22nd Domestic Airfare Hike Attempt of 2011
FINAL UPDATE Friday, Dec. 16: The 22nd attempted domestic airfare hike of 2011 has failed. After garnering initial support from major legacy airlines, the attempt began to collapse Thursday morning (Dec. 15) as American Airlines and others began rolling back hikes, culminating in a full rollback Friday morning by initiating carrier Delta.
UPDATE Wednesday, Dec. 14: US Airways matched the hike, which is now backed by all major legacy carriers. In addition, discount airline Virgin America has matched but others still on the sidelines include Southwest/AirTran, JetBlue and Frontier.
UPDATE Tuesday, Dec. 13: United/Continental matches the airfare hike; three hours later, American Airlines does the same.
EARLIER: On Monday evening (Dec 12), Delta Air Lines initiated a $4 to $10 round-trip domestic airfare hike across the bulk of the route system.
This latest hike attempt follows activity started Dec. 1 by JetBlue, which attempted to raise flights by $6 on a significant number of domestic routes. The attempt later failed, after Delta matched the hike, but other airlines didn’t follow.
This is the 22nd attempted airfare hike of 2011. So far, nine of these attempts have been successful. More updates on the latest increase as the information becomes available.
