Flight Costs

I’ve been keeping an eye on flight costs for a possible trip in December, and the tickets have gone up about $120 over the last week. I assume others on the board may be doing the same thing, so I’m wondering if anyone else has noticed an increase recently. I’m hoping they may go back down, but I’m also worried this may be the result of higher gas prices and increased demand due to vaccinations.

Flight costs in December might be exorbitant, as costs are dramatically higher in the holiday seasons, as I found out over a Thanksgiving week trip ! You might want to travel now !

I was looking this week at a possible trip in the fall, and found the prices in general to be much higher than even pre-Covid. My feeling is that airlines are thinking there is pent up demand and figure they can make out..

Can't blame them. Got to make it worthwhile to keep the plane flying.

Yup....they are probably correct

I booked flights for 2 weeks in June using miles. Highest ever. exhausted my account but after pandemic, who knows what might happen.

The airlines will have little difficulty “setting the hook” with me. I’ve got a bucket of money that has been earmarked for travel, budgeted but unspent, from three cancelled trips to SXM/SBH, and a bunch of cancelled regional trips.

Our tickets last December were $438. December 2021 tickets were $486 for the past two months or so. Last week, they jumped up to over $600. Hopefully they’ll drop back down, but I may have missed my chance.

I also go down in December. I start watching fares as soon as they come out. I have a threshold below which I will buy tickets. I jumped at Delta's first fare because even the main cabin fare (which I bought) was relatively good. I'm glad I did because the same ticket is now $110 per ticket more.

we go every year from around Christmas until after the new year, and i think this year's (2021/22) airfare will be the least we've ever paid for that time period, for FC/BF no less

and we usually go to the bahamas in May for Kentucky Derby weekend, but this year we're going to SXM instead since we found such a good price on tix

I think the prices that people are finding sky high are for fall 2021..

several posts in this thread mention high priced december travel, and i was just commenting we purchased our airfare for next december at a pretty good price

OK, sorry, I thought somehow you were talking about December 2020..

We just paid $1350 for our trip on AA 3/21-4/16. Most we have ever paid.

I assume that's for two?

Just to update ... costs for direct flights from Charlotte on American continued to rise. They’re now $662 for our dates, up from $486 about a month or so ago. The good news is we’re just a little farther from Atlanta compared to Charlotte. Delta is flying direct from ATL for $457 one day sooner than our original dates. If the AirBnB host agrees to change our reservation, we’ll just fly from Atlanta on Delta. It’s only about $20 more than we paid last December, so I’m satisfied considering travel demand will be a lot different this year.

Yes

Our timeshare weeks begin the Saturday before Thanksgiving and end three weeks later. We booked our return flights quite some time ago for the Friday before our Saturday timeshare checkout, but found the flights going down were ridiculous. We finally decided to fly down on the Thursday before our timeshare check in, and are spending a couple of nights at GCBC. Flying on Saturday is almost always more expensive.

We were looking to go Thursday to Thursday right before Christmas, but now we’re arriving and leaving on Wednesdays. I kept wondering why I didn’t see any direct flights from ATL and thought Delta wasn’t offering them right now. Turns out I was just looking on the wrong days. I finally figured this out using a flexible dates search option that gave results three days before and after my entered dates. The AirBnB host just confirmed the change, so we’re booked!

We just booked for next February. Arriving on a Saturday and leaving on a Tuesday (10 days). From Portland Maine through JFK, roundtrip was $774.00 each (Comfort Plus).

Thought about trying to wait on a cheaper fare but really feel it is only going to go up as more and more people begin to travel again.

The other day booked for June SXM-JFK return for two about $1000. Same as we paid in October. Flights on Saturday were cheaper than any other day

Elaine--surprised at that, considering I was looking at June flights from Miami to SXM and they were WAY up from what they were about a month ago (before Celebrity announced their cruises from SXM..)

I just booked Delta from JFK for July and found the prices to be $200 more than usual.

I feel the same way now, and realized it was a mistake to keep comparing costs to last December. I didn’t book at $486 from Charlotte because I wanted to see if it would go down to last year’s price. Then it just went up and up. I ended up booking now to lock in the option of changing flights for free. That option seems to be ending this month with basic economy tickets on Delta and AA. I think it’s still available for the more expensive tickets.

