Manila Bulletin

PH ranks 9th in best value for aviation price index

- By EMMIE V. ABADILLA

The Philippine­s placed number 9 in terms of offering the best value flights worldwide in online travel agency Kiwi. com’s 2016 Aviation Price Index which ranked the least and the most expensive flights from over 1 million internatio­nal and domestic trips in 75 countries.

The Philippine­s’ average flight cost was pegged at US$7.76 per 100 kilometers of travel, factoring in both domestic and internatio­nal journeys, against the least expensive country, India, which averaged a flight cost of $3.25 per 100 km of travel.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) issued the most expensive tickets, costing over 30 times higher, at $105.71 per 100 km of travel, according to the index.

Kiwi.com professes to offer the best value ticket prices for customers and undertook the research on the Aviation Price Index published yesterday (September 6, 2016) to help travelers find the most suitable internatio­nal flight deals.

The 10 countries offering the least expensive flights, according to rank are: India, Malaysia, Russia, Portugal, Indonesia, Azerbaijan, South Africa, Algeria, the Philippine­s and Sweden.

The 10 countries with the most expensive flights are: the Solomon Islands, Switzerlan­d, Austria, Denmark, Belgium, Canada, Japan, The Netherland­s, Qatar, Finland and the UAE.

Notably, India offered the least expensive domestic flights on both low cost and legacy airlines, at $2.27 and $2.67 respective­ly per 100 km of travel.

China offered the least expensive internatio­nal flights on both low cost and legacy airlines, at $1.22 and $2.84 per 100 km of travel.

At the other extreme, the UAE offered the most expensive domestic flights on both low cost and legacy airlines, at $181.38 and $202.36 per 100 km of travel.

Canada offered the most expensive internatio­nal flights on both low cost and legacy airlines, at $43.70 and $94.66 per 100 km of travel.

In order to calculate the rankings, Kiwi.com analyzed more than a million flights to find an average price of domestic and internatio­nal flights on a low cost and a legacy airline from each of the 75 countries.

They calculated domestic flight costs by finding an average of flight costs from the country’s capital to up to five major cities within the country (where available), or a major city in a neighborin­g country where no domestic flights were available.

On, the other hand, they computed internatio­nal flight costs from the capital of each country to up to five internatio­nal hubs within the same continent.

All flights were checked for the same dates of travel (or neighborin­g dates, where necessary) on- and off-season, taking into account the same destinatio­ns and travel scheduling.

“The Aviation Price Index is a fascinatin­g guide to the costs of air travel around the globe,” noted Kiwi.com CEO, Oliver Dlouhý.

“We always aim to offer travelers the best possible deals and hope this ranking informs customers on which countries have the most cost effective airfare and assist them in booking the best value journey,” he concluded.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Philippines