That's a deeply misleading summary of the data. The table excluding inflation is meaningless in the context of parent's comment, so I won't even touch that.

Real prices have dropped 14% in the past 19 years, and have been basically flat since 2004, except for an obviously anomalous dip during the financial crisis (2009/2010). The prevailing trend lines are a steady drop of 1.7% per year from 1995-2004 and then a flat-line (.15% increase per year) 2004-2014. To go back a bit further, airfare dropped over 50% 1978-2006[1]. That is, the trend in the late '90s didn't start in '95.

So no, parent's comment isn't quite literally true (prices have gone up 1.5% in the last decade), but historically prices clearly trend down, which I think is the point.

[1] http://web.mit.edu/airlines/analysis/analysis_airline_indust...

Airfares are most definitely higher than they were in the mid 2000's. The global recession saw a big cut back in capacity and that capacity hasn't been added back in to the system to offset the ever stronger economy. Flights are fuller than they've been in a long time meaning higher fares etc.

> Airfares are most definitely higher than they were in the mid 2000's

We've established that. The data shows that flights this year were about 13% higher than at the lowest point, which was 2009 (recession). They are a little under 5% higher than the lowest point during the "mid 2000's". These numbers (~.25% increase per year over 10 years) are fairly insignificant when you look at the broader trends (>1% decrease per year over 3-4 decades).

Yes, I was referring to airfares over the past few decades, not the recent past.

How much of that is down to taxes and fuel prices? Oil has dropped recently but for most of the past 5-6 years it's been much much higher than it was back then.