On Saturday night, American Airlines raised base airfare prices by $20 roundtrip on about one-third of city pairs that would normally constitute a system wide fare hike (for them), according to Rick Seaney, CEO of FareCompare.com, an airfare monitoring website. Later that evening, Seaney reported that Continental, Delta and United all quickly matched the $20 roundtrip increase across the bulk of their respective route systems – for good measure Air Canada and Midwest Airlines decided to come along for the ride. He said that Northwest Airlines and US Airways had not yet matched.
Seaney said that the number of city pairs American increased was just more than what he would normally chalk up to an "elevated level" of catch up activity, but he noted American raised prices this past Saturday by $30 to 60 roundtrip on just under one-quarter of their city pairs (including overlap with Southwest), with little matching activity by other legacy airlines. Seaney said that neither of these "micro-hikes" added up to what he would call a full blown system-wide airfare hike attempt (66 percent or more routes) but said that "it is getting close and marks a definite departure from previous fare hike activity. Seaney said that as a result of this and previous fare hikes, the domestic fuel surcharge that at the beginning of the year had been $20 roundtrip chugged with almost weekly increases up to $130 roundtrip on most non low-cost airline routes (this hike is a base airfare hike).
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