This morning in the 10:00am EST U.S. domestic airfare distribution the FareCompare.com proprietary airfare processing system noted significant increase matching activity by American Airlines. American Airlines began a very selective set of matching of the $20 roundtrip increase initiated by Delta Air Lines late Monday evening — $20 roundtrip increases from American are noted in over 6,000 city pairs (well less than half of a full match) for both leisure (14 or more days advance purchase) and business airfares. Keep reading to see how the American Airlines match could affect travelers throughout the country.

The American Airlines $20 roundtrip matching activity appears to be targeted at their least competitive and smaller city routes. A quick check of their Dallas/Ft. Worth (DFW) hub only shows significant matching to/from ANC, ATL, BOS, CVG, BDL, EWR, RSW, MKE, PIT, RDU, WAS and their Miami (MIA) hub shows significant matching only to/from ANC, ATL, BWI, CHI, CVG, DEN, LAS, MEM, OKC, PHL, SLC leaving dozens of more competitive routes out of the mix for now.

This $20 roundtrip increase matching activity occurs amidst a tidal wave of airfare sales for off-peak travel days through the end of winter 2008 which began rolling in starting late Monday on both the legacy and lower cost airlines. Off-peak airfare sales are targeted at the least traveled days of the week including Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday.

The volatility of daily airfare changes in the past few days has been incredibly high with off-peak airfare sales strangely coupled side-by-side among increase matching its enough to make any air travel consumers head spin the bottom line for consumers is that if they are flexible they can get some incredibly cheap deals and should be booking them now — business travelers and those less flexible will absorb the brunt (and the bulk) of the previous 8 successful increases since Labor Day.

I have also posted in my blog a brief analysis of flight schedule changes in the last month which shows some interesting flight schedule cutbacks within the U.S. domestic route system for travel departing in early March 2008.