This evening in the 8pm EDT Domestic U.S./Canada airfare feed, Delta Air Lines filed an airfare sale for departures between August 14, 2007 and October 16, 2007.

The newly filed airfares require a 21 day advance purchase before departure all days of the week. Tickets must be purchased by August 9^th.

The average decrease in price is $73 below the current lowest published Delta airfare in over 6,000 city pairs. The seat inventory for these airfares is in the Deltas deep discount T class where seats are usually limited in quantity.

Traditionally most airlines file airfare sales for the softer travel time period between late August and mid November. However, with the highest demand in history this summer, it was not clear cut that these traditional airfare sales would occur this year.

This airfare sale signifies what should be the first of several airlines matching for fall travel departures are associated wit the time period after children are back in school and before demand increases for Thanksgiving and end of year holiday season travel.

Example city pairs with these now low airfares include:

Phoenix to Toronto: $290+tax

Nashville to Raleigh-Durham $118+tax

Given the wave of attempted airfare increases in the past 4 weeks by several airlines; FareCompare.com has decided to review these increases to see just how sticky they were.

We decided the best way to do this was to intersect the airfare increase information with non-stop flight schedules. To this end:

• We pulled all the non-stop flights within/between the U.S. and Canada for Friday 20-July for each airline and totaled the number of seats flown (Fridays are typically the busiest travel day).
• We also pulled all non-stop airfares that had a price increase of at least $10 roundtrip ($5 one-way) since June 20^th (the day before the first wave of recent attempted airfare increases)
• We intersected these 2 sets of data to compute the number of seats flown which had at least $10 roundtrip increase ($5 one-way)
• We did not attempt to analyze connecting airfare markets; this report is solely based on all non-stop seats flown on a typical day within/between U.S & Canada.

The analysis showed three groupings of airfare increases $10, $20, & $30 roundtrip ($5, $10, & $15 one-way).

The following chart shows the percentage of seats flown with at least a $10 roundtrip increase since 20-June on each airline broken down by advance purchase (number of days required before departure).

A few interesting notes about this data:

• Airlines which initiated increases had more luck keeping it sticky
• It was difficult for the airlines to maintain attempted increases on leisure airfares (14 days advance purchase and higher) and much easier on business fares (less than 14 days advance purchase)
• Northwest was the only major airline which did not have any significant stickiness
• Surprisingly US Airways which was a late matching entrant is currently the leader on increases
• Delta was the strongest behind US Airways on maintaining the increase
• Jet Blue was able to sneak in late and get some increases after not participating initially
• United had a surprising number of $30 roundtrip increases, suggesting they either have little competition on some routes or did not yield as much to competitive pressure
• Lastly, the big question: Can airfare increase be called sticky if they only stick in 20-30% of all non-stop seats flown and only for business travel?

* Note: All data is relative to a single day of all non-stops seats flown that day

This morning in the 10:00am EDT airfare feed US Airways initiated a system wide increase of $1, $3 & $5 each way.

This increase follows hot on the heels of a Southwest airlines increase of $1, $3, $5 & $10 each way, matched by all major airlines over the weekend except US Airways.

We track the Southwest increases through matching activity of the major airlines in overlapping Southwest flight routes. It should be noted the $10 each way increase on matching airlines was only on walkup (0 day advance purchase) airfares and not across the board (so the Southwest $10 each way increase is likely only on walkup fares).

It is highly unusual for a major airline to initiate a system wide increase (US Airways) on a Monday. Most increases occur on Thursday evening giving the other major airlines a chance to match over the weekend.

Historically airfare sales begin to occur in August for travel departing in late August through mid November which is normally a softer travel time period. The airlines willingness to maintain increases at this point may point to a change in this historical pattern of slower travel during this time period.

The history of this weekends airfare increase activity is shown below:

A rollup of the last 2 weeks of increases shows that for the most part both rounds of increases did indeed stick with some notable exceptions:

• Low cost airline overlap markets. Southwest, JetBlue & AirTran did not match either of the two increases
• Smaller markets that were not as important to a particular airlines market share

The following report shows a comparison of the increase for the past 2 weeks from Wednesday June 20^th 8:00pm EDT (the day before the first increase) and today at 12:30pm EDT.

The information is categorized by advance purchase (number of days required before departure for purchase today) and the percentage of total markets where the price has risen by $20 roundtrip ($10 one-way) or only $10 roundtrip ($5 one-way).

Note: The $4 roundtrip Continental and Northwest fuel surcharge increase for this comparison was removed. Empty columns reflect no significant data to report.

To more accurately reflect the stickiness of increases and/or decreases, starting next week we will begin a weekly rollup that uses flight schedules to further refine and filter the airfare information.

The increase initiated by United last Friday morning was matched by the all major airlines over the weekend.

After processing all three of todays airfare feeds (10:00am, 12:30pm and 8:00pm EDT), the increase is holding firm and the matching has been expanded during the day by Delta and Continental (totals shown below).

Details for other airlines can be requested individually.