The new head of discount Swoop Airlines says higher fuel prices have to be passed on to passengers.
Bob Cummings, who was named head of Calgary-based Swoop last week, told Canadian Press on Easter Monday that his airline, a subsidiary of WestJet, can’t ignore market forces.
“We’re always adjusting, almost real time, to those market forces when input costs to go up. And they really do need to be passed through in order for the company to be financially healthy,” he said. “We’ll be doing everything we can to minimize that and have affordable fares.”
Citing information from the flight booking site Hopper, NBC News reports that the average price of a domestic airfare in the U.S. now stands at $330 USD per round trip,. That’s a seven percent increase over the same period in 2019 and the highest average price since it started collecting data. International airfare matches 2019 prices at $810 US per round trip.
“We anticipate other factors such as regular seasonal changes in demand, jet fuel prices, capacity, and carrier competition to be the primary drivers of price action in the U.S. market,” Hopper economist Hayley Berg said earlier this month.
Jet fuel prices in North America recently were around $153 USD per barrel. That’s an increase of 158 percent from 2020, and up 30 percent from just a month ago.
