Background: Friday evening and over the weekend, the last of the legacy airline stragglers matched the $10 roundtrip airfare increase. Remember, United initiated the increase on Friday morning, and by Saturday evening, Northwest Airlines had come along to complete the match by all six remaining legacy airlines. So…what does that mean? We have all the gory details. Just click “more” to read all about it.

The increase was broad based, affecting both leisure and business travelers. As usual with the past increases this year, legacy airlines have stepped lightly on competitive, “lower cost” airline city pairs.

There were a relatively small number of city-pairs that only inherited a $6 roundtrip increase - both are noted below in a complete rundown of the fuel surcharge increase as of early Monday morning:

• American Airlines - 5,300 city pairs, $10 roundtrip increase, 650 city-pairs, $6 roundtrip increase
• Continental Airlines - 9,700 city-pairs,. $10 roundtrip increase, 380 city-pairs, $6 roundtrip increase
• Delta Air Lines - 15,000 city-pairs, $10 roundtrip increase, 1,100 city-pairs, $6 roundtrip increase
• Northwest Airlines - 14,500 city-pairs, $10 roundtrip increase
• United Airlines - 10,500 city-pairs, $10 roundtrip increase
• US Airways - 7,000 city-pairs, $10 roundtrip increase

Note: none of the smaller airlines had any substantial increase as of late Sunday evening.

Also of note: over the weekend, the major legacy airlines raised airline ticket prices to/from Hawaii by $31 roundtrip.

The prospects of $130+ per barrel oil do not bode well for scoring many cheap airline tickets this year. Passengers should be aware that, this year, peak travel (especially holidays) is likely to be at an all time high - and travelers should seriously think about locking in prices at the current level.

What will be interesting in the remainder of 2008, is to see how Southwest Airlines reacts; a significant portion of its fuel cost is hedged at just over $50 a barrel until the end of the year. At this point Southwest has not participated to any major extent in the numerous increases this year (7 attempts to increase in 2008 - 5 “sticky” to this point). As the nation’s dominant passenger carrier, Southwest has kept prices from increasing in several competitive markets while those less competitive cities have absorbed the brunt of increases in the past 6 months.