Alpha_Floor wrote:
Also in most of the Western World societies are ageing rapidly, birth rates are at a record low and the demographic pyramid is more like a cocktail glass. This surely has something to do with it.Flying has always been very expensive but today it is losing in attractiveness as there are other forms of cheap entertainment and cheap travel. Young folk would rather spend 100 GBP on a return ticket from the UK to somewhere warm in Europe rather than paying for one flight hour.
+1
I got my PPL in 1992. I payed around 2.5k in € equivalent. At that time the cheapest ticket I could get to the US and back was about the same or more. Today a PPL cost 10k+ in € equivalents. With that money a young backpacker type person can fly with airlines around the world, visiting every continent, have a great time for a year.
I’ve been paying between $600 and $1600 for transatlantic airline tickets since around 1989. They’re generally cheaper in real terms (considering inflation) today but the prices have stayed about the same or drifted a little higher. A friend says that the same is true going back to about 1970. What has come down in price is commercial flights within Europe.
My least expensive transatlantic flight was in 1989, when for a period nobody wanted to fly Pan Am. Now that I think about it, it may have been even cheaper than I mention above (the number $387 has come to mind…), and that was a big factor in me choosing that time to make my first European motorcycle trip. I wasn’t too concerned about another Pan Am terrorist incident. I’ve made a huge number of commercial transatlantic flights since and flown my own planes locally too, starting mostly in 2002… Many things can be done over time, when you start young and earn them. Cheaper commercial travel just makes more money available.
