By Maureen O’Hare | CNN

If you’re searching for a silver lining, look to the clouds. While the cost of living is spiraling and hitting groceries and other everyday costs hard, the price of plane tickets is at a 15-year low – in the United States, at least. Travel expert Katy Nastro tells CNN Business that average airfare is nearly a quarter less than it was prepandemic, and in fact, “hasn’t been this cheap since 2009.”

This is the first full “normal” year of travel since Covid rocked our world, and while Nastro doesn’t expect prices to skyrocket anytime soon, she does sound one note of warning.

“The single biggest factor for why we see cheap flights is competition,” says Nastro. “We want (budget) carriers in the mix because it actually places downward pressure on the legacy carriers” and keeps prices down. Airline mergers could affect that, meaning less competition and, potentially, higher fares. But this week, a federal judge blocked a merger of JetBlue and Spirit Airlines.

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