Tonight in the 8:00pm EDT domestic airfare distribution, the FareCompare.com proprietary airfare processing system noted a significant airfare increase initiated by American Airlines. American Airlines increased airfares by $20 roundtrip (10$ one-way) on over 10,000 city pairs including both business airfares (less than 14 day advance purchase) and leisure airfares (more than 14 days advance purchase).

This increase represents the seventh (7th) major attempted airfare hike since Labor Day weekend – the previous six increase attempts (most recently by Continental Airlines) have been mostly “sticky”.

American Airlines has been one of the most cautious of the legacy airlines during this unprecedented wave of increases (although American did initiate one of the previous 6 increases) — with this increase, however, they have thrown caution to the wind – as this is the first across the board $20 roundtrip increase attempt which has included all domestic mileage distances — previously only a smaller number of longer haul city pairs had $20 roundtrip increase activity.

This increase comes in the midst of a relatively broad based leisure airfare sale initiated by several lower cost airlines for holiday travel on mostly off-peak travel days by JetBlue, AirTran & Southwest which has been widely matched by the legacy airlines.

American Airlines also increased airfares to Hawaii by $54 roundtrip in over 700 city pairs – Hawaii has seen heavy increase volatility in the past few months. I am posting examples of increased city pairs in my blog (http://rickseaney.com).

Examples of hub city pairs with the $20 airfare increase are shown below (sorted by roundtrip distance):