Passengers would pay on average only $8 per hour to shorten long haul travel according to research released by travel search engine Skyscanner.
The ‘Value of Time’ to air passengers was calculated using Skyscanner’s Travel Insight data tool. It also shows that passengers were willing to pay only $1-2 to reduce travel time on short duration trips.
The data for the findings comes from all global searches and exits on route pairings conducted for travel between June 2015 through to May 2016. Skyscanner has 50 million monthly visitors, and the data collected includes pricing and route intentions.
Skyscanner analysed the top 100 most popular long-haul flight routes, plotting the durations of routes passengers booked against the price they paid for the flight to show the value they place on saving journey time.
The analysis, which also includes an interactive dashboard where the data can be drilled down on further, reveals that $8 is the average value passengers attribute to an hour of long-haul travel time saved. The data also shows how this value can vary per route, depending on a number of factors such as the duration of the trip, and whether it’s for business or leisure.
As part of the analysis, Skyscanner also picked 10 popular global routes which currently lack a direct non-stop connection, calculating the value of reducing time on those routes, and showing the potential opportunity for carriers to introduce direct flights.
On the Bahrain to Kuala Lumpur route for example, which is popular but has no direct route, passengers pay on average $26 per hour to shorten their journey. Meanwhile passengers flying between LA and Buenos Aires, where more choice from carriers exists, pay on average of $2 per hour saved, showing the value per route can vary significantly.
Head of Business Development for Skyscanner Analytics Faical Allou commented, “In this day and age, time is an increasingly valuable commodity. Looking into the value of reducing journey time involved in taking a flight, particularly a long-distance one, reveals interesting insights and shows that there are several factors involved in how much value passengers attribute to reducing travel time, such as whether the trip is for business or leisure, the length of the trip and the choice of carriers and itineraries on offer.”
*The following top 100 long-haul routes (between 6,000KM and 11,000 KM in distance) were used in the analysis:
LON-NYC PAR-BKK MUC-BKK DUS-NYC
LON-DXB MAN-NYC LON-GOI LON-WAS
LON-BKK DUB-NYC LON-CHI DUB-BKK
MIL-NYC MOW-CMB IST-NYC DUB-SFO
LON-LAX LON-CPT LON-COK LON-BJS
LON-ORL LON-SFO SAO-NYC BRU-NYC
MAN-ORL LON-HKT SEL-PAR LON-MAA
MOW-BKK AMS-NYC LON-NBO LON-RIO
MAN-BKK BHX-DXB DXB-LON LON-YVR
MAN-DXB PAR-NYC WAW-NYC SYD-BKK
LON-MIA MIL-MIA BCN-BKK LON-CUN
MOW-HKT NYC-LON DUB-DXB LON-LVS
MAD-NYC BCN-NYC DUS-BKK BHX-NYC
LON-YTO MOW-NYC LED-BKK SEL-SYD
LON-BOM ROM-BKK ZRH-BKK SEL-LAX
DUB-ORL FRA-NYC BER-NYC ZRH-NYC
LON-CMB IST-BKK BER-BKK GLA-ORL
MIL-BKK TLV-NYC LON-LOS MAN-LAX
FRA-BKK SAO-MIA ATH-NYC SEL-LON
LON-HKG BKK-LON SIN-MEL LON-ISB
LON-DEL WAW-BKK LON-AUH DUS-MIA
ROM-NYC LON-TYO LON-LHE GLA-NYC
AMS-BKK LON-BOS DUB-LAX EDI-NYC
LON-JNB HKG-LON AMS-DXB SEL-DPS
SIN-TYO SAO-ORL ROM-MIA SEL-HNL
