Fuel Price Keeping Surging, Airline Tickets Unchanged

With the substantial rising of plane fuel price from August, will the price of airline tickets follow to rise? Recently news from the General Aviation Bureau and Aviation Company shows that the price of airline tickets will sustain the present level, no big price adjustment will take place.

According to the latest statistics from the General Aviation Bureau, due to the fuel price surge, the cost of fuel has accounted to 31% of the cost of major business of airline companies in the first half of this year from 22%. The whole airline industry has afforded additional cost expenditure of 1.27 billion RMB.

Why does the airline industry which is always sensitive to price change take no action this time? The South-west Airline Company disclosed that now it was the peak period for tourism, and the number of airline passengers had just revived a little. If we raised the ticket price at this time the passengers would scare away. Several transportation companies also mention that the domestic transportation is stagnant recently, and it would be further overwhelmed if the airline raised price now.

According to insiders, the ratio between the flight mileage and the airline ticket of China¡¯s airline companies is much higher than that of foreign companies. This restrained the development of airline industry factitiously. Therefore under the present condition of fuel price surge, the airline should minify the loss through management strengthening, cost lowering and efficiency improving, but not simply raise the price.



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