As flight prices have been on a steady increase since COVID-19 restrictions have loosened up, people everywhere are now expected to pay a hefty price for vacations that used to be significantly cheaper.

The price increase has indirectly affected seniors’ heavily-anticipated spring break, since these vacations are more costly it’s borderline unreasonable to go on two vacations within about one month of each other. Evie Ulbrich ’23 and her family made the decision to stay home because they have big, expensive plans this spring break.

“My spring break plans definitely affected the decision to stay home,” Ulbrich said. “We have a trip to Cabo planned, which I’m super excited about and is definitely worth the staycation.”

Unfortunately for others, like Jake Chunn ’23, has to undergo an involuntary staycation for a similar reason as Ulbrich, since spring break plans came at a hefty price tag. Their family never really plans anything special for mid-winter break either, so staying home wasn’t unexpected.

“We’re already spending a lot on spring break, so it wasn’t really worth it to plan another vacation just a month before,” Chunn said. “We usually don’t go anywhere for mid-winter break either.”

Avonnah Washington ’26 usually takes mid-winter break to recoup at home anyways, so she said these price increases didn’t heavily affect her plans. However, with such a huge family, this could further prevent them from flying anytime soon.

“We don’t really plan anything big over mid-winter break,” Washington said. “Though we might have to start driving for vacations in the future since I have five other siblings, and a trip to Florida with a big family is definitely not cheap these days.”

Luckily, this hasn’t put a damper on everyone’s plans, since Jack Vethacke ’23 is going to be visiting his grandparents down south. However, these drastic flight price increases have turned Vethacke’s parents away from going with him.

“My grandparents live in a very rural part of Florida—you might as well be going to Idaho or something,” Vethacke said. “My mom doesn’t want to spend the money on a plane ticket to go down there when she could buy a ticket to the Outer Banks or something she’d actually enjoy.”