In the past few years, there has been a fixed routine for May Day air tickets: targeting honest people. About a month in advance, everyone was worried about ticket shortages and gritted their teeth to place orders at the price of 2000+at that time, thinking they had seized the opportunity and made rational plans. So what? Two to three days before departure, the airline plummets sharply in order to increase seat occupancy, with a few hundred yuan enough to buy the bottom. The honest person who locked the ticket in advance saw the price cut in half, and their mentality collapsed directly; And those gamblers who have "learned well" and decided to wait for low prices are often forced to buy at high prices because they did not wait for a drop or sell out their tickets directly. Year after year, many people have repeatedly suffered this loss and simply changed their strategy: not buying in advance, just squatting on the deadline to buy at the bottom. Unexpectedly, this fixed routine of 2026 was directly shattered by reality. This May Day, the average price of economy class air tickets including tax in China has approached 990-1000 yuan, which is about 25% higher than in 2019 and nearly 12-14% higher than in 2025. Popular routes easily cost nearly 2000 yuan, and some outbound routes cost over 6000 yuan one-way. Even worse, international flights (especially in Southeast Asia and Oceania) have been cancelled on a large scale due to the short-term surge in aviation fuel prices, with cancellation rates soaring from 3.6% last year to over 7.4%, and in some directions even exceeding 50-80%. Why did the sky suddenly change? Because the airline is no longer involved. Fuel costs account for the majority of operations, and after the situation in the Middle East pushed up oil prices, they lost money every time they flew. They no longer rely on sudden drops to rush traffic, but have begun to seriously calculate costs, cut low revenue routes, and stop vicious price wars. This wave of operation should be particularly felt by the old leeks in the encryption circle: early FOMO high position takeover → regret Dead waiting for lower price to buy → found that the bottom was gone, directly higher Honest planning party vs gambler faction, whose wallet hurts more? When airlines start calculating costs instead of rolling in traffic, it's like the project team shifting from 'pulling the wheel' to 'fundamentals', and the most difficult stage for ordinary people comes.