Holidays are going to get more expensive as airlines hike prices and cancel flights due to a shortage of airplane engines and spare parts.
This means if you’re lucky enough to get off the ground, you could be paying a far higher price for the pleasure.
At least that’s the case for a hand-baggage only ticket on British Airways’ Heathrow-Cape Town route, The Independent revealed.
If you were to fly on April 11, you’ll be paying £2,922 return, which is nearly three times the price of a similar journey to and from Johannesburg, also in South Africa, on the same dates.
This is due to a shortage of Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines needed to replace the engines of aging Boeing 787s.
Without them, airplanes may be deemed unsafe for travel, forcing airlines like British Airways and Virgin Atlantic to ground planes used for long haul flights.
The airline cancelled 4,033 flights from UK airports in the 12 months before July this year, near double that of its low-cost rival easyJet.
Last month, British Airways axed their seat capacity between the UK and southeast Asia by 200,000.
With fewer planes in the air, there’s less competition between airlines, driving up prices as a result.
Flying was a luxury when commercial flights were first introduced.
In the 1950s, you could easily pay the modern equivalent of £5,000 for a one-way ticket to the USA.
Now, you can fly from London to New York and back again for £470.
We have grown used to cheap airfare, and even the Covid-19 pandemic didn’t send them skyrocketing.
But supply chain problems, which emerged from job cuts and scaled-back manufacturing in this period, might change that.
It’s not just British Airways’ Heathrow-Kuala Lumpur route that’s been affected. Virgin Atlantic won’t resume flights between London and Accra, Ghana, or to Tel Aviv in Israel, until next winter.
It too blames the Rolls Royce shortages. Paul Charles, who was the airline’s director of communications before joining The PC Agency, said: ‘The engine issues have caused massive problems for airlines and consumers.
‘Airline planning teams have had to rewrite their rulebooks on how they use their fleet on the most popular destinations that they need to protect – and gamble on which routes will pay the price and be deleted from their networks.
‘For consumers, prices will continue to rise – 2025 will see record fares on many routes. If you want to go abroad next year, be prepared to pay for it is the message.’
A spokesperson for Rolls-Royce said: ‘We continue to work with all our customers to minimise the impact of the limited availability of spare parts.
‘We have been taking decisive action and moving quickly to prioritise the resources needed to reduce the impact created by the current industry-wide supply chain constraints, it’s the highest priority for our Civil Aerospace division.’
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