美国机票价格为何难以下降

If you're looking for travel bargains this summer, you might be out of luck. Airlines are spending billions of dollars more on fuel this year, and they're passing it along to customers. This is how much I paid round trip to go from Newark to Barcelona last year in late October. I looked up the same dates for this year and it is over $1,100. We're going to Chicago. Economy was $800 for two of us. We fly United a lot, but it's expensive.

All of them are. The four biggest U.S. airlines control more than 82% of the seats flown by U.S. carriers. That's up almost two and a half percentage points since 2022. And they've never had this much pricing power. Look at how much unit revenue, meaning how much airlines are getting for their seats, has gone up in the second quarter compared with the same time last year. Fuel prices have come down from recent highs, but executives say that they don't expect fares to come down too, mainly because they're seeing that many customers are more than willing to keep paying these higher fares.

What are you doing here in New York? Bon Jovi concert. If I had taken an earlier flight, like an earlier day, I would have maybe saved 100 bucks. It's Bon Jovi, I didn't care. We've seen no resistance to to higher fares in this revenue environment. Demand is incredibly strong. Our consumer is financially very healthy. A tremendous amount of wealth accumulation. When you ask our consumers what is their main purpose and use of discretionary funds, they'll say we want to participate in the experience economy, with air travel being the number one.

The industry lost what was once its biggest discount competitor in May: Spirit Airlines. With the collapse of Spirit Airlines, tens of millions of affordable airline seats evaporated overnight from the US market. The airline had been profitable for years, but there were a lot of challenges. There were changing consumer tastes that went more up, market costs were going up for labor, for aircraft, for maintenance, and that ended up biting the airline.

And ultimately, the airline could not survive in the new environment. Oil is higher now, but I want to be clear, it's lower than it was about a week and a half ago in that July peak, we've had a 40% move from the lows to the highs and where we are today. Truly stunning. Prices have been volatile because of blockages of a key shipping channel for fuel out of the Middle East. The on again, off again cease fires with Iran have also made prices extremely volatile.

The prices that airlines thought that they would be paying for jet fuel at the beginning of July were very different. By the middle of the month. Before the war started, it was probably like $270. But I usually also fly southwest, so it's a little cheaper. This time. I flew United and so yeah, I played $340. We'll talk about about oil prices. The reality is that airport fees and maintenance expenses and labor, all those have gone up much more even than the price of oil.

And in fact, even with prices today, airfares are still down about 13% compared in real terms compared to where they were pre-COVID. But just because all. Of the airlines are charging you more, it doesn't mean that they're all doing well. Delta and United account for almost all of the industry's profits. We posted a $1.4 billion profit, 9% margins, and came in above the top end of the guidance range. And to put that in context, we estimate over 60% of the industry's profits this quarter will be Delta, despite only having 20% of the market share.

And that's reflected in its stock performance. Here's a look at the four biggest U.S. airlines over the past five years. But as the cost of business keeps going up and airfare follows, airline executives say the key to their success is going to be customers willingness to keep paying more to fly, and also for those customers to spend more on those lucrative airline credit cards. We're giving our customers the reason to buy up, giving them the reason.

So and that's all rooted in a better customer experience, a network that gets them to where they want to go, leading in loyalty and really making sure that they have the ability to buy up. Even though deals are harder to come by this year, I do have some tips. If you can travel in the off season when schools are back in session. Also look for midweek departures, say Tuesday or Wednesday. And there are also tools now that will help you optimize your credit card points and your airline miles.