When four easyJet flights to Crete cost £5,394, something is very wrong

If you live in Bristol and are hoping to fly to Crete over May half term, I suggest you pour yourself a tall glass of cider (or ouzo) and make sure you are sitting comfortably. There is only one option, and it is as follows.

When I last checked, return flights departing Saturday May 24 and returning Saturday May 31, with easyJet, were selling for no less than £1,211, each.

Throw in seat selection (£8.99 per bottom) and basic check-in luggage at £59.73 a pop, and the sum for your week in Crete for two adults and two children comes to £5,394 before you’ve even thought about booking your accommodation.

Flights from elsewhere in the UK to Crete are similarly expensive. The cheapest return flight from London to Crete over half term is an easyJet ticket from Luton for £708. Manchester is £777 (with Jet2) and Birmingham is £920 (also Jet2).

I was aware that May half term flights to Europe were steep, not least because Telegraph Travel’s Nick Trend recently crunched the numbers on peak vs off-peak airfares, but what these supposedly low-cost airlines are charging British families over May half term in particular takes things to a level we have never seen before.

No exceptions

It isn’t only people hoping to travel to Crete who will have to remortgage their homes to go on holiday. Looking Saturday to Saturday in that final week of May, the only option from Birmingham to Menorca (Jet2) will cost you £1,137 per head. Manchester to Bodrum starts from £1,065 (also Jet2).Gatwick to Corsica will cost you £909 (easyJet). No airline is exempt: Tui flights from Stansted to Paphos start from £720, Ryanair services from Stansted to Kefalonia start from £549. These prices can and will fluctuate. But I’ve been checking these regularly and the above gives a fair indication of where things are at.

If you are tied to the school holidays, one way of sidestepping these eye-watering flight fares is to book a package holiday instead. For example, I found one Tui deal from Gatwick to Crete over May half term costing just £605 per person for a week. That covers flights, accommodation and half-board catering. That’s more than £100 cheaper than the cheapest available flight from Gatwick over those dates.

Another option would be to look further afield. Over the May half term I found Lufthansa flights from Heathrow to San Francisco for £528 return. You can fly from Heathrow to Toronto for £449, to Colombo, Sri Lanka, for £673, or to Kuala Lumpur for £673. The latter two destinations will be pleasingly cheap on the ground, too. What a strange state of affairs, where a flight spanning more than 5,000 miles costs half the price of a two-hour hop to somewhere on the Med.

Or, of course, you could always take a punt on a less traditional holiday destination for May half term. A skip to the vibrant university city of Gothenburg costs just £56 return (with Ryanair, from Stansted). You could enjoy the unsung German city of Hamburg for just £59 (with Ryanair, from Stansted). And not all resort destinations are astronomical: you can get to Malaga for sub-£250 with Vueling from Gatwick, or Edinburgh to Lanzarote with easyJet for £165, if you act fast.

Supply and demand

With high demand and finite seats, budget airlines are able to charge higher prices over school holidays because, simply put, they know they will sell. Airlines have staggered pricing systems which mean that the last remaining tickets tend to be more expensive: when challenged on the Bristol to Crete route, easyJet confirmed that there were only a small number of seats remaining.

John Grant of aviation analyst OAG says that (aside from the economics of supply and demand) the rising cost of labour and Air Passenger Duty are partly to blame for higher flight prices, but there’s an even bigger factor that airlines are having to deal with.

“Perhaps the biggest issue at the moment is the supply chain and aircraft availability,” says Grant. “There are airlines with 30 per cent or more of their fleets grounded awaiting checks and overhauls as a result of manufacturing and performance issues from Rolls Royce and Pratt & Whitney, who make most of the engines on commercial aircraft.”

One such airline is British Airways, which said last week that its 2025 schedule would be heavily affected by reduced aircraft availability due to problems with engines on its Boeing 787s.

“In some cases aircraft are being taken offline for a maintenance check and not returning to operation for over 300 days,” adds Grant. “When that’s 30 per cent of your fleet, that is a huge issue. This is leading to the supply of capacity being limited and the principals of supply and demand kicking in which in turn leads to these high fares, especially over school holiday periods.”