This evening in the 8:00pm EST U.S. domestic airfare distribution the FareCompare.com proprietary airfare processing system noted significant airfare price rollback activity by US Airways.

Late Tuesday evening US Airways increased airfares by filing an additional $5 per ticket surcharge system-wide on all airfares in its route system - this evening US Airways has rolled back this increase by modifying the surcharge to only charge $5 per ticket “If sold on the EDS Reservation System” (the EDS reservation system is not used for online travel agency sales, effectively removing this previous surcharge which had no conditions).

In the days surrounding Thanksgiving the other legacy airlines had the opportunity to match the increase, but did not follow along which was probably a major factor in the decision to roll back the increase. In the past few years there have been several increases that have failed — this particular increase is the first failure since early 2007 and follows on the heels of 8 mostly successful increases since Labor Day Weekend.

Other Increase News

Several have asked me for more information on the magnitude of the legacy airlines increases since Labor Day - so I am including the following chart — which shows the average of the cheapest 14 day advance purchase (leisure) roundtrip airfares between 38 top U.S. cities on each of the six (6) legacy airlines since early August 2007 (PDF version of this note attached for those that cannot view images):