This afternoon in the 12:30pm EST domestic U.S. airfare distribution the FareCompare.com proprietary airfare processing system noted significant system wide airfare increase by American Airlines. This past week the legacy airlines began matching and subsequently rolled back an attempt to raise fuel surcharges to 50$ roundtrip by United Airlines…

This unprecedented $50 roundtrip fuel charge attempt meant most legacy airlines increased their $20 fuel surcharges by an additional $30 roundtrip – this increase was subsequently rolled back completely by late Tuesday evening by all legacy airlines after Continental Airlines bailed out early Monday.

A few hours ago – undeterred by this latest increase failure – American Airlines hiked their airline ticket fuel surcharge by $20 roundtrip ($10 one-way) to a total of $40 roundtrip ($20 one-way) on a majority of its route system for both business and leisure traveler segments.

A quick check of two of the American Airlines hub cities (Dallas/Ft.Worth and Miami) shows they are again “tip-toeing” around Southwest Airlines overlapping markets.

Just like the previous increase attempt last week, the fundamentals to sustain this increase (restrained capacity, firm demand and record fuel prices) are still in place and there is no reason why we won’t see the 5 other legacy airlines match this increase shortly.

Air travelers contemplating a purchases should buy their tickets before full fledge matching occurs over the weekend.

The next airfare distribution is 8:00pm this evening — I will update on any significant matching or rollback activity related to this attempted airfare increase.