File photo for reference only

 

ANALYSIS | by Michael Bridge

 

With the government’s announcement canceling the requirement for the Thailand Pass, hotel quarantine and pre-travel Covid-19 tests, Thailand is expecting a surge in air traffic.

 

“Travel will see a strong resurgence because conditions [for entry] will return to almost pre-Covid normality’ said a CAAT director.

 

Signs of recovery emerged in the first quarter of this year, when Thailand saw a total of 11.26 million passengers, up 2.5 million from the previous quarter.

 

There were 108,987 flights throughout Thailand in the first quarter, up 21,277 from the previous quarter, according to CAAT.

 

It is anticipated that Thailand’s aviation market is likely to be “the most active” in Asia along with Singapore which have also followed the relaxation of entry regulations.

 

Domestic air travel is also recovering well thanks to relaxed rules, high vaccination rates, and the reduced severity of Omicron, he added.

 

However, the growing demand for air travel is being offset by fallout from the war between Russia and Ukraine, the CAAT chief said. 

 

The rising cost of fuel is adding to airlines’ costs and would likely force them to raise airfares in the second quarter of this year.

 

Crazy Price Rises

 

Well, his predictions seem to be coming true, as the urge to travel by a global population coming out of the pandemic and lockdowns is gaining momentum.

 

This coupled with the fuel hikes have made airlines look at the budgets and schedules and inevitably we the passengers must pay more.

 

Only a few months ago it was possible to book a return ticket from Bangkok to London Gatwick for THB19,000 return with Scoot, the Singapore-owned budget airline.

 

Now if you wish to book a return ticket with Scoot for travel in July the fare quoted online is THB31,400.

 

Hardly a budget rate anymore!

 

According to online booking system Kayak the cheapest flights out of London to Bangkok were flying with Thai Airways and ITA Airways at THB44,663. https://www.kayak.co.th/flights/

 

And the total trip each way with various stops is 25 hours, not exactly relaxing, more like an endurance test.

In the past, I have flown with Qatar Airways to London via Doha for around Thb25,000.

 

On their website the lowest return fare offered in July was THB56,340.

 

Fares in Vietnam rise by the hour

 

Airfares have risen in the last several months, with customers reporting hikes within hours, as summer travel demand booms after two years of Covid-19.

 

A media representative for budget airline Vietjet said fuel accounts for around 40 percent of operating costs. When fuel prices crossed $100 per barrel, airlines’ operating costs increased by 50 percent, she added.

International airfares have risen by 25-30 percent, with the HCMC-South Korea and HCMC-San Francisco routes recording prices of VND10-13 million and VND41-45 million, respectively.

The US fares up by 50%

More Americans are also taking to the skies this summer than there are available plane seats, driving up ticket prices as airlines grapple with surging fuel costs, staffing challenges and smaller fleets.

Airfares at American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines — the three largest domestic carriers — shot up nearly 50% for the week ending May 23 compared to a year ago, according to an analysis by Cowen, a financial services firm.

It is also expensive to go by road for domestic trips, with petrol at an all time high, so perhaps the answer is to head for the railway stations.

If you like an adventure, I suppose you could have flown to Hanoi and got a train to Kunming and then taken the trans-Siberian express to Moscow and trains to London.

One problem here….the trains are not running through Russia for obvious reasons.

So maybe you will need to book a slow boat to Europe instead.

 

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Hey, nice article, good information and handy to know. 

 

I usually fly once a month, my company provides airline tickets for me, but lots of frequent travelers here.

 

Thanks 

Anyone who tried to book air travel anywhere in the last six months knew this already. The days of cheap fares are gone. Question for this forum is how much will it affect travel to Thailand? (not so much from Bangkok).

 

my mate just came over for a two week holiday to catch up with family - cost 97K return. ouch.

Isn't that a good thing, to apply the true cost to our carbon footprint?

13 hours ago, Boomer6969 said:

Isn't that a good thing, to apply the true cost to our carbon footprint?

Are you mad , who cares?

Biggest problem from US is availability of flights. When my wife flew out on 6/14 the cheapest tickect was through Doha of all places and $US1,500 (R/T) which would have been 30 hours. Went with Philippines Air at $US2,300 (R/T). I fly out out August on Philippines at $US1,500 (R/T) When we flew in February it was $US800 (R/T) on ANA/United. Just like everything else, the prices have doubled.

1 hour ago, soi3eddie said:

Anyone who tried to book air travel anywhere in the last six months knew this already. The days of cheap fares are gone. Question for this forum is how much will it affect travel to Thailand? (not so much from Bangkok).

