When was air travel cheapest?

Factual Questions
1

What with the rising price of oil these days, airlines are adding fuel surcharges to their ticket prices, and air travel is becoming more expensive. It was expensive in the beginning as well. Somewhere in the middle, it was least expensive; there was the tourist boom that the 1960s brought, and I seem to recall reading of people going overseas then for basically the wages from summer jobs.

So, what’s the hard data? When was an economy-class fare from, to pick an example, New York to London, least expensive as a proportion of the average person’s income? Would it make more sense to compare first-class?

2

This comment is not quite relevant, but I’d like to toss it out. In 1977, most airlines would allow you to take an extra piece of luggage for $1. I used to go back to school from L.A. to UC Davis for less than a $100 and take my entire college possessions ( Close to 20 boxes including my pretty huge fucking speakers, all separate stereo components, bicycle, and tons of crap).

Those were the days my friend!

3

Sometime in the late 80s would be a good contender. My sister and I used to catch a Southwest flight from Houston to Laredo for $19 each way apiece. That was pretty cheap, even then.

4

Typical fares between LAX and SFO were around $16 on a walk-up basis, in the mid to late 1960s. There’s even a song by Country Joe And The Fish where the singer mentions a kindhearted soul in L.A. who gave him $20, enough for him to fly home to SF.

As a high schooler in the early 1970s, I was fortunate enough to go on two HS/college tours to Europe, one to Spain and one to Italy. Each lasted eight days, was all inclusive, and cost in the mid $500 to mid $600s range. Of course that didn’t include things bought along the way, but as a kid that age one usually doesn’t spend a lot on souvenirs, and they watched us like hawks to prevent us from drinking alcohol.

You have to figure that the airfare portion of those trips was an incredibly modest $300 or so, and this was from California.

5

The complete analysis would be complex in many ways because airlines have published coach fares that they rarely charge and they price tickets by seat according to complex algorithms. The mid 1990’s were cheap. It was easy to get round-trip tickets from Boston to Western Europe in the $300 range and sometimes less. I don’t think I paid over $400 for a round-trip ticket back then even to the Caribbean or Central America.

6

I think that economy-class fares are actually quite cheap today.

If you adjust for inflation the historic prices others have mentioned, they’re not so cheap. Spectre of Pithecanthropus mentioned a mid-1960s $16 LAX-SFO fare, which is about $105 today and the $300 flight to Europe from the early 1970s is about $1,500 today.

7

Flights from JFK to San Diego used to cost $99 just 4 years ago. From San Diego to Hawaii $99 just a few years before that. That had to be some sort of low point.

8

[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus]
Typical fares between LAX and SFO were around $16 on a walk-up basis, in the mid to late 1960s. There’s even a song by Country Joe And The Fish where the singer mentions a kindhearted soul in L.A. who gave him $20, enough for him to fly home to SF.

As a high schooler in the early 1970s, I was fortunate enough to go on two HS/college tours to Europe, one to Spain and one to Italy. Each lasted eight days, was all inclusive, and cost in the mid $500 to mid $600s range. Of course that didn’t include things bought along the way, but as a kid that age one usually doesn’t spend a lot on souvenirs, and they watched us like hawks to prevent us from drinking alcohol.

You have to figure that the airfare portion of those trips was an incredibly modest $300 or so, and this was from California.
[/QUOTE]

It always depends on the market. Until fairly recently, minimum prices were always vastly higher within Europe than in the U.S. Now the situation is reversed.

Regarding Calilfornia air fares in the 1960s, the secret was the fact that SAN, LAX, SFO were served by PSA which, operating only within the state of CA, was regulated by the CA PUC, not by the CAB. The PUC set the maximum fares for the route based on a fair return to PSA investors, hence the <$20 fares from SAN-SFO (with or without a reservation). In contrast, the CAB set the minimum fares that airlines could charge. The result was that the minimum fare for a distance equivalent to SAN-SFO on the east coast was about 3 times as much as the maximum SAN-SFO fare. That situation ended when PSA started flying outside of CA. Federal degregulation soon followed.

I walked into the Loftleider (Icelandic) office in NYC in 1972 and bought a RT NYC-LUX youth fare ticket for no more than $178 including taxes, etc. In about 1977 or so I paid some ridiculous price (I think it was $99) for a standby seat from BOS to AMS and returned for the same fare to NYC from AMS. However, both of those trips required waits iin the airport because there was a high demand for the standby tickets.

I recently used 40,000 frequent flyer points to buy a ticket between Central Asia and Europe and had to pay, in addition to the 40,000 points, over $500 in “taxes.” I could have bought a ticket from a consolidator for about $900. I don’t know about the U.S., but in some places it seems that >half the cost of an airline ticket does not go to the airline. It’s a different world.

9

[QUOTE=Crawlspace]
Flights from JFK to San Diego used to cost $99 just 4 years ago. From San Diego to Hawaii $99 just a few years before that. That had to be some sort of low point.
[/QUOTE]

I just went from Minneapolis to San Diego last month, and it was $49 each way. Yes, it was a fare sale, not an everyday price, but an everyday price can range from $200 to $1500.

10

From the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Average Passenger Fares:

1960 - $138.96
1965 - $138.27
1970 - $138.65
1975 - $135.45
1980 - $123.18
1985 - $112.42
1990 - $117.94
1991 - $119.18
1992 - $114.14
1993 - $113.74
1994 - $112.60
1995 - $114.73
1996 - $124.53
1997 - $121.38
1998 - $119.86
1999 - $120.39
2000 - $121.27
2001 - $121.07
2002 - $123.02
2003 - $122.32
2004 - $124.41
2005 - $125.21
2006 - $126.20

The winner is 1985, with 1994 a close second.

Purrrr. Data!

(edit) Forgot to note that these fares are adjusted for inflation, in constant 2000 dollars. And I forget to note that these are the fares, and do not include fees. As noted above, they can increase the actual cost significantly.

11

Flying around Europe and the UK can be incredibly cheap if you book in advance.

12

meant to say - using internet booking.

13

[QUOTE=unspun]
Flying around Europe and the UK can be incredibly cheap if you book in advance.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, in a European and an Asian context, I’d say “now” is the answer. Many Euro airlines (Ryanair, EasyJet, FlyBe) and SEA ones (AirAsia, Tiger Air) offer a significant number of seats for around $2 - or in the case of AirAsia last month, nothing at all - two or so months in advance. Even if you have to buy tickets at the full flight price, you’re talking around £40 ($80) for a one-way ticket between two European capitals, though airport taxes do bump them up a bit.

Of course the service is shoddy, you tend to have to use obscure airports and if something goes wrong with timing or luggage you’re screwed, but those are the prices we currently ‘enjoy’.