This evening in the 8:00pm EST domestic U.S. airfare distribution the FareCompare.com proprietary airfare processing system noted significant system wide airfare increase rollback activity related to the United Airlines $50 roundtrip fuel surcharge increase attempt this past Friday. Tonight Delta Air Lines completely rolled back airline ticket prices — to Friday mornings previous levels — before they originally matched the 50$ roundtrip fuel surcharge increase initiated by United Airlines late Friday evening.

Continental Airlines had completely pulled out of the increase earlier today and late this evening they slightly reinstated the increase on about 15% of their route system - basically leaving Continental and Delta on the sidelines. US Airways also slightly rolled back their previously matched routes by 15%.

In the past 3 years I have never seen an increase attempt be fully matched over the weekend and then withstand two major legacy airlines pulling out early the following week - I wouldn’t be surprised to see all four (4) remaining legacy airlines with the $50 roundtrip increase roll back to previous levels by late Tuesday evening.

I suggest all air travelers that can possibly wait on purchases until late Tuesday — do so — in order to benefit from the probable rollback tomorrow.

Legacy airlines have been very successful recently getting over ten (10) roundtrip increases of both $10 and $20 to “stick” in the past 4 months - the most recent “sticky” increase just ten short days ago in the first week of 2008 — it seems breaking this strategy of frequent - smaller — increases has either finally met some push back by air travelers or more likely predictions of an economic slow down coupled with swirling merger rumors has legacy airlines more cautious.

Despite this probable increase failure — the fundamentals remain the same for U.S. domestic air travel with firm demand, restrained capacity and high fuel costs providing a suitable environment for further increases in the coming weeks. Assuming this particular increase fails it would not be out of the question to see a similar attempt later this week - savvy air travelers should be aware of this possibility and do some shopping and booking before the end of the week.

The next airfare distributions are at 10:00am EST and 12:30pm EST Wednesday. I will continue to update after each airfare distribution on any significant increase matching and/or rollback activity.