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Thanks, Comair.
The commercial aviation company bombed out recently, and now we’re all going to pay the price when it comes to domestic air travel.
Comair operated domestic British Airways flights as well as low-cost carrier Kulula and was responsible for 40% of domestic airline capacity.
Around 1 000 jobs will be lost due to its liquidation. In addition, for the short-term at least, there will be a marked spike in domestic ticket prices.
Earlier this month, SA Flyer editor Guy Leitch told Moneyweb that “domestic air travellers should be prepared to pay three to four times more for their flight tickets”:
“Airlines operate on what are called dynamic seat pricing or yield management systems and they structure their prices according to the demand, and obviously, on a particular flight they can vary the prices literally minute by minute,” Leitch says.
“So that’s going to force the prices up a huge amount and on top of that, we’ve had enormous price increases because of the fuel price increases.”
Stunning.
There’s been lots of chatter about surging prices on social media. In particular, flying to Durban appears to be a nightmare:
R3k for a return flight from JHB to Durban. Get fucked
— Kirsty Bisset (@KirstyBisset) June 23, 2022
Since when did flight prices from Durban to JHB begin costing more than R2500 for a return trip. @FlySafair definitely taking a piss on being one of the few airlines still standing
— Muhammad Malek (@Mo_Malek) June 15, 2022
Anyone travelling from Pretoria to Durban tomorrow afternoon? Ngicela uLift bandla
Obviously I’ll contribute
Both flights and buses are RIDICULOUSLY expensive rn
— Khulekani. (@_Zungu031) June 23, 2022
We feel your pain.
There’s good and bad news here. In the short-term, or until at least the end of the year, expect domestic ticket prices to remain high.
However, they should eventually stabilise:
According to Leitch, domestic air travellers may have to stomach these price increases at least until 2023, when the aviation industry is expected to start settling down from this most recent crisis.
“It’s going to be quite a slow process because you can’t just buy a new aeroplane and you can’t just expand [by] finding new pilots and air crew. So I am not expecting to see much stability before the end of the year – and then of course we’ll be in the end-of-the-year rush – so I think the knock-on effects are going to continue at least until 2023,” says Leitch.
Good luck to families zooming around for those December holidays.
Family road trips, even with escalated fuel prices and screaming children asking ‘are we there yet?’, suddenly sound slightly more appealing.
The rise in ticket prices has actually been building over the course of the past year. Consider this from BusinessTech:
The cost of passenger air travel in South Africa has increased by almost 50% over the last 12 months as pent-up demand and the closure of several domestic routes add pressure on the market.
Consumer Price Inflation data published by Statistics South Africa on Wednesday (22 June), shows passenger transport by air increased by 49.5% between May 2021 and May 2022 – one of the single biggest increases recorded by the statistics body over the period.
It’s relentless.
Every time you leave the house these days, it feels like money starts exiting the bank account in all directions.
Hang on for dear life.
