February 26th - Are Boeing going to cost holidaymakers more for European holidays?
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 26 February 2024
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Could your holiday flight cost more because of an inflight scare and a problem with contaminated “powder metal”? Delays in Boeing aircraft deliveries because of safety concerns, combined with an issue affecting some Airbus planes, mean some airlines are struggling to fulfill their planned operations. That could mean air fares in Europe will rise by as much as 10 percent, according to the boss of Europe’s biggest budget airline. So, should travelers book their summer flights now to avoid further fare hikes?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. |
| 0:05.5 | It's Monday the 26th of February and as you may have seen on the independent website or perhaps heard on other media, |
| 0:13.4 | your flight could cost more because of problems with aircraft. |
| 0:19.4 | I've been looking into this all day and I think I can now bring you some |
| 0:24.2 | answers. Could your fare be going up by as much as 10%? What lies behind it? And should you book |
| 0:32.8 | your summer flight now to avoid further fair hikes? Well, let's see. I'm going to take you back |
| 0:40.7 | almost two years. It was the 17th of March, 2022. COVID travel restrictions were finally lifted |
| 0:48.5 | across most of the world and everybody wanted to go travelling. There was a huge surge in demand for flights as people |
| 0:56.2 | sought to make up for lost family trips, beach holidays, city breaks, adventures. The airline industry |
| 1:04.0 | has pretty much ever since been struggling to keep pace with demand. And of course, at the same time, airlines have been |
| 1:13.2 | taking advantage of that to put up fares. They went up by an average of one sixth on Ryanair |
| 1:20.3 | last summer and many of us, I think, are going to feel that we pay an awful lot more. I'm |
| 1:24.9 | typically expecting to pay about 50% more on what I was paying before |
| 1:29.0 | the COVID pandemic. You might think, here we are, things must be getting back on an even keel this |
| 1:36.7 | year, but according to the latest figures on flights from Eurocontrol, the pan-European air traffic control body, well, there were 8% fewer in the |
| 1:48.8 | middle of February than there were in the same spell before the pandemic. Now, for passengers |
| 1:55.5 | in February and early March, that's not too much of a problem. Demand for travel is fairly weak, |
| 2:00.5 | and that's reflected in the fares that you can get. For instance, I've just been looking Thursday, |
| 2:05.5 | March the 7th, you can fly 1,200 miles from London to Tirana in Albania for 15 pounds or less. |
| 2:13.7 | Take your pick between Ryanair and Whiz Air. But from Easter onwards the pendulum rather |
| 2:21.5 | swings back in favour of the airlines with so many of us wanting to fly. And big problems |
| 2:27.5 | with the two big plane makers as Airbus and Boeing mean that there frankly won't be enough short-haul aircraft to |
... |
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