So long, €10 flights: Is this the end of an era for budget travel?

Over the weekend I was growing increasingly frustrated. I wanted to book a city break to anywhere but London for later this year, but one glance at Skyscanner and I knew that any international (and even domestic) flight was beyond my budget. My first world problem was compounded by the fact that I’d told myself during the UK’s various lockdowns that, once restrictions ease, I would start seeing more of Europe. Because, as a Kiwi expat, that’s what I’d moved over to London for, right?

But what was once a £50 return trip to a European capital was now a £200 return flight to Prague, or a £150 return flight to Split ‒ carry-on luggage not included. It should come as no surprise to me, then, that Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has today said that the era of the airline’s famous €10 (£8.50) flights is “over”.

O’Leary said that the budget airline’s average fare would be rising from €40 (£34) to €50 (£42) over the next five years. “There’s no doubt that at the lower end of the marketplace, our really cheap promotional fares ‒ the one euro fares, the €0.99 fares, even the €9.99 fares ‒ I think you will not see those fares for the next number of years,” he told the BBC on Thursday. He cited rising fuel costs as the reason for the price hike.

I moved to London in 2016. It was the first city I had visited overseas as a teenager, and I had been enamoured with it ever since. London wasn’t just the best place to develop my career as a journalist ‒ it gave me access to cities and destinations that I’d always wanted to visit but had been too far away (anywhere in Europe is at least 24 hours’ flying time from New Zealand).

Like any Kiwi or Australian expat who descends on London in their twenties, I began to fill my weekends up with city breaks. A weekend in Stockholm here, a few days in Dublin there, a jaunt to Mallorca, or a last-minute trip to visit a friend in Paris after a breakup. So many memories and experiences, all accessed by flights costing less than £50 return. I would leap on airline fare sales and see which destination I could squeeze into each bit of annual leave I’d accumulated. The world ‒ the chunk of it wedged between the UK and Turkey, at least ‒ was my oyster.

Fast forward six years and the pandemic, plus the UK’s current cost of living crisis, seem to have altered the way we travel for good. Lack of staff is causing a summer of cancellation chaos, fuel prices are driving up air fares, and…