In
real terms, air fares in the U.S. are well below what they were 25
years ago. No news there. Even if fares are not adjusted for
inflation, they are very often lower than they were a
quarter-century ago.
That's not
particularly newsy either. The fun part of the statistics collected
by Minneapolis-based airline analyst Terry Trippler is the degree
to which fares vary from (read: drop below) the fares of
1982.
Trippler's method was
not science, but it was certainly random. Trippler stumbled onto an
old Official Airline Guide and started reading it. He was inspired
to search for current best roundtrip fares on 140 randomly selected
nonstop routes to compare with the 1982 OAG's lowest-listed fares.
(He used best alternatives if there was no nonstop on a
route.)
He found that 72.9%
of today's fares were lower than those from 1982. At the other end
of the spectrum, 2.1% of the fares were $75 or more than those from
25 years ago.
After adjusting for
inflation, all fares were lower than those from 1982, some by big
numbers. About one in five fares were down $201 to $300, about 20%
were down $301 to $400 and about 20% were down $401 to $500. About
10% were down $501 and $700. The two routes with the largest
differences were Providence, R.I.-Las Vegas, with a savings of $802
in real dollars, and Charlotte, N.C.-Los Angeles, with a savings of
$824.
On 52 routes, the
savings was more than double the current best fare; on 10, it was
more than triple; and on four (Boston-Richmond, Va.;
Detroit-Sarasota, Fla.; Miami-Richmond; and Portland,
Ore.-Philadelphia), the savings was more than four times the
current fare.