Friday September 14^th, 2007 10:00pm CDT

Farecompare.com, a consumer airfare research website, noted today in the 10:00am EDT, airfare distribution, a 6$ roundtrip (3$ one-way) system wide increase attempt by United Airlines.

Subsequently, in the 12:30pm EDT and 8:00pm EDT airfare distributions, the FareCompare.com proprietary airfare processing system noted significant matching activity.

This most recent increase continues to be broad based, encompassing both business and leisure airfares. The current tally on the percentage of publicly filed airfares that have increase by $6 roundtrip (3$ one-way) is shown in the table below:

There are only 2 airfare distributions this weekend at 5:00pm Saturday and Sunday (where more matching or rollback activity might occur)

In the span of just three short weeks, a significant number of passengers are now paying up to twenty four dollars more for roundtrip ticket. Three relatively sticky increases in as many weeks (initiated by Southwest, Delta and United respectively) is a telling sign that the major legacy airlines are feeling pretty confident about passenger demand in the coming months.