Why are flights staying so expensive internationally but not domestic?

Since Covid shut down the world, I noticed a disturbing and disappointing phenomenon as far as travel is concerned. The prices for international flights, especially long-haul flights going over the Atlantic or Pacific, skyrocketed in price since the pandemic and at first this was justified by the airlines as they claimed they were enduring greater costs associated with personnel and social distancing regulations etc. Now here we are years later where almost zero countries have anything like that happening yet the prices remained high. I no longer believe them about their claims of additional costs and I believe they are just fleecing the customers.

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I've read some articles that are probably written by people hired by the airlines where they attribute this sustained high cost in 2023 to inflation and high fuel costs but there is something I have noticed that contradicts this "excuse" on the part of the airlines: Domestic flights have gotten cheaper than they were (adjusted for inflation) pre-Covid.

Unless there is something dirty going on as far as countries charging various tariffs on one another it doesn't make much sense that this would be the case ONLY for international flights if what they are saying is true.

When I say "domestic" I don't necessarily mean in the United States because I've always felt like the USA had a bit of a price fix among the various airlines to make sure that Americans are consistently charged more for flights than the rest of the world. This has been the case for all of my adult life and I suppose it could be a tax thing as well.

The point remains though that I have been in North, South, and Central America since Covid ended and the international prices remain about double the price they were pre-Covid but the domestic flights, for the most part, have been cheaper than they were before. This includes when the domestic flight is actually LONGER than some of the domestic flights I have taken.

now to address the question that I asked in the name of this post I apologize but I don't actually know the answer. Normally when I write a blog post it is to inform other people of an answer to something but this one is a real mystery to me.

I miss the days when big airlines seemed to be competing with one another or price for longer flights especially when they are going to or coming from rather large cities such as NYC or Atlanta. These days the price difference between various airlines are suspiciously similar to the point where I don't feel it is really possible that they are not price fixing.

I would be willing to bet that the airlines all get together and agree to a "minimum" price for certain routes and they merely pretend to compete with one another. I just can't make sense of it any other way.

I miss the good old days where I could travel from East Coast USA to somewhere in Asia and pay less than $1000 round trip. This wasn't even that long ago either. It was maybe about 5 years or so ago. These days you are likely to see prices that much for a one-way ticket and while I understand that inflation is a very real thing, it hasn't DOUBLED the cost of things in the past 5 years.

If anyone out there has any idea why these prices are remaining so high I would be interested in understanding why that is the case....not that there is going to be anything we can do about it.