The increase in the prices of plane tickets has been a constant during the last year. On average, prices in mainland France increased by 21.7% according to the DGAC index, the general direction of civil aviation. The month of December does not escape the rule with an increase of 20.6%.
The reasons for this inflation are well known: the sharp rise in the price of kerosene and the wages paid by many companies, that of spare parts, as well as the strong recovery in traffic have encouraged operators to step on the price accelerator.
Inflation is even higher if we compare December of this year with the same month of 2019, the last “nominal” year of the aviation sector: +26.5%.
Sprout towards the DOM-TOMs
These averages obviously hide some disparities. In 2022, domestic flights increased “only” 15.4% while those for DOM-TOM increased more than 20%.
Prices abroad increased particularly last year, only in December, tickets to Martinique exploded with +59%, those to Guadeloupe increased by 47%.
“This trend affects the four departments in a differentiated way, with Martinique and Guadeloupe registering the strongest increases, particularly due to the partial transfer of the increase in the operating costs of the carriers to the price of tickets as well as to a tourist activity and support family in the West Indies for the end-of-year celebrations”, we can read.
But throughout the year, it was the medium-haul tickets (mainly low-cost airlines) that increased the most on average with +24% according to the DGAC. Conversely, inflation was less strong on long-haul flights: +14.6%.
France: 86% of 2019 traffic last year
Despite these strong price increases, 2022 is a very good year for the sector after two very complicated years due to covid and travel restrictions.
According to figures published by Eurocontrol, air traffic returned last year to 83% of its 2019 level, before the health crisis, despite the war in Ukraine or a start to the year marked by the Omicron variant.
In France, this figure rises to 86%, better than Germany (75%) but worse than Spain (91%) and Portugal (96%).
European airlines and airports handled around 2 billion passengers last year, up from 2.42 billion in 2019.
For this year, Eurocontrol expects traffic to reach 92% of the volume of 2019.
Source: BFM TV
