If I told you that you could book a last-minute ticket from Dublin to New York for a fare of €15, you’d probably think I was mad. Welcome to transatlantic travel in 2025. When I checked last week, the price of a return airfare in the month of May on that route with Aer Lingus was €30.
The taxes, charges and carrier-imposed fees on top of that fare totalled €368.58, meaning the real price for the customer was €398.58, which was still a bargain. The carrier-imposed fee for transatlantic flights on Aer Lingus from Ireland to North America is €280 return per passenger on economy, and €800 on a business-class ticket.
So, a €30 return fare from Dublin to JFK? What’s going on? I think we all know. Tourism to the US is falling – dramatically. This shouldn’t be a surprise. There has been a plenty of news reports of people finding themselves stalled at Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); anecdotes of people being refused entry or dealing with intense questioning, bordering on interrogation; and articles about what to do when your electronic devices are searched and how to prepare for that eventuality. There’s also the perception that a break in the US right now doesn’t exactly scream carefree, liberated, positive vibes and fun.
In March of this year, slightly fewer than 39,000 people normally resident in Ireland travelled to the US, a drop of 27 per cent compared with March 2024. Over the first three months of 2025, about 105,000 Irish residents travelled to the US, compared with 120,000 in the same period in 2024. It’s important to note that the Easter holidays – a big moment for outward travel from Ireland – were in April this year, and at the end of March last year. Perhaps a useful comparison will be April 2025 versus March 2024, once we have the data.
Low fares from Ireland to the US aren’t unique to Aer Lingus. You could also fly from Dublin to Newark this weekend and return the following Saturday on Austrian Airlines for €400.69. A flight from Dublin to Boston next week (with a stop in Reykjavik) on Play Airlines, and returning 10 days later, will cost you €283.16. Keep in mind that these fares are for last-minute bookings. Purchasing a transatlantic flight with little notice is usually an expensive endeavour.
Luckily, if I want to get under the bonnet of the economics of airfares, I have an expert at my disposal. My mother spent most of her working life selling plane tickets, first for Aer Lingus, and then with multiple other airlines, including United Airlines. “It’s yield control. If they see the aircraft filling up, the fares go up. Airfares are basically dynamic pricing,” she said when I told her how low the fares to the US were. “If there’s no demand, the price goes down, like any commodity. But you can’t reduce it to half-nothing. Under €400 is nearly unsustainable as a fare. If you’re selling that, you’d hope if a bunch of people paid €398, then 20 people will have paid €598. But that sounds like a stagnant market to me. Put it this way, that fare would not be that fare if the flight was filling.”
During her career, she traversed a moment of extreme fear regarding air travel, working for United Airlines when 9/11 happened. In the aftermath of those attacks, air travel fell, particularly within and to and from the US. According to the US department of transportation‘s data, the drop in monthly passengers on aeroplanes in the US in September 2001 was 33 per cent. It took until March 2004 for the number of passengers to recover to the level that existed in August 2001.
Business class and first class are extremely important to airlines. When economy fares drop substantially, it’s those fares that essentially pay for the flight. But uncertainty regarding what may happen on arrival the US will influence people’s choices. “I’m sure there’s some exaggeration with the stories we’re hearing, but in a way, it doesn’t matter,” my mother said. “It’s about people’s perceptions. It doesn’t matter if the fear is justified, because the fear factor is real.”
For travellers from Ireland, there is the bonus of pre-clearance. Nobody likes layovers, but I’m sure at least some of our fellow Europeans looking to travel to the US may now be thinking of an Irish airport as an interesting option. We’re not in a unique position when it comes to pre-clearance, but it’s still unusual. There are 15 pre-clearance locations outside of the US. Nine are in Canada, then Aruba, Bermuda, Nassau, Abu Dhabi, Dublin and Shannon. If an unanticipated denial of entry occurs at US CBP in Ireland, at least you’re still in Europe.
The one thing that does happen with low airfares is that they encourage people to travel. A bargain is a bargain.
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