. “Unlike in 2020 and 2021 when there were some last-minute winter holiday flights available, those are long gone in 2022.”