Lufthansa boss says higher flight prices are good for travel

Lufthansa chief executive said pre-pandemic airfares were "too low". Photo / Torsten Dettlaff, Pexels

The number of people taking to the skies is rising and so are prices.

According to the chief executive of Germany's largest airline, the increased price tag for a flight isn't just necessary, but good.

Lufthansa boss Carsten Spohr said several pandemic-related factors have prompted airlines to increase prices, telling the Telegraph this was important for the industry and the planet.

"I believe that prices were too low before Covid. €9 or £9 [for a flight] from the UK to Portugal is not healthy for the industry, not healthy for our environment," he said.

Spohr isn't the first to speak about the end of this particularly cheap era in air travel.

In September, Ryanair's chief executive Michael O'Leary told The Sunday Times that passengers should expect "dramatically higher" airfares when planning their European summer trips.

O'Leary said the price hike was likely due to a combination of a surge in demand for holidays and the reduction in flights, fleets and, in some cases, entire airlines.

"There is going to be about 20 per cent less short-haul capacity in Europe in 2022 with a dramatic recovery in demand," said O'Leary.

Spohr said airlines also had to take pandemic-related costs into account.

"It's possible that Lufthansa will eventually have a $10 billion bill for the whole Covid crisis. That's what it cost us. Similar numbers to our competitors. So we're all going to have to be more disciplined."

While cheap flights could still be out there, Jamie Baker, a JP Morgan airline analyst, told CNBC they would no longer fall into consumers' laps.

"Discounted fares increasingly require a hunt, and for many consumers that have been locked up for a year, they're probably not up to the effort," he said in March.