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Travellers to and from Spain are once again facing serious disruption as Ryanair ground staff stage a new wave of strikes running through to the end of the year. But even if your flight isn’t cancelled or delayed, there’s more bad news for passengers: the cost of flying has shot up yet again.

 

According to the latest Consumer Price Index figures, airlines operating in Spain raised ticket prices by 5.8% in June compared with the same month last year. That followed a small 0.2% increase in May and a huge 19.3% jump in April, which was the steepest rise since September 2008, when fares went up by 20.5%.

 

What this all means is that prices have now been rising non-stop since September 2024, something which Ryanair predicted was going to happen as costs continue to climb.

 

Domestic flights have been hit particularly hard. Airfares within Spain rose 11.9% in June, on top of a 2.4% increase in May and a record-breaking 21.3% surge in April. According to the National Statistics Institute, this was the highest increase since it began separating domestic and international data in 2017.

 

Earlier this year, domestic tickets also rose 5.2% in March, 3.4% in February and 5.1% in January. That came after a jump of 11.3% in December, 9.8% in November and 1.2% in October.

 

The worrying trend began in August 2024, when fares skyrocketed by 21% after rising 11.7% in July and 12.3% in June.

 

Unfortunately for jetsetters, international flights are showing a similar pattern, though the jumps are slightly less dramatic. Prices for trips abroad rose 3.5% in June after falling slightly in May.

 

In April, they spiked by 17.8%, the biggest increase since March 2023, when they shot up 18.8%. In March this year, international fares had dipped 0.7%, but before that they had been climbing steadily for five months in a row.

 

February saw an increase of 2.5%, following rises of 10.9% in January, 9% in December, 8.6% in November and 2.1% in October.

 

This long upward run marks a major turnaround from the pandemic period, when international ticket prices were on a downward trend for nearly 21 months. That drop only ended in December 2021 with a tiny rebound of 0.2%.

 

Since then, the cost of flying has largely been on the way up, with records broken more than once, including in the summer of 2022, when international fares spiked by over 20% in both July and August.

 

For now, with strikes continuing and costs still rising month after month, air travel in and out of Spain shows no sign of getting easier or cheaper.

 

 

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