 

We booked Southwest  Airlines 2 months ago , $1200 for a family of 4 to Hawaii.  It was cheap and flew out of San Jose where we lived. Spending our summer vacation, 3 weeks,  on the tropical and beautiful Hawaiian islands.  The customer service and hospitality has been awesome from hotels to restaurants and everything in between. 

Just booked for November with Royal Jordanian air from Heathrow to Bangkok return late December for

£ 540 inc 23kg which was the cheapest by around £200 . Not sure about the airline mind you but only me etc and flight times are okay . Outward spread over 16 hrs and return nearer 20.

If you look ahead to August for LHR-BKK, compared to the July quotes provided (which seem reasonably accurate) better deals are to be had in the mid-upper THB 30k range.

 

It's a supply and demand issue, as airlines and airports (many issues with the latter) ramp up operations again, whilst more travellers are coming back into the market. 

 

For a while at least, the days of booking tickets a few days or weeks before travelling are over (unless you have money to burn..), and you will be advised to be booking a few months before travel to actually be able to get a ticket and potentially one at a more reasonable price.

15 hours ago, webfact said:

Only a few months ago it was possible to book a return ticket from Bangkok to London Gatwick for THB19,000 return with Scoot, the Singapore-owned budget airline.

 

Now if you wish to book a return ticket with Scoot for travel in July the fare quoted online is THB31,400.

 

Hardly a budget rate anymore!

 

Not UK school summer holiday vs UK school holiday ! Always been the case, always will. 

 

12 hours ago, RichardColeman said:

Not UK school summer holiday vs UK school holiday ! Always been the case, always will. 

 

I see return flights from lhr 31st august return 30th september with cheaper airlines with long stop overs from £462 ie Saudia 37hours flight time on one leg, £462, Gulf air 19hour flight time £591, qatar flight time 19 hours £634, Thai air direct flight from £704, Finn air 17hours flight time from £710, Emirates 15hour flight time £802, 

so you could be correct, lets hope so

Fares change daily or even hourly on different consolidators sites.

I was quoted a fare BKK-SIN-LHR return with Singapore Airlines for 29000 baht for next month with no more than a 2 hour stop in SIN.

I suspect it wasn't around for long, you just have to bash the keyboard on multiple sites to get something reasonable.

A bit of effort can save you a considerable sum.

4 hours ago, webfact said:

Signs of recovery emerged in the first quarter of this year, when Thailand saw a total of 11.26 million passengers, up 2.5 million from the previous quarter.

Surely this is a mistake in the accounting of passengers, unless it is including domestic.  If you read it as international tourists, like I did at first, Thailand will be saying tourism is scheduled to beat the 2019 numbers and they will have over 45 million arri Al's this year....story is poorly written but has a TAT spin on it.

 

Airfares are increasing because of oil and fuel costs as well as staffing issues, where they are paying more for all aspects including overtime.  A friend working for United is regularly working 20 extra hours a week.

4 hours ago, soi3eddie said:

Anyone who tried to book air travel anywhere in the last six months knew this already. The days of cheap fares are gone.

Nothing changed why are you saying that? I've heard this in the news media so maybe you're repeating it from them but this kind of propaganda is like magic spells, if you repeat it over and over again it becomes true.

39 minutes ago, ThailandRyan said:

A friend working for United is regularly working 20 extra hours a week.

what happened to all the old employees? I hear these stories often but I don't understand how people can decided to simple go home and not work as if that's ever been an option at any point in human history.

Two adjacent headlines on AseanNow today.... And I checked - the second headline refers to international, not domestic travel

Flights have gone crazy from where I live in the US. Prepandemic I was paying $600-800 (granted that was through China). Other airlines were $800-1000 then. Since Thailand started reopening, I was paying $800-1000. Now flights are $1000-1200! ????

I think the days of cheap flights International wise is over unless you want long stay overs in the Gulf states ect 

The price of oil is causing problems world wide on the cost of flying 

On the bright side  it will lower the Carbon footprint keep the Eco people happy ???? 

 

33 minutes ago, NorthernRyland said:

Nothing changed why are you saying that? I've heard this in the news media so maybe you're repeating it from them but this kind of propaganda is like magic spells, if you repeat it over and over again it becomes true.

I beg to differ, a huge amount has changed since late December 2021, at that time I was checking flights to the UK for early August 2022 and could book a return FIRST class ticket with Emirates for 118,500 THB, in fact a friend of mine did so and flies in a couple of weeks.

Unfortunately for me, I didn't book it, as at that time it really wasn't clear what the future held Covid wise.

Roll forward to May 2022 and I started looking again, Emirates Biz class was now 130k +, I did end up booking a biz class return with Oman for 99,505 THB which was by far the best price available at that time. I would normally fly in to to MAN and out of LHR, that option isn't available this time with Oman, as they are not flying in to MAN right now, so it means a night in a hotel close to LHR and a 160 mile drive the following day, such is life!

