Every spring I do the same thing. I'm down in Mexico, working remotely, and I start casually watching prices for my flight back to Canada. Usually I let it ride. The fares drift down, I find a cheap flight on a flexible date, and I book it.
This year was different. The prices weren't drifting down. They were climbing. And not by a little.
So I did what I always do when something feels off, I went digging. It turns out we've gone from the "golden age of cheap flights" I wrote about a couple of months ago straight into a full-blown jet fuel crisis. Here's what's going on, and more importantly, what it means for those of us trying to fly on a budget.
The short version is this: war in the Middle East has thrown the oil market into chaos, and jet fuel has been one of the first casualties.
According to the IATA Jet Fuel Price Monitor, the global price of jet fuel sat near $100 a barrel late last year. By the spring of 2026 it had surged past $200 a barrel before easing back. As Al Jazeera reported, jet fuel prices were up more than 80% since the war began in late February.
The cause? The flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most important chokepoints on the planet, has been severely constrained by the threat of attacks. That strait is now closing in on its tenth week of disruption. Less oil getting out means higher prices for the refined products that come from it, jet fuel included.
Here's the thing a lot of travelers don't realize. Fuel isn't a small line item for an airline. It's one of the biggest costs they have.
Jet fuel typically represents somewhere between 20% and 30% of an airline's total costs, second only to labor. So when the price of fuel doubles, it doesn't just nudge an airline's budget, it blows a hole in it.
To put a number on it, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told employees back in March that if fuel prices stayed at their current level, it would cost the company an extra $11 billion this year. That's one airline, one year.
Airlines don't absorb a hit like that. They pass it on. And that's exactly what's been happening.
The numbers are already showing up at checkout. Per Al Jazeera's reporting:
The average international airfare from the US was $1,101 in the last week of April, up 16 percent from the same period last year. Domestic fares in the US have risen more steeply, jumping 24 percent year-on-year.
And on some long-haul corridors it's far worse. Aviation consultant Hans Jorgen Elnaes told Al Jazeera that prices on certain routes between Europe and Asia have climbed as much as fivefold. Fivefold. That's not a typo.
It's not just the base fare either. Airlines have been quietly bringing back fuel surcharges. Cathay Pacific announced it would roughly double its fuel surcharges on tickets, and others have followed. These are the kinds of fees that don't always show up until you're deep in the booking process.
When fuel gets this expensive, the least profitable flights stop making sense to operate. So airlines do the math and start cutting.
Al Jazeera reported that carriers have slashed 9.3 million seats from schedules for the June 1 to September 30 period, right in the heart of summer travel season. Qatar Airways alone cut around 2 million seats, Emirates trimmed 700,000, and Etihad pulled 450,000.
And in the most dramatic example of all, Spirit Airlines, the budget carrier I mentioned was already in serious trouble earlier this year, has now permanently ceased operations. One of the biggest names in cheap domestic flying is simply gone.
Fewer budget carriers and fewer seats mean less competition. And less competition almost always means higher prices on the routes they leave behind.
I wish I had better news here. The head of the International Air Transport Association, Willie Walsh, has been blunt about where this is heading. He's said the combination of high oil prices and constrained refining capacity will lead to an "inevitable" increase in air ticket prices.
There's a lag built into all of this. Airlines hedge their fuel costs and sell tickets months in advance, so the full impact of $200-a-barrel fuel hasn't even hit fares yet. As CNN put it, fares aren't up that much, but they will be.
Translation: if you've been putting off a trip, waiting probably isn't going to save you money this time.
This is the part where, if you've read my other posts, you know what's coming. Because my answer to "flights are getting expensive" has always been the same: stay flexible.
A crisis like this punishes rigid travelers most. If you need to fly on one specific date, to one specific city, round-trip, you're going to pay whatever the airline asks. But if you can flex, there are still deals out there. Here's what's working for me right now:
Book sooner, not later. With prices on an upward trajectory and the full fuel impact still working its way into fares, the cheap seat you see today may genuinely be cheaper than the one you see next month. In a survey cited by Al Jazeera, 11% of passengers said they'd already started booking flights sooner because of all this. Smart move.
Search a range of dates, not a single day. Shifting your departure by even a day or two can mean a dramatically different price, especially now that airlines are thinning out their schedules. This is exactly what I built FlightList for, searching a window of dates and surfacing the cheapest fare instead of locking you into one.
Stay open on the destination. Some routes have been hammered far worse than others. If you're flexible on where you go, not just when, you can route around the worst of the increases and find the corridors that are still competitively priced.
Lean on one-way tickets. When prices are this volatile, locking yourself into a fixed return date weeks in advance is a gamble. Two one-way tickets keep your options open, and they often come out cheaper anyway. That's been my default for over a decade, and a fuel crisis is exactly the kind of moment it pays off.
We're in a genuinely tough stretch for airfares. Fuel has doubled, surcharges are back, seats are being cut, and a major budget carrier just disappeared. None of that is great if you love to travel cheap, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
But "more expensive on average" doesn't mean "no deals anywhere." It means the deals are harder to spot and they go to the travelers who move fast and stay flexible. That's always been true. The fuel crisis has just turned up the volume.
So keep watching the prices. Keep your dates loose. And when a good fare shows up, don't overthink it.
