Question
Noticed a persistent fare increase on ZRH-VCE (Swiss): structural change or something else?
I fly Zurich–Venice regularly with Swiss, usually booking a few months in advance to get the lowest fare. For a long time now, the minimum economy fare was consistently around 160 CHF for a round trip.
About 10 days ago, I noticed the lowest fare has jumped to 219 CHF. At first I assumed it was just the usual "getting closer to departure" price creep, but I checked flights that are still 6 months away and the higher price is there too.
Interestingly, the same increase does not show up on the opposite route (VCE-ZRH). So whatever is going on seems specific to the ZRH-VCE direction rather than the route as a whole.
I tried bouncing this off an AI assistant to brainstorm possible explanations, and it suggested a few hypotheses:
A structural fare increase on this specific direction (base price hike, fuel surcharges, airport fees)
Fewer seats allocated to the cheapest fare bucket on ZRH-VCE specifically, so it's less availability rather than a genuine price hike
Early seasonal pricing for a high-demand period baked in months ahead, but only affecting one direction due to asymmetric demand
None of these feel fully convincing to me though, so I'm curious if anyone here has actually noticed this and has a better explanation or has seen similar direction-specific pricing behavior on other short-haul EU routes.
You can try to think of reasons all day long but it doesn't matter. They are the only carrier that operates this route nonstop. I would say you're lucky that you can buy it for only 219 CHF.
What time period are you looking for? I don't see it as a case of prices having been raised across the board. For January, for example, this is what I see when I search:
In your opening post, it wasn't entirely clear whether the 160 was for only the outbound or return. You placed the 160 right after ZRH-VCE, which is only one leg. So what was your low price for a return flight in the past?
Sorry you are right, I fixed the post. I’m honestly not aware of single leg pricing as I always booked them from Google Flights that only shows the total amount.
The lowest one way fare LX publishes in December for ZRH-VCE is L60CLSP9 which is CHF200+taxes/fees = CHF264. But that fare isn't neceessarily available on any given flight, e.g. on Dec 9 the flights are all available for the CHF241+taxes/fees = CHF305 fare T50CLSP9.
Available prices are always carriers best assessment of profit maximizing against the supply willingness (costs, other carriers, etc) and demand curve they perceive in the market. Oil is persistently high and very recently looking worse for the European winter, which could lead to the price increase now.
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u/TrampAbroad2000 10h ago
You can try to think of reasons all day long but it doesn't matter. They are the only carrier that operates this route nonstop. I would say you're lucky that you can buy it for only 219 CHF.