Buying cheap Tet flight tickets is as difficult as 'picking stars from the sky'?

As Tuoi Tre Online reported: In order to reduce the pressure on ticket prices during the 2025 Lunar New Year, although airlines have increased operations and introduced measures, airfares have still increased sharply. Many people are disappointed because they cannot find cheap tickets even if they buy early.

Many passengers said they booked tickets 4-5 months in advance but ticket prices have not decreased.

As someone who regularly uses air travel, reader Manh Quang shared his perspective on this issue.

Hunting for cheap airline tickets is like "picking stars from the sky"

In mid-September 2024, domestic airlines announced the opening of ticket sales for the 2025 Lunar New Year.

At that time, asking friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, almost no one had bought a plane ticket for Tet. According to their explanation, the price of plane tickets for Tet always sold in the highest and most expensive class, buying now would not be any cheaper.

Now reading the article "Airfare prices for Tet 2025 are high, buying early won't get you cheap tickets", I see that it is exactly the same.

Why is that? Where do the cheap tickets "disappear" to?

A friend of mine who is from the North said that although airlines always introduce attractive promotions to customers such as buying tickets early to get good price incentives, in reality, hunting for cheap air tickets during Tet is harder than "picking stars from the sky".

Therefore, many people who often have to book tickets to visit their families during Tet or those who often travel by air are not surprised or excited about buying cheap tickets to travel during Tet.

Because every year, as soon as it opens, there are only the highest class tickets for the trip from South to North (before Tet) and the opposite direction (after Tet) and there is always a tendency for the following year to be higher than the previous year.

Where to find cheap flights?

For a round-trip flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi between January 25, 2025 (December 26) and February 2, 2025 (the 5th day of the Lunar New Year), the cheapest price is 6 million VND/round-trip ticket of Vietjet, while Vietravel Airlines, Bamboo Airways and Vietnam Airlines have prices of 7.1 - 8 million VND/round-trip ticket. This price is higher than the 6 - 6.8 million VND of last year.

Airlines claim that they always sell a wide range of tickets at various prices for customers to choose from, that it is due to the imbalance in demand, to compensate for empty flights in the opposite direction, that it is due to a lack of planes, that input costs are increasing...

But there are questions like: Why are domestic tickets in many other countries cheap, even during New Year's, they are not as expensive as in Vietnam? Why are there many ticket ranges but when it opens at 0:00, there are no cheap tickets left, only the highest class?

And where are the cheap tickets for Tet?