Hi, I am in the process of booking my local flights in South America for my holiday in March and I c

Hi, I am in the process of booking my local flights in South America for my holiday in March and I can t get over how expensive travel is in South America, its over $ 350usd just to get a flight from Lima to Guayaquil (a short flight) and was going to cost me $ 500usd+ from Argentina to Ecuador. I have shopped around and seen these are the going rates.
Back to my question Are these rates because of the lower quantity of people flying in ratio to the populations of these countries? My theory on these prices is the more proportional people fly in richer countries.. the more competition there hence cheaper airfares. I am from New Zealand and Australia and my return ticket to South America is almost the same as a ticket from Argentina to Ecuador (and that s only one way too!) I know in the countries I ve travelled (Europe, UK, New Zealand, Australia, Asia).. air travel is cheap comparatively. I know this is a silly question.. cheap tickets to hawaii but being a pilot this interests me and but I would love to hear some other thoughts. Thanks, Jason.
I don t know about air travel, per se, because I did manage once to travel relatively cheaply from Lima to Sao Paolo a couple years ago. Though, that was on a budget Brasilian airline that went under less than a year later. Maybe the majors are able to force some kind of monopolistic legislations in that area? Indeed, the region isn t unfamiliar with that brand of corruption.
Also, another factor, and I m only speculating because I know that South American countries are constantly cheap tickets to hawaii feuding and falling-out, perhaps travel cheap tickets to hawaii for locals is too messy. For example, in your case, maybe not too many Argentines travel to Ecuador, because they d need to solicit visas and other paperwork. So it d be hard to keep costs down, with demand so low.
I think that the number of flights per day and the amount of competition helps set the price. If there are a lot of airlines competing, then the price will go down. However if there is only 1 or 2 airlines that flies a particular cheap tickets to hawaii route and there are not many flights cheap tickets to hawaii per day, the ticket price will be higher.