myspace visitors

average costs & prices | How Much Does a Flight Cost?

How Much Does a Flight Cost?

Contrary to popular belief, the price of an airplane ticket is not generally based on the distance or the length of the journey of a flight. Often times it would cost more to fly 300 miles than to fly halfway around the world. One hour flights could even cost twice the price of 12-hour journeys. So then how much does a flight cost?

Here are some of the factors that airline companies use to compute the cost of flight tickets:
·    Destination popularity. How popular is the target destination? Flights to business centers like New York or London, travel hot spots like Paris or Hawaii, and similar cities that attract a wealth of travelers and tourists are generally more expensive than flights to less-traveled places.
·    Seasonal demand. Traveling during the holiday seasons will always increase flight price as compared to off peak seasons. Another example would be flying to Europe during summer, as there will be a lot of people willing to pay higher to enjoy touring in Europe at the best time of the year.
·    Competitive price. Airlines aggressively compete with each other for the most passengers for all of their flights. This means that when one airline lowers their price, other airlines must match it or risk losing a lot of business.
·    Fuel costs. Gas prices will always be a major factor in determining the cost of flight tickets, as well as the estimated number of people traveling to a certain destination. If a flight has to go at 60 to 70% capacity, the airline adjusts the price in order to break even. Conversely, one that’s near to 100% will have discounted prices in order to attract more passengers for a full capacity flight.

Aside from these, there are numerous smaller details that affect the price of plane tickets. So, on average, how much does a flight cost for popular routes? Here are the price ranges of some of the most popular airline routes in the United States:

·    Los Angeles to New York: $250 to $350
·    London to New York: $500 to $800
·    Chicago to New York: $200 to $280
·    Boston to New York: $150 to $200
·    Los Angeles to Las Vegas: $130 to $170
·    Los Angeles to San Francisco: $80 to $110
·    New York to San Francisco: $200 to $250
·    Miami to New York: $190 to $220

There is a lot of variation when it comes to ticket prices, and price updates happen frequently. Here are some websites that offer cheap airline tickets:

·    Cheap Flights. http://www.cheapflights.com
·    Skyscanner. http://www.skyscanner.net/
·    Globester. http://www.globester.com/

As the airline industry boomed over the years, the need to streamline the process of selling plane tickets and storing volumes on information led to the creation of the Global Distribution System (GDS). Today, there are 5 GDS in the world and each one has a specific algorithm that it uses to calculate ticket prices. Over the years, this has become so complicated that now, it’s very hard for even experts to fully explain how ticket prices cost as they do.

Filed Under Costs, Travel | 4 Comments

Tagged With , , , ,

Comments

4 Responses to “How Much Does a Flight Cost?”

  1. Ashlee white on April 9th, 2011 2:28 pm

    well, ive been planning this for a while, but im 13. and i need to fly to ohio ALONE. see i wanted to know how much would a plane ticket from utha to ohio be??

  2. Alec on June 4th, 2011 5:26 pm

    just wanted to know how much a ticket from Illinois to Barbados would be??? Anyone know???

  3. caylee on July 22nd, 2011 1:43 am

    how much would 3 tickets from mass to hawaii cost

  4. assandramathis on August 12th, 2011 4:07 pm

    I just wanted to know how much does it coast to fly from Midalnd Texas too LA

Leave a Reply