2023-06-20 23:31:16
The Arab communities residing abroad suffer from the high cost of air tickets in the summer, which is noticeably higher compared to the rest of the seasons, especially in some European countries, the United States and Canada.
“Because of this high price, I can no longer afford to buy tickets for my family of four to spend the summer holidays or holidays with the family in Morocco,” Mounir Alawi, a Canadian resident of Montreal, tells Sky News Arabia, lamenting.
Alawi added, “I cannot afford to pay tickets worth more than $6,000 in addition to the annual vacation expenses that do not exceed a month. I am forced to choose another destination for the next year in a row.”
As for Sana and Salti, a Tunisian residing in the French city of Lyon, she did not hide her fear of her inability to establish a relationship between her three young children and her mother country because of the high cost of travel tickets, which do not take into account, as she put it, “the economic conditions that communities around the world suffer from.”
She explained to “Sky News Arabia” that despite her desperate attempts to save up throughout the year to spend the summer vacation with her grandparents in the Tunisian city of Sfax, she might not bear the burden of ticket prices during the month of August.
The solution.. installment and deferred payment
The survey numbers conducted by the “Liligo.com” website confirm the increase in prices in France as well. According to Somaya Arum, the site’s communication officer, the rate of increase in airline tickets, for example, from France to Lebanon, reached 42 percent during the period from The beginning of July to the end of August, compared to the same period in 2021.
As for Egypt, the percentage reached 32 percent during the same period and 20 percent for Tunisia.
For Morocco and Algeria, the percentage did not exceed 4 percent and 1 percent, respectively.
Muhammad Al-Ludi, the owner of a travel agency in the French city of Lyon, notes that these increases have increased the community’s demand for his agency because it provides facilities, explaining: “Many members of the community of different nationalities chose to pay in installments or pay following returning from travel to reduce the load, and thus many families will not be deprived from visiting their countries, especially those who cannot travel long distances by land or sea.”
What explains these price increases?
“After the health crisis caused by Covid-19, all factors interfere with each other to eventually lead to a rise in prices in the sector,” said the delegate general of the Federation of French Airports, Nicholas Boulissin, to Sky News Arabia.
He pointed out that these factors are mainly represented in:
The increasing demand in front of the meager supply due to the fact that airlines did not restore all their capabilities before the health crisis. Lack of competition between companies. Increasing the salaries of workers in the sector due to the high cost of living. High prices for services. The cost of energy, which skyrocketed following the Russian-Ukrainian war, especially kerosene, which has the greatest impact on prices, as it represents 45 percent of the long-distance ticket price.
And the general delegate of the Federation of French Airports stated that the traveler who chooses the plane as a means of transportation to any destination “must understand in the future that the price of the ticket for tomorrow’s plane will be more expensive than the price of today and yesterday, because soon the energy transition cost standard will be added to the ticket price.”
1687306627
#airline #ticket #prices #explode #face #Arab #communities
