Due to rapidly increasing prices of European airlines, the glory and time of cheap airlines flights is very close to the end. Most of the European airlines have increased their fares to cope with the taxes and fuel costs, the International Air Transport Association shared yesterday.

The traffic of air travel fell down by 3.5 per cent across the world between November and March because passengers who have limited travel budget, rejected air fares that have increased as a result of increasing prices of oil. The sudden and abnormal increase in tax in the Uk and Germany has affected Europe very badly.

The International Air transport Association said that airlines are forced to increase the air fares to cope with the price of jet fuel which has increased more than half in the previous year. The association further added that it’s the repeat of 2008 when increased cost of fuel affects the ticket prices and there was a sudden huge rise in the ticket prices.

Brian Pearce, Iata’s chief economist, said European airlines are left with no other option but to raise up the airfares. “ if the airlines have got a remarkable margin, then only they can lower air fares to accelerate the demand, but when fuel costs are raised by 50 per cent , its practically not possible to offer cheap airline tickets”, Mr Pearce Said.

Iata said UK airlines have to raise the prices for another 8 per cent this year. The rising price of fuel takes 5 percent and the passenger duty hike will take up the remaining 3 percent.

Last month, Ryanair, the start financial performer of the budget airlines said the airline will increase the fare by 12 percent this year to cover the expected increase in its fuel bill, which increased 37 percent to €1.2bn (£1.1bn) in the previous financial year.

This week, Iata cut down its profit prediction for global airline profit by more than half to $4bn because of the intense hike in the oil prices and economic hurdles.

The overall profit margin of the airline industry will narrow down by 0.7 percent this year from 3.2 per cent of pervious year, which was the strongest one since the September 2001 attack on US.

Overall, the travler’s influx is expected to be the lowest worldwide at 3.9 per cent this years as compared with 14.6 percent of the Middle east, Africa and Asia Pacific. The growth of the European airline will now depend on the business travel entirely, which is holding up well as encouraging companies to spend on the business trips. It is expected that the business traffic will increase for 6 percent.

Gulf airlines, led by Qatar Airways, attacked European carriers and Canada by ceasing the access to their markets, while European airlines accused their competitors of Middle East for taking hidden subsidies. With doubtful profits, taxes are also giving the burning effect to the issue.