Holidaymakers are being lured to popular European destinations with cheaper deals on flights, as customers delay bookings due to fears over jet fuel shortages.
Travellers can snap up deals to Spain, Portugal and Italy for less than the cost of a flight in 2025, according to data from airfare comparison site Kayak.
But while airlines have been offering cheaper deals to boost demand, industry leaders have cautioned that in the longer-term, higher fares are inevitable due to soaring fuel prices sparked by the Iran war.
According to Kayak, the average price of a return flight from the UK to Faro in Portugal in the week ending 4 May this year was £139, compared with £150 over the same period in 2025.
The cost of a flight to Rome has slumped 15 per cent since last year, with a return on average £116, down from £137 over the same week last May.
And bargains are available to Spanish holiday hotspots including Barcelona, where prices have fallen from £131 on average last May to £108 over the same week in 2026.
Alicante is also cheaper, with airfares up to the week ending 4 May costing £122, compared with £126 in the same week last year.
Examples of cheap flights over the coming weeks include a £79 Skyscanner deal for a return flight from Newcastle to Faro on 20 May, coming back to the UK on 27 May, with Jet2 and Ryanair.
A return flight from Manchester to Milan is also available with EasyJet for £93 over the same period, while a return from Stansted to Genoa can be snapped up for £43 with Ryanair.
Airlines ‘won’t keep absorbing cost’ of Iran war
The Strait of Hormuz, the waterway which around a fifth of global oil flows through, remains effectively shut to shipping due to blockades by Iran and the US.
The crisis has cut off about 30 per cent of Europe’s aviation fuel shipments, leading to soaring prices for scarce alternative supplies.
On Thursday, Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said there was no need to panic over potential jet fuel shortages, but warned rising fuel prices would inevitably feed through into higher ticket prices.
Walsh cautioned airlines couldn’t continue “absorbing the cost” of chaos from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz in the long term, with the price of jet fuel more than doubling since the start of the US-Israeli war with Iran.
“There may be some instances where airlines will discount to stimulate some traffic flow… but over time it’s inevitable that the high price of oil will be reflected in higher ticket prices,” he said.
European airlines, airports and tour operators, however, have been striking a bullish tone on jet fuel supply, despite one of the worst crises in decades.
Jet fuel supplies have been under pressure from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz (Photo: Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch)This week, WizzAir said 44 per cent of its summer fuel capacity was already booked, up two percentage points on last year while Luis Gallego, chief executive of British Airways parent company IAG does not believe there will be any interruption of jet fuel supplies for the summer.
Sebastian Ebel, CEO of Europe’s largest tour company TUI , said there was “no indication” of fuel running out.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said more fuel has been imported from the US, while UK refineries have upped their production.
But James Noel-Beswick, head of commodities trading at Sparta Commodities, said further problems were looming from July when the peak summer holiday travel season kicks in.
Jet fuel stocks in Europe still looked poor, he said, with supplies at the major import-export Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) hub at their lowest for more than 10 years.
“We can’t run at the same typical demand numbers like last year in July, August, and have no disruption,” Noel-Beswick, told The i Paper.
“The first thing that happens is that prices go up. Then the airlines cancel any flights they can, and also their least profitable ones, essentially.”
Data released this week by aviation analytics company Cirium showed airlines axed 296 departures from UK airports this month, equivalent to 0.75 per of the total, and up from 120 cancellations six days ago.
The number of outbound flights planned in June is down 48 from a week ago, after 0.2 per cent of flights were cancelled.
“But actually we’ve seen things flip around a little bit in that we’ve seen so much demand destruction, and fear from the airlines that people aren’t going to book any ticket over this summer, that they have started to lower flight prices a little,” Noel-Beswick said.
“They’ve lost a lot of their jet fuel supply, or future jet fuel supply, but it’s possible that they’ve lost more future flight bookings.”
Analysis from Barclays shows short-haul travel demand in Europe is struggling in the face of the conflict, with the war weighing on consumer confidence.
“Whilst the Western Med outperforms the Eastern Med, demand is softer than before the war and bookings are later,” said transport analyst Andrew Lobbenberg.
“We expect that demand will brighten when the Strait reopens, but that consumer confidence will still be weaker than it was before the war as high energy prices take time to flow through the economy.”
While airlines are speaking confidently about fuel availability for May and June, he said, carriers were “motivated to accentuate positive messaging” since uncertainty over jet fuel is hitting consumer demand for travel.
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