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 rollback and matching activity related to the United Airlines $50 roundtrip fuel surcharge increase attempt this past Friday. The fuel surcharge increase price roller coaster continues this morning as both American Airlines and United Airlines (the initiator of the increase) have both rolled back their fuel surcharges to pre-increase levels — meanwhile Delta Air Lines who rolled back last night has reinstated the increase this morning. UPDATE: We did get a comment from United spokesperson Robin Urbanski, who said only, “We rescinded the move to keep our fares competitive with other airlines.” Pretty self-explanatory. American Airlines rep Tim Wagner echoed those sentiments, saying his carrier rolled back because “We weren’t competitive.”

This now leaves three legacy airlines with rollbacks (United, American & Continental) and three legacy airlines still holding with the increase (Delta, Northwest & US Airways).

The bottom line is that this attempted increase is most likely going to completely fail by the end of the day and air travel shoppers should wait to purchase until all the airline ticket pricing machinations settle down later this evening.

There is no rhyme or reason for Delta Air Lines airfare filing behavior last night and this morning — they most likely will roll back again later today (they really don’t have much choice if they want to remain competitive).

US Airways and Northwest are normally the slower movers on matching and rolling back so I look for them to rollback as well later today.

As I stated in the previous note:

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 12:30pm EST and 8:00pm EST today. I will continue to update after each airfare distribution on any significant increase matching and/or rollback activity.