Should I book my Spain trip now or will prices decrease?
I’m booking my annual return trip to Spain at the end of July. Prices are coming up around £440. Will this price come down at any point during the year or are we best to book now with a 15 per cent discount? The deadline is 24 hours.
Alex N
I am not sure which route you are looking at, nor on which airline. But to get an impression of how the market is behaving this summer, I have made test bookings on Manchester-Alicante
on easyJet, travelling out on Saturday 22 July – the first day of the school holidays for many people – and returning a week later.
On the morning flight there are just four seats on sale at £268. For a journey of under three hours, covering barely 1,000 miles, you might regard this as expensive. But once the four seats in that price bracket have gone, you can expect the fare to increase still further. This is simply a reflection of the strong demand since the coronavirus pandemic and the limited number of seats.
The corresponding inbound trip a week later has more availability and is priced at £84. Add in a hold bag of up to 23kg (an annoying £48 each way) and the total is £448 – not far off your quote.
Prices will come down only if more capacity comes in. I cannot see that happening to a significant extent this summer. Last year, you may recall, flights actually became scarcer as the months went on – due to thousands of cancellations by British Airways and easyJet. Air fares soared as a result.
While I don’t expect those miserable mass cancellations to be repeated, I cannot see prices easing. In your position, I would take that 15 per cent discount, reducing the fare you were quoted down to £374. I surmise the saving is offered by Jet2’s free-to-join “myJet2” membership option, which often provides useful discounts.
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