To be furious about these prices

[Atissue123]

Seriously...

Flight to Corfu (3.5 hours away) during May half £905 PER PERSON (Jet2)
....The week after £307 (also JET2)

There are some marginally cheaper ones if you go Fri-Fri or whatever (still £750 per person) This is flight only, no seats, bags or meals, no accommodation included.

I am outraged. Why is having school age children penalised in this way by airlines? Who can afford to spend almost £4000 just on flights?

I realise I am lucky to even be able to afford a holiday, but it won't be this!

I was joking... but also I can no longer feel my toes and have spent £15 on heating today...

Because it barely does. Cutting it will make no difference.

We used to go abroad regularly, often a few times a year and always at Christmas but since having become Special Guardians for our Great Grandson some years ago foreign holidays have become exponentially more expensive and are now eye watering in comparison pro rata! 😡
At a squeeze we could still afford it, but I would just feel 'ripped off' and victimised at how much the prices increase in the school holidays and, as I have become older with a few health issues, I almost get palpitations thinking about the actual hassle of all the complicated arrangements and bureaucratic nonsense we would have to deal with! Thanks Brexit?!🙄
Not to mention the possibility of flights or even the holiday being cancelled at the last minute!! 😱

Exactly this. ALL aviation only accounts for about 2% of carbon emissions. Heating and cooling accounts for over 50%.

It’s just infinitesimal.

Emissions from aviation are projected to grow to 22% of global emissions by 2050 given the growth in flying as more people move into middle incomes around the world. It's the most carbon intensive way to travel. Of course we all want to go on holiday and see the world. But it's a great idea to try to travel by other means too, if you can. Sneering at people raising climate change as an issue we should all think about seems pretty insane given the news at the moment.

Interested to know what stats say that is the full price, and based on what?
Do you mean that's the actual cost to fly one person? What would the profit be?

I've flown to Vancouver for much less than that, I would be interested to know what the actual cost to the airline is v profit

Sadly it's always been the same, awful I know. 😖

If excess profits exist in a market, competition enters.

Honestly, such catty, sarcastic comments. I’m sure the OP understands supply & demand but there’s so many organisations that just take it too far. As long as there are people willing to pay that for a mediocre experience it will continue. The OP probs only wants to take her kids a break at a reasonable price and is hit with total sarcasm. What’s happened that everyone is soooo mean… you can always just not comment..,,

As long as people continue to prioritise their “making memories” overseas holidays and are willing to pay then airlines will continue to charge.

If people boycott overseas school holidays, demand would even out, so would costs.

Basic market laws as PP said.

Why would we not comment? Her op is ridiculous and this is aibu.

Just go the week after and pay the fine

Isn't cruising the worst?

The actual cost of a commercial flight needs to take into account fixed costs that are required year round for keeping the plane, staff and flight code available, as well as the marginal costs of flying each additional passenger. Those fixed costs dwarf the marginal costs.

The marginal cost of a passenger is (very crudely) the cost of the additional fuel required to fly the additional weight, plus a bit extra for any consumables on the plane, and any airport charges which are generally added as tax to the ticket price. But all the infrastructure required for commercially available flights - significant airport costs, buying and maintaining the planes, highly trained staff, moving planes so they are available, etc. and even the diplomatic efforts to secure flight codes, are required regardless of how many tickets you sell at any particular time of year. If you want your high season tickets to be available - it’s you that has to cover these when they aren’t wanted by others even though you aren’t using them all year.

If you averaged the cost of running a commercially available flight, the tickets in the off season would seem to be being subsidised by the tickets in the high season. But if you charged the same price for all the tickets, so few people would fly in the off season that the average cost per ticket sold would soar well beyond the current high season prices. This is because the cost of keeping the flight running during the off season so that is available in the high season would not be being offset by all those low season tickets. To get the price back down, if you can’t discount off season tickets, you’d have cut the available seats year round to a level that off season ticket sales can sustain. So there will be fewer seats available, making it less likely you’ll get one, and probably higher overall prices as less overall demand would mean lower economies of scale. Which is how things were several decades ago when airlines didn’t have such large differentials in their ticket prices and flew with a lower overall passenger load factor.

Edited to add: Last time I saw a profit estimate for commercial airlines it was less than £2 a ticket, that was about a decade ago, I think.

YANBU. I think it's blatantly sexist to charge triple the normal flight cost during school breaks as it disadvantages mothers and teachers who are mainly female.

If you stay in the uk for your school holiday holiday you get gouged too and that’s with no benefit of experiencing a different culture and no guarantee of any decent weather. It’s bollocks - if you have kids and want a holiday without a fine you have to pay over the odds regardless of where you go and what you do.

Well you DO have the option to take them out of school a couple of days earlier (no fine below 5 days, so you could take them out Thursday/Friday and not risk a fine). Or holiday in the UK...nothing wrong with that.

Some of us (teachers) don't have that option so have to suck it up...or as in my case, stay local 🤷‍♀️ Not been overseas for about 10 years as I just can't afford it (also single, so single supplements apply too 😔)

But if you book when they come out they are a lot cheaper, so some forward planning would make it less costly.

‘It’s capitalism’, ‘it’s demand’ - they could just run an extra flight couldn’t they, if the demand is so high.

Of course they could! They could just magic up another plane, and another couple of pilots and flight crew, and magically create some take off and landing slots at airports and inrease capacity in the hotels!

Oh wait...

Oh I would love to be around MN when this happens!

I assume this is a sarcasm. Owing to the amount of other daft comments on here, I'm having some doubts now!

Surely people know that holidays are more expensive during school holidays before they have children?

And as stated, there are only so many holidays. Even if the prices were artificially levelled out, not everyone who wanted to would be able to holiday during the six weeks.

🙄

Why the eye roll? Your post was nonsense.

I don't take holidays when school is out, so I am not rushing for the best prices in those weeks anymore. Not a teacher, or a parent, and very happy to leave everyone who needs those weeks to get their preferred dates.I am very happy to travel in the off seasons and quieter periods.