My last trip to the UK was late July 2019 where I paid 58k return biz class with Oman (BKK-MAN-LHR-BKK via MCT), so yes, a lot has changed.

44 minutes ago, NorthernRyland said:

what happened to all the old employees? I hear these stories often but I don't understand how people can decided to simple go home and not work as if that's ever been an option at any point in human history.

Out on covid leave, because they are ill, it has created a shortage at many locales.

9 hours ago, Mattd said:

My last trip to the UK was late July 2019 where I paid 58k return biz class with Oman (BKK-MAN-LHR-BKK via MCT), so yes, a lot has changed.

I know the prices changed but nothing structural has actually changed. When people start flying again flight patterns will resume and prices will come down.

 

I just got a flight to Colorado USA for $1300/USD.  The path was not normal but not actually a terrible flight and the prices is about $250 more than usual, plus I need to get to BKK from Chiang Mai which is another annoying thing.

 

it will take some time for normal procedures to resume but that doesn't the mean "the days of ___ are over" like some global think tanks would like you to believe.

2 minutes ago, NorthernRyland said:

I know the prices changed but nothing structural has actually changed. When people start flying again flight patterns will resume and prices will come down.

I think that rather depends on where you are flying to, the war in Ukraine is making flights to and from Europe far more difficult for the airlines and the distance further, which I guess adds to the cost.

Fuel costs have risen tremendously which is certainly not helping the ticket cost.

From what I can see, the flights are actually reasonably full of passengers, which should justify more flights.

The other issue is that airlines and airports are critically low on staff, not just due to sick leave, a lot of redundancies happened over the last couple of years and the companies just assumed that everyone would rush back to their old job, this has not been the case, for example, in Europe (and US) the main reason for the big delays is shortage of staff, especially security, check in, baggage handling etc. where the salaries are close to minimum wage levels and those who left have found better paying employment.

It takes months to train new people, those working airside have to go through rigorous security clearance checks etc. etc.

Some airlines cannot put more flights on right now, a lot of the senior pilots elected to retire or take other employment, which has left the airlines with a pilot shortage and it takes years to replace each one, cabin crew are in short supply etc. etc. all of which will eventually increase each airline's overhead as the the only way to solve this is to employ, train and pay competitive salaries.

5 hours ago, soi3eddie said:

Anyone who tried to book air travel anywhere in the last six months knew this already. The days of cheap fares are gone. Question for this forum is how much will it affect travel to Thailand? (not so much from Bangkok).

 

If you booked 2 months In advance tickets were still cheap up until about a month or two ago. 
 

$600 for a ticket from bangkok to Toronto up until May 

but now it’s $4000

6 hours ago, webfact said:

Only a few months ago it was possible to book a return ticket from Bangkok to London Gatwick for THB19,000 return with Scoot, the Singapore-owned budget airline.

I booked a return flight to my home country back in April for October, it cost me 18,260 baht on sale, today it's on sale again at 22,595 baht, that's a 23.74% increase and on sale, WOW. 

 

Someone here on another topic said I was made to book so far in advance because we could go into lock down again by then and the airline could go bust by then, and my reply was something on the lines of you tink to muk.

 

The above said, there are 4 of us travelling so that's a great saving, even on the current sale price because those tickets usually sell for around 28,000 baht when not on sale. 

1 hour ago, NorthernRyland said:

Nothing changed why are you saying that? I've heard this in the news media so maybe you're repeating it from them but this kind of propaganda is like magic spells, if you repeat it over and over again it becomes true.

Oil prices have increased markedly, just look at gas prices at the pump. That means Aviation fuel, Jet A1 , will have increased. Fuel prices do get passed on to the passengers, its no secret, as it makes up approximately 40% of the standard running cost of an airline.

https://www.iata.org/en/publications/economics/fuel-monitor/

Just booked Qatar BKK/LGW return.....33,500 baht...so did quite well by the looks of it.

Nice they mentioned ITA airways (Al Italia) as the lowest price option.

 

Just in past month they had incident where both pilots fall sound asleep flying over France, so ATC dispatched jets to check up on them, believing plane was hijacked, and another crew damaged Air France plane on tarmac in JFK before flight and took off with damaged wing, claiming they weren't involved.

 

Wonder what will be the next news bulletin...

I will not be booking air travel out of Thailand for at least the next 2 years.   Its just good luck and planning that I live in a tropical location anyway and have no real need or desire to spend the money , or endure the hassle of aircraft and airports. Just crack another beer and stay by my pool and watch the mayhem that is air travel at the moment, from as long a distance as possible. 

For my upcoming trip to San Francisco, I found return fares on SQ for 38k economy, 57k premium economy, and 113k for business class...all quite reasonable for this flight.