Finally going for a summer vacation back to Europe with family and I am having a hard time finding a ticket: prices start at double from just a few years ago, 300+, anywhere but the main hub includes very long layovers somewhere in between, and suddenly it’s back to one checked bag up to 23kg! On top of that many tickets require lots of extra charge if changed or, god forbid, being canceled. I really don’t wanna go anymore, but with school, summer holiday is the only time to stay a reasonable amount of days! Searching mostly through Expedia (was great help 2 years ago), and tried a few airlines directly, nothing in reach…
EDIT. After a few hours I got some tickets, going with Eva, back with Thai, looks already like an adventure, looked like I could get Eva for return as well, but alas only 2 left and I needed 3. Going directly to the airlines was mostly expensive, but I was surprised to see that Lufthansa was rather inexpensive, when you are flexible with the times. They also still offer 2 baggages and fly from Haneda, so if you live in Tokyo, it is def worth a deep look
38 comments
did you miss covid happening, and all the flights getting cancelled?
now airlines are trying to recoup 2-3 years of lost profits by overcharging.
there’s still the war in ukraine right? i don’t think flight routes to europe are back to pre-covid/pre-war yet
Yeah, it’s insane. Tack on the weak yen making the already expensive tickets even worse, and I’m just telling relatives to come visit me for once or help me pay if they want me going abroad.
IIRC JAL still allows 2 bags up to 23kg, or at least they did for travel to the US back at Christmas (not sure about Europe flights), which is why I’ll be going with them over American Airlines going forward; even though they codeshare, if you have a ticket through AA, JAL still has to charge you extra for a second bag :/ the price is pretty much the same, so they’ve got my business at least for the free second bag from now on.
Demand also affects the price. Everybody wants to go out.
One free checked bag ? That’s more than some airlines offer now.
Well covid happenned so the companies want to get there money back asap.
Also with the current war between russia and ukrain they have to use different routes to get to asia in general than before.
When I went to South Korea in 2019, we flew over russia to get there. But you cant rly do that at the moment as far as I know, so you have to use longer routes
A lot of factors playing into it. Just getting out of covid, high demand for travel, airlines needing to make up for last 3 years and also short on experienced staff because they had to fire many people, war still going on, list goes on and on.
Maybe a Europe thing with the war and all, we booked tickets to the US at Christmas time and only paid about 20,000 yen more than we were paying before the pandemic and that is on JAL with 2 free checked bags per person.
I have the same problem and will probably fly to Seoul because the tickets from Incheon to Europe are half as expensive.
Yeah I experienced that too. We were looking at flights since late lasst year for summer this year. Hoping it would either be cheaper to buy really early or get a bit cheaper the closer we get. Didn’t happen. The prices just stayed high. We ended up biting the bullet and buying tickets through Turkish airlines.
Airlines- like shipping companies (and pharma) have understood to turn a crisis into an opportunity and now boast the biggest profits ever. Greed knows no stopping.
This is when it pays to have mileage saved up. Flew 2 RT to the US, 2 RT to Guam and have 2RT to China coming up-all free, just about ¥5,000 each for gas and taxes
They’ve gone mad, yup.
Just booked tickets for the family to go to Toronto from Tokyo. One checked bag per person, 30万 per ticket, economy. Almost cried when putting in my credit info…
My sister has been bitching hard for me to come visit her back in Scotland but the prices are way too high, and the “cheapest”, four digit costs, are 35+ hours of flight time. I’d rather just stay here.
Bought a ticket from KIX to Frankfurt last week from Juli to August. 18 Man round trip, with Singapore Airlines with reasonable layover times. Pretty happy about the price but painful when compared to the 550€ I paid for a round trip in 2018.
Ooo i wrote about this on a complaint thread a few weeks ago. I got the price down, but possibly may not apply to you as you’re going to Europe. BUT! 1) search in incognito. 2) if you have one, search through a VPN.
3) check both .com and .co.jp of websites as .com Expedia won’t have the Japanese domestic airlines, and vice versa.
4) maybe websites like momondo.com will help.
It’s all a scam too. I booked the flight from one service back to my parents’ country. They only had the baggage for 2/4 for the journey, one at the start, and one for 1 hour at the end. So I had to spend another 300 usd (150 usd per 23kg) to make sure that the luggage made it back as well.
