Flight ticket prices skyrocket for the holiday season

RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) - Whether you’re going to Washington D.C. or California, you’re going to be paying hundreds of dollars for that plane ticket, especially if you’re going for the holidays.

“Prices are not that cheap anymore,” said Eric Ansah, a passenger flying back to New York.

According to the travel app - hopper - prices are nine percent higher than last week. It says domestic roundtrip flights between December 26th and the 30th - cost an average of $357. That’s 3%, or nearly $10 higher than last year.

Morgan Dean said that getting out of the pandemic allowed people to vacation again. The end of the pandemic opened the door for people to go on vacation again.

“What we have seen this year has been travel numbers in the air when we look at the holidays have been higher than last year, and a lot of cases were higher than what we saw in 2019 and in some cases the most travelers we’ve seen since 2005,” said Morgan Dean, the spokesperson for the Mid-Atlantic region of AAA. “People really got back to what they were doing pre-pandemic, which was traveling to places they wanted to see,” he said.

The forecast for the number of travelers this past Thanksgiving was more than two percent higher than in 2019.

So even more people are expected to travel this month for the holidays.

“If so many people are flying, there’s not as many chances or reasons for airlines to discount their seats if people are booking them up left and right,” said Dean.

According to AAA, nearly 3 million people throughout the country went through TSA Checkpoints on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, so December holidays could be very similar.

“That’s the highest number of travelers that they have ever processed in one day,” Dean said.

He said this could be a record-breaking year for the number of travelers.