I usually fly to Seattle three times a year — it’s where I’m from and where my family still lives so I try to make one trip in the spring, another in the fall, and a third for either Thanksgiving or Christmas. This year I was planning to fly down in April, but ticket prices have gone up $100 from last year. To give you some reference: when I first began flying to Anchorage in 1999, the average summer ticket was $250. That price slowly crept up to $350. Now the average is hovering around $450, though it’s possible to score the random ticket in the three-hundred-dollar range. And mileage tickets have gone up as well. It used to be easy to get a mileage ticket for 20,000 miles, but I can only find a 40,000-mile flight except for the worst dates and times.
Then, gas prices have gone up. It’s a 126-mile drive to the airport, so the cost of catching my flight has gone up considerably in the last couple of years as gas prices have risen.
The result of these higher prices for me is one less trip a year. Instead, I’ll try to make my fall trip longer than the usual long weekend. I didn’t think all the buzz about the cost of travel meant anything until I tried to buy my most recent ticket. I’m definitely bummed, but at those prices I can’t afford to be taking so many trips.
Has your travel been affected similarly?