Originally Posted by
aminozuur
I'm based in the Netherlands. And I've noticed this in the last few months: a 10hr flight into Asia is much more expensive than a 10hr flight towards America. In a nutshell: Going west is cheaper than going east. It seems to hold true regardless of the country or airport I chose. Does anyone know why this is? Thanks.
For economy class this kind of dynamic with pricing discrepancy’s isn’t anything new. It has been going on long before there was any Russian effort to expand its invasion of Ukraine this year.
I think a lot of the pricing ends up being a function of how inelastic the demand profile appears to be. For example, VFR traffic — and factoring in issues related to visas to visit the “West” — come to play in how much more money an airline can extract out of a customer desperate to see their parents or a wedding abroad than a customer who wants to check out the Golden Gate Bridge but would be just as fine to substitute for another destination with cheaper flights at around the same time.