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Comment by partiallypro | Hacker News Reader

The oddity I've personally had, is I had been planning a summer trip to Germany for the Euro 2020 tournament (assuming they don't get cancelled.) However, I hadn't bought plane tickets yet. Due to the virus, I figured I might get cheaper rates. The opposite has been true. The round trip went from ~$1200 up to ~$1800 in just a month or two. I'm still tracking flights, but so far I haven't seen a good dip in pricing. I don't know if airline pricing isn't reacting to supply/demand, or if there hasn't been that big of a dip in US to Europe passenger traffic.

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You might be buying too far out. People are assuming the virus will be contained by then.

I just looked at prices for a round trip ticket from San Francisco to Montreal for Monday. It was $389. I've never seen such a low price for buying two days in advance.

Those buying tickets are probably people who need to travel and thus will pay more. The market for the cheaper tickets isn’t there

Coworker of mine is in a similar situation. He said tickets were 2x before. I joked he's making up for the other person who cancelled.

I don't think that's a joke - I think that's exactly what's happening.

It's only going to work for customers who have to fly - which is a fairly small number. So instead of making up a shortfall, it's more likely to be a money-losing strategy.

I checked our local carrier and prices are down a lot. I was considering a flight at the end of April and prices are between a half and a third of what they were when I checked them in January.

I've also seen this! I went casually looking at the route I fly most often (but I'm not flying myself at the moment) and both economy and business fares seem to have gone up very substantially.

What's going on?

The airlines have changed their rebooking policy to make it much more lenient for the next few months. Maybe this is making the tickets more valuable and pushing up the price?

I think that if passenger numbers go down and fixed costs stay the same, and if passengers aren't very price sensitive (their company is paying their fare) then it makes sense to raise prices.

The trouble is that this will drive out the holiday flyers and leave them dependent on business flyers whose companies can turn off the tap on a whim. And will have every incentive, and excuse, to do so.

Prices cycle up and down when you are that far in advance. Lately airlines are changing rates multiple times per day and using ML to maximize their profit. It's much harder to predict when to buy. Many articles about ideal days and months to purchase are becoming obsolete.

That's opposite of my experience, although I am not flying until September. I booked a flight from JFK to Athens and back for around $400. The day after I booked (earlier this week) alerts were almost 2x as high. I wonder if I just got lucky.

They can't fly half a plane if only half the seats are taken. During times of low demand you'll have to pay for the empty seats.

Airlines are reducing capacity by big percentages and margins are tight they know some people have to travel so will increase prices.

Yeah, someone has to pay for running a bunch of empty planes all the time.

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