This morning in the 10:00am EST domestic U.S. airfare distribution the FareCompare.com proprietary airfare processing system noted significant system wide airfare increase matching and rollback activity related to the United $50 roundtrip fuel surcharge attempted increase last Friday. The domestic U.S. airline ticket price roller coaster continues this morning as Northwest Airlines matched the $50 roundtrip fuel surcharge across the majority of its route system which would have completed the match for all six legacy airlines, except that Continental Airlines in a complete turnabout has completely rolled back their matching of the increase - leaving them as the lone hold out to this point.

Normally any major legacy airline rolling back has spelled the death of an increase, but Continental Airlines has had trouble in past increases setting their fuel surcharges and at times have dropped surcharges only to reinstate them in the next airfare distribution. Because of this historical behavior, I think it is prudent to wait and see what happens in the next few airfare distributions before making any prediction on the “stickiness” of this unprecedented increase.

It is a bit odd that a few airlines outside the six major legacy airlines have been sitting on the fence so far - Alaska and Frontier have usually followed the legacy airlines in most of the past increases in the last year.

Those passengers contemplating purchasing tickets on Continental Airlines should do so now - they can save $30 to 70 roundtrip on their domestic U.S. airline ticket purchases for the next few hours (assuming Continental reinstates their increase later today).

The next airfare distribution is in a few hours at 12:30pm EST. I will continue to update after each airfare distribution on any significant increase matching and/or rollback activity.