Air Fare Rate Increase Attempt Abandoned

Reluctance by the nation’s No. 3 air carrier Delta Air Lines to boost leisure fares has scuttled an attempt by Continental Airlines and other major airlines to hike domestic air fares between $10 and $30 across the board as the summer travel season heats up, travel industry observers said. Delta did, however, raise prices on its more expensive business walk-up fares, enabling competitors such as United Airlines and Northwest Airlines to retain their own price increases on those fares without fearing customer defections, said Terry Trippler with Minneapolis-based 1Travel.com. On Monday, three-day advance purchase business fares between Los Angeles and New York were going for $2,096 on both United and Northwest. Continental touched off the latest round of price hikes Friday when it boosted all fares $10 to $30. American Airlines, Northwest, US Airways, TWA, America West and United all followed suit by Sunday night, Trippler said. Delta’s decision to keep its leisure fares untouched, however, prompted American, Northwest and US Airways to rescind their increases on similar fares by Monday afternoon, Trippler said. He expects the remaining airlines to pull back their own leisure fares by this morning.