A basic family holiday now costs up to £5,000 – and that’s just the flights

Flight prices for peak school holiday dates this summer have reached stratospheric levels. Research by Telegraph Travel found many return fares on sale for well over £500 per person, with three examples for the May half-term week soaring to over £1,100.

The most expensive we found was an EasyJet fare from Gatwick to Corfu for £1,312. That means a family of four paying £5,248 just to fly to the island for a week’s holiday.

I have been monitoring peak-season airfares for decades and am certainly accustomed to seeing prices reach eye-watering levels for such dates.

But we have now crossed a whole new threshold. Before the pandemic I would have expected a handful of fares to top £400 and a few more to exceed £300. Now, you will be lucky to find any fares at that level for May half term and very few for the busiest Saturday of the school summer holidays.

They have nearly all soared to levels that will price out many British families. When assessed alongside similar research I carried out last year, the highest fares this summer are 50-300 per cent higher than in 2024.

The table below shows the full results of our survey. It reveals the cheapest and most expensive available fares for return flights to popular family destinations travelling between May 24-31 (half term) and July 26-August 2 (the first week of most state school summer holidays). It is worth noting that the cheapest option is usually for a very anti-social departure time.

I also checked prices for the week after the late May half term, and the week before the start of the summer holidays, to illustrate just how much prices rocket during the peak period. These are also included in the table. All fares quoted include one checked bag (the price for hand baggage only is generally about £120 cheaper).

Should I book now, or wait?

Airfares are priced dynamically and set by the airline’s software algorithms to respond to supply and demand. So while these fares are what you have to pay now, they may still rise. If people don’t book, however, they may fall, which is what happened last summer when some unsold seats dropped in price quite significantly.

There is no guarantee that it will happen again, but I have a sneaky feeling that it might. After all, common sense would suggest that very few people can afford, or frankly would want to pay over £1,000 for a seat on a short flight with a no-frills airline – especially when you realise that on the dates when EasyJet is charging £1,312 to Corfu, you can book Club Europe flights with BA from Heathrow to the same island from £1,076 – a saving of £236.

So there may well be an element of no-frills airlines trying their luck during the peak booking month of January in the knowledge that they can always lower prices nearer the time.

Why have fares gone up so much?

A cocktail of causes seem to be pushing up fares, including the way that inflation hit costs generally since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But the biggest factors are simple: high demand, combined with a shortage of flights. This is caused by backlogs in delivering new planes so that airlines like Ryanair can’t run as many services as they want to, and also a lack of air traffic control capacity at key airports and on key routes.

The shockingly high fares for the May half term week reflect a particularly intense concentration of demand. Nearly all schools take those dates off, so if you want to take the family away for a week without missing classes, you have no option but to fly on the Saturday or Sunday.

How do peak-time fares compare with other departure dates?

Very unattractively. As our table shows, I also looked at fares on dates which avoided, but only by a week or two, the school holidays. I only checked the very cheapest fares for these, but, as you can see, if you travel out for the week after half term these are generally less than half the lowest peak rates and far below the most expensive.

Take for example, EasyJet’s fares for Gatwick to Faro. It costs £571-£1,105 for half term; and from just £203 for the following week. In high summer, the differences are less pronounced because so many more dates are available over the school holidays. But, while in mid July you can get from Stansted to Lanzarote for £277 (with Ryanair), wait until those holidays start on the last Saturday of the month you will have to pay at least £478.

How does summer 2025 compare with last year?

I did a similar, more limited exercise on the same routes last year. Then, I listed the most expensive fares for the first Saturday of the school summer holidays – so they are a straightforward comparison with the highest price for summer 2025.

Not every fare has gone up. For example, the highest fare on the Gatwick-Corfu route this summer (£457 with EasyJet) is more than £100 cheaper than last year (£593), as is Ryanair’s fare for Manchester to Majorca (£567 as against £746 last year). But more have risen than gone down and the overall trend is clearly an upwards one.

Where can I find better value?

Short of travelling on different dates, you could rethink your summer holiday plans and head north or east instead of south. On those peak July-August days for example, when it would cost you over £600 to fly from Manchester to Dalaman, you could book return flights to Copenhagen from £199 with Ryanair. And for the May half term, returns to Vienna with Wizz start at £230.

Another alternative is to check package prices, which include airfares in the deal. For example, Tui is currently charging £481 per person for a week in the two-star Agnes Beach Hotel in Kavos on Corfu – including flights from Gatwick. That is between £216-£832 cheaper than the cost of the flight alone with EasyJet.

Mind you, Tui’s outbound flight does arrive at 02.20 and the return departs at 03.20, so it is hardly a family-friendly option. Likewise a Tui holiday including flights to Marmaris near Dalaman in Turkey with accommodation in the Club Evin hotel and departing on May 24 costs £784. That compares with £923-£1,180 for the flight only with Jet2. So in both these cases you would save hugely on flights even if you didn’t use the accommodation and stayed elsewhere.