Yes, it was less expensive a month ago, but waited to book after we got our jabs. Way better than the flight I booked on AA for April 2020 (which was cancelled). $1000 for 1 ticket!

With the cruise ships that are planning to home port in SXM, that's really going to drive demand and ultimately prices. The cruise lines and also cruise wholesalers buy seats in bulk to sell to those who like to buy a cruise and air package, and that will carve out seats early, drive load factor and ultimately prices. Lots of cruisers like to tack on some extra days at the home port before or after their cruise, so hopefully that pushes some of the demand off Saturday/Sunday. Add 3000 cruise passengers per ship to the Saturday time share travelers, folks connecting to neighbor islands and Princess Juliana will be tough to navigate. On the upside, to service the demand perhaps the airlines will add flights, giving us all more options. It will be interesting to see if the cruise lines line up some charters from major cities to help fill their ships...I kinda hope they do.

gomer--I was actually quite shocked that they DIDN'T have charter air set up for the sailings from SXM, knowing how crowded Juliana already is on any given Saturday. Having the ONE ship, as of now, home porting in SXM will definitely drive some prices up for air this summer.

As of now, there is only the Celebrity Millenium which will be home porting. That ship only carries 2,000 pax, fully loaded, and they are not going to be doing full loads, although I haven't really seen what percentage they are actually going to do. My guess is that it will be no more than about 1,500 pax per sailing. And looking at booking air through the cruise line, it looks like you can book pretty much any day to arrive or leave, so hopefully the extra crowd will be dispensed out over several days.

As of NOW, the cruises from SXM will be ONLY from June through the middle of August. What will happen after that depends on a million things, including how well the sailings sell and what happens with the CDC 'no sail' order from US ports, which currently is in effect until something like November 1. My pure GUESS at this point is that, if the sailings sell well, they may bring the ship back to SXM by around November 1 to sail for this winter. But it would surprise me if they scheduled sailings from SXM in September and October, as the risk of hurricanes during that timeframe is pretty high. ...although I was stunned that they didn't do charter air to begin with, so I guess I don't know a lot of what I think I do..

Thanks for the input Carol! Makes me feel better about the whole deal. I'd forgotten the info regarding capacity limitations, etc. I'm for anything that helps St Maarten, and getting some traffic there in the low season can't hurt. I'd say your speculation is also accurate..if this thing takes off, other cruise lines will surely try to copy in their efforts to recover. St Maarten is voted the most popular Caribbean cruise port every year, and has the regions best airport..cruise facilities.

And by the way Carol, we're headed for BSV Saturday! Can't wait! waiting for our test results to come in, EHAS process...barring any airline drama we're almost there.

gomer--The size of this ship, versus the 6,000 pax ships that Royal Caribbean is using, is a bit different, so hopefully it won't be a huge deal at Juliana. I think that overall, it should be a big help to the island, in terms of business, both for the short AND long terms, so it is a good thing, as far as I'm concerned. I would bet a good percentage of the pax will come in at least a day or two early, so as to not miss the ship. I note that the ship will not be sailing until 10 PM, which is pretty late, but the good news I guess also is that those getting onboard will be able to enjoy a nice meal in SXM prior to leaving, if that is their desire.

gomer--good for you!!! Send some pictures from 'home' when you arrive! Enjoy!!!

The option to change our tickets without a fee was important to us when comparing flights. American stopped allowing free changes with Basic Economy tickets March 31. It looks like Delta has now extended its policy for Basic Economy. The deadline for booking Basic Economy tickets without a change fee was March 30 but is now April 30. I'm pretty sure both plan to continue offering free changes with the more expensive cabin fares.

Right now the only airline with out of whack fares (from BOS mid-January) is JetBlue....United and Delta are normal. I did not look at AA with other options available

AA still has a no fee change, I believe. Also, an option of refundable for an extra $50.00 per ticket. Seems reasonable to me. ( not available for Basic Economy)

Decided to bite the bullet and book our mid-January two week trip. I can't say the fares were unreasonable. Last week I booked United down (using flight credits) for around $340 each (Economy plus seats) and the return on Delta (Comfort+) for $313 each...so $650 for the extra room seats roundtrip. Not a screaming bargain but not over the top either

The Celebrity from SXM will be sailing at 50%.