Scammery with service charge for buying a ticket, and even omitting from buying a seat lands you a seat fee.
Two things are affecting prices and that is the weak yen as well as the Russia Ukraine war that is making airlines avoid Russian airspace which adds a lot of fuel to the trip as they have to take a detour outside of Russia which takes more time and uses more fuel.
That’s why I’m stuck here. We’ve got to pay for another seat, so instead of going home for $1500 for a week, it’s $3500 now, minimum.
Airlines always sucked, but damn they suck more now.
Same here, not seen my folks for going on 4 years and my dad is not keeping great, so they can’t come see me – so tried to find flights for me and my 2 wee ones – around £10,000 to fly back to London. Even just me, it’s close to £6,000 – I mean that’s impossible!
So scared I’m not going to see them properly again 🙁
I empathize with you here. I flew back to the US once a year for 3 years before covid and paid less than 900 US dollars for each roundtrip flight. I just bought a roundtrip ticket to and from the US and Tokyo for 1800usd. So painful when wages are staggering.
Its not worth to travel overseas now with the weak yen and inflation, u will need to pay extra if u really want to go.
I understand the pain. We paid 1.4 million for the family to get home to Canada this year. It was 670,000 pre-corona.
Here’s some reasons as to why that is.
-Covid
-Increased fuel prices
-Yen getting weaker
-Japan’s a high demand country
So yeah, basically that’s it.
I use to pay 200 us for Taiwan. Now is more than double, even 600 us
I booked a flight for a couple months from now and the airlines is already changing and delaying flights. Airline industry is BS and airline companies can eat s. Overpriced. Why tf does canceling a flight 3 months before result in me loosing all my damn money?? Non refundable tickets should be illegal
Do you think prices will ever get lower as they were before COVID and the war in Ukraine?
It’s like the entire premise that you can live in Asia and fly back to Europe to see relatives now doesn’t work unless you have money to burn. International marriage got a lot harder.
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It isn’t just covid that has affected prices. Sanctions and no fly zones b/c of the “Special military catastrophe” have massively affected air travle. Carriers have canceled flights into and over Russia, and about 1000 commercial airplanes have been stolen..by the Russians.
Alot of airplanes don’t actually own planes, they lease them. The largest lease company is based in Ireland and when political action was taken to punish Russia, Russia grounded alot of those planes, or refused to pay the lease.
https://simpleflying.com/alc-quarterly-russian-plane-loss-18-million/
Also, speaking as Someone living in Japan, the increase in delivery of packages to foreign locations is a good indication of demand for logistics. Less planes, less shipping company’s, more cost.
Forked over $1388 for a Tokyo to Seattle RT back in August with a layover in Honolulu, and that was cheap for the time. Used to easily find for $800-900 for direct routes to PDX or SEA, sometimes less if we were more flexible. Instead of both of us going to visit family, only one of us did. Maybe I’ll go next year at the five year mark for me. When we add in RT shinkansen fares, a hotel night in Tokyo on either end to make long transit more bearable, that shit adds up fast.
I was planning to take a month off to go to the US with my wife and six year old son.
All in all I was looking at a 10,000 USD bill. That on top of the fact that apparently US airports are such a clusterfuck right now that people are getting cancelled, delayed, sleeping in airports, etc. Not trying to do that with a 1st grader.
Not that I *can’t* afford it. But I guess I don’t love my family that much. That’s a lot of money, and doesn’t even include local costs like hotels, car rentals, food, etc. Ultimately just cancelled the trip.
protip for those who have a billing address abroad: book a flight using a foreign billing address. This gets around the fuel surcharges for some of the companies. This helps somewhat.
For people flying alone/willing to rough it a bit, zipair also is offering a good way to get to the US for cheap. Gotta pack some food or otherwise figure something out though.
That’s why you have to force your way on. Yell the b word and run!
What i can’t understand is the taxes JAL and ANA tag on. Using miles to UK in Summer. Same number of miles for KLM as JAL but taxes are 40,000 yen with KLM and 100,000 with JAL.
Is this just price gouging Japanese because they are willing to pay anything to use Japanese airlines???
Fly via Singapore?
We went to Manchester via Hong Kong for about 180,000 each back in March. Need to go again in November and prices seem to have fucking gone up.
Fucking November. It’s not even peak time! They are taking the absolute piss.