Key Points
- Australians looking for cheap flights are somewhat at the whim of airlines and when they next have a sale.
- Third party booking sites may not offer the lowest prices.
- School holidays aren't the only periods to avoid. Travelling outside of summer periods can mean better fares.
Easily nabbing cheap flights, either domestic or international, appears to be a thing of the past for Australians.
Anyone who has searched for flights by price in recent months would have realised flying costs more than it did in the couple of years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic.
But Australians eager to travel are trying all they can to find the lowest fares possible.
The high cost of airfares
Travel expert Angus Kidman from comparison website Finder said about five years ago Australians on the east coast had access to $20 flights and return fares to Europe could be booked on sale for just under $1000.
Flights can either be booked directly with airlines, through a travel agent or through a third-party booking site. Source: Getty / Tang Ming Tung
“It was really fierce competition and there were lots of bargains to be had.”
Virgin Australia CEO Jayne Hrdlicka has said airfares are about 50 per cent higher than they were pre-COVID while international fares were about 10 per cent higher “in inflation-adjusted terms” and domestic fares 4 per cent higher.
Kidman said the true increase was probably "somewhere in the middle".
Travel agent, a third-party booking website or direct from the airline?
Many people use third-party booking sites that promise to find good fares and some think travel agents may have access to better deals than the public.
Kidman said travel agents may provide value for those making more complex bookings where different products and services were being bundled up but for people simply looking for a cheap, convenient return flights, they weren't necessary.
He said using third-party booking sites was also unlikely to get consumers the lowest price.
Angus Kidman is a travel expert at the comparison website Finder. Source: Supplied
But he said complicated routings often provided by these sites could be problematic.
"If they do come up with those complicated routings, often there's no guaranteed connection between them. They book them all for you but that doesn't mean that you're guaranteed to get from A to B," Kidman said.
He also reminded people that if the sites were based overseas, they often added on fees at the end of the booking process.
"The cheapest fare you're going to find usually will be the one you can find directly on the airline site itself," Kidman said.
He did say that booking sites can be useful in identifying cheaper flights as a starting point.
"It can maybe be instructive as a way of looking at it as an option, but I would always then go back to the airline site and try and do it that way," Kidman said.
When to book and when to travel
While Kidman said booking at the last minute is not going to you help find cheap flights, planning really far in advance is not always going to get the best price either.
"Leaving it to the last minute is very rarely a viable tactic, when you're booking within two to three weeks, you're always going to find you're paying higher," he said.
At the same time Kidman said "the really low sale fares will not come in advance".
He suggested avoiding planning holidays during peak times as fares will always be higher.
"It really is those peak seasons that matter, school holidays and summer wherever you're going, plus Christmas, Easter and Chinese New Year," he said.
"If you can travel outside those times the routes and fares will be cheaper."
Kidman said at the moment travellers looking for cheap flights really are at the whim of the airlines and their next sale.
"The best way to get a bargain sometimes - and it's not very helpful advice for people who want to plan - is if you see a sale and there's a really good fare, then go, 'right I'm gonna go on holidays then'."
Work and other responsibilities do not always allow everyone to be able to take a holiday according to flight prices so Kidman said those wedded to flying in peak periods should book as far ahead of time as possible.
"If you're thinking of doing that Christmas trip, or that European summer thing or during school holidays, generally, the sooner the better because those fares rarely get any cheaper."
While price is one consideration when looking at flights, you should also take into account the number of stopovers needed on longer journeys. Source: Getty / Sutthichai Supapornpasupad
Booking hacks: skiplagging and incognito windows
Bargain fare hunters may have heard of the term skiplagging or throwaway ticketing, a practice some people use to get cheap flights.
It involves booking a cheap fare that has a stopover but not taking the second flight.
"It's a very US phenomenon because in the US they often have a lot of multi-sector fares, so you go from one city through another to a third and sometimes it can be cheaper to book to the remote city, than to the closer one," Kidman explained.
Unfortunately for Australians, those types of fares are not a feature of our flight system.
"In Australia, I've never seen an example where flying on a paid ticket via a second city was cheaper than going direct," Kidman said.
Using a private browser or going 'incognito' is something people do to keep their browsing history private. Source: Getty / Oscar Wong
"So when you browse the site, they can have some idea that you visited this site and maybe looked this up before and in some instances they might go, 'well you're obviously keen on doing this, so maybe we'll show you a different price and we may not show you the prices we showed you last time'," Kidman said.
He said this may be a case with aggregator sites but "it doesn't commonly happen if you're actually going directly through the airline itself".
The price of airfares into the future
Kidman said given many people did not fly for two years during the height of the pandemic, there was backed-up demand for people wanting to take holidays, so people have been paying higher prices to do that.
"I think we're still at the phase where most flights are still largely sold out," he said.
Kidman pointed out that the aviation industry is yet to get back to the level of operation it was at pre-COVID and building back up may work to push prices down somewhat.
"We're probably still looking at at least another year before we start seeing, you know, any evidence of really strong competition and price battles in those markets," he said.
Flight Centre managing director Graham Turner has said he expected prices to start dropping within the next six months as competition and capacity on international routes increases.
His forecast came on Wednesday, as the company delivered its first full-year profit since 2019.
After a $287 million loss in the previous financial year, the company recorded a $47 million after-tax profit for the 12 months to June 30.
