At lunch time today, in a similar fashion to the recently posted International Fuel Surcharge Report — I analyzed over 193,000 publicly filed airfare from our Farecompare.com Labs database between the Top 50 U.S. Domestic Cities by Non-Stop Traffic (all combinations).

The intent was to pull all of the fuel surcharges and report on them to provide a baseline for future reports on airlines activities regarding the increase or rolling back these fuel surcharges which has been a hot topic in recent weeks as the price of oil has dropped below $100/barrel from $147/barrel.

Average U.S. Domestic Roundtrip Fuel Surcharge by Airline

Of the 193,000 airfares analyzed in approximately 1,200 city pairs just over 75,000 or 38 percent of filed airfares had no surcharges - these tend to on the cheapest most competitive airfares especially on Southwest routes. 44 percent of the 193,000 airfare with a fuel surcharge were targeted at business travelers (those airfare with 7 days or less advance purchase purchase required). Leisure travelers were not as hard hit as business travelers.

The highest fuel surcharge was $300 roundtrip (on several Honolulu airfares) and outside of Hawaii $220 roundtrip was the highest(see the $ breakdown by % at the end of th report).

The airfares pulled for these city pairs from our database included both coach and first class cabins. Sample does not include Southwest Airlines.

Average U.S. Domestic Roundtrip Fuel Surcharge by Airline and Advance Purchase (Days Required Before Departure)

Average U.S. Domestic Roundtrip Fuel Surcharge by City

Average U.S. Domestic Roundtrip Fuel Surcharge by Amount