Originally Posted by
orbitmic
not more actually. Air travel prices went down a lot in the 1980s and 90s but if anything, compared to 10 years ago they have gone up quite a bit. 10 years ago I travelled J to Australia multiple times for £1500 or less, to South Africa and Korea for under £1000 (ZA was Qatar but icn was ba) and my most frequent European route could be had on ba for under £60 return whilst it is now hard to fall below 100 at best and often a lot more. Even accounting for general inflation that’s definitely not the direction of affordability.
Hmm, inflation-adjusted £1500 from 10 yrs ago is now £2,014 (source:
Bank of England), which sounds about right these days for J to Aus if you're flexible on dates, booking during sales etc. £60 is apparently now £80, so your point stands for that route.
Personally I've been finding CityFlyer pretty good value recently - booking domestics at a week's notice for £250 return seems much better value than a train at least...