The Gamble of Buying Plane tickets
This kind of thing comes up enough that I may make it into a serial.
If you know me, or read my blog much, you know that I often liken buying plane tickets to other forms of gambling.
I’ve got clients that rock, and they rock because they love to share travel with not only their kids, but also their grandkids. Anybody who does this rocks in my book and they go double because they do it in business class. That’s right, these folks, most years if they can, buy a lucky number 13, international business class tickets. In the summer of 2022 they decided to go to Slovenia by flying into Vienna and had a budget of $4k a ticket. They were well in advance, but had to go on Weekends the last week in May through June, because.. Well, kids and school. Trying to coordinate the schedules of one household is tough, that’s 3 times as hard and for 4? Yikes! This is another way the awesomeness of the entire family stands out. You really have to love travel and travel as a family to do this.
The other restrictions for the $4k a ticket is that they wanted to have one stop, in Europe (no USA connections because that’s smart when it’s possible) . There are no nonstop flights to Vienna, but in the summer, from Denver, there are seven to nine (depending on the day of the week) nonstops to Europe that puts over 250 to well over 300 seats to give us options. What is more, is that most of those aircraft have close to 50 business class seats. If we add in the flights operated directly to Vienna from other spots in the USA, we get to add another 5 flights, bringing us up to nearly 500 one stop business class seats to vienna one way or another.
$4k to Europe, for good flights, in the summer, is about as low as it gets. It will get a bit lower, but not much. (Usually) They want to fly together because at least half the point is that they go as a family. So they will need ¼ to ½ of a business class cabin for the use of their family. The smaller flights within Europe are of course, also a factor, but Airlines like to fill seats when it comes to transatlantic flights, especially in business class, so this is a more minor issue. A ¼ of a business class cabin at a lowest price on the ‘fare ladder’ is tough, half is really, really tough.
So this year, they want to go to Chile over winter break. It’s the double whammy down there of the holidays and being summer. A big part of Chilean Patagonia is only really accessible in the summer much like Alaska in the USA. (and summer in Patagonia is AMAZING)
Like $4k a person in European Summer, $5k to Argentina and Chile in their summer, for decent flights,even over the holidays is difficult, but far from impossible.
But it’s the 13 all on the same flights where this goes from “far from impossible” to “pretty close to impossible” and this is compared to via one stop in the summer to Vienna which is merely “difficult”.
Stipulation here is that they fly an American Carrier, for Santiago Chile, that leaves 1 United flight, 1 Delta and 2 operated by American Airlines. That’s 4. Even if we add in the flights from Foreign LaTam and include Mexico city, that number only goes up to 8. What is more, is that these flights have smaller business class cabins. This means we have only about 60 possible seats to work with here. If we add in the LaTam flights, that goes up to about 180 seats. In the comparison. Airline tickets are set by supply and demand, our supply of Ideal options to Chile is about 20% of what it is to Europe.
Then the real rub, all in the same cabin. For Europe, we had flights where we only had to get the lowest price on roughly 25% of the cabin. For Chile, we would be filling at least 45% to over 80% of the cabins…. At the lowest price. This is a complete guess, but I would think that for an airline to offer its lowest price for half of its inventory, we’d have to have a nearly empty aircraft at 45-30 days out. I suspect that if it was nearly empty at that point, the airline would likely look at cutting flights over cutting prices.
In both cases we had the lowest price, for a good schedule at a top time of year ($4k and $5k, respectively). For just 2 people, I’d put this as likely, especially with booking ahead of time and watching things carefully. At 4 people, this gets again, merely difficult, but for 13? Now we are talking nearly impossible.
Be that as it may be, I’m still recommending that these Folks don’t get these tickets now, and that’s because Delta and United may be considering pulling flights or perhaps have a fuel, airport or other matter resolved by a yearly contract still “up in the air”.
Look at this.
First we have AA, they have a flight from Dallas and one from Miami. AAis deeply entrenched in Central and South America. For AA, you need “I” seats for their cheapest Biz Class, “R” seats aren’t too bad and by the time we are left to “J” seats, we are set at at least $10k a ticket.
This is looking a little holiday tough, but it’s clear they are still flying.
Then we have United and Delta. For United, their lowest fares are in P and Z, respectively and Delta is Z and I. Both Airlines have a much higher starting price also. In theory, an AA ticket in business class could bottom out below $3k, where UA and DL are going to be a minimum of around $5.5k, but at the top end, they are all around the $10-11K mark. (Conversely, Europe in the summer can conceivably bottom out at around $2.5K, but can also conceivably get as high as over $18k per seat, and this also illustrated what more inventory can mean for pricing)
But, while AA is offering a normal sort of range of tickets. United and Delta are limited to just ridiculously high inventory (J in both cases) . Which to me says…. These airlines aren’t sure if they are going yet. While AA has 2 flights, that’s actually only about 30 seats in total, while the Delta and the United flights are larger, and each have 30. So, for these folks, for what they want. 2/3rds of the options haven’t even been released yet. As competitive as this market is during Christmas, I wouldn’t buy personally until those airlines fully opened availability.
Sad to say, but this may not be the year for a trip to Patagonia in the holidays. Boo! I hate that answer. I also should say that I don’t know everything and these clients go to Chile fairly often. Maybe they have seen prices drop or have some insight i don’t have. Gosh, I sure hope so. Chile is one of the 3 places in the world that I could sincerely move to and be happy. I really love it there and that’s an amazing time of year
