Monday evening (18-June) at 8pm AirTran filed a system-wide 14-day advance purchase airfare sale (see our original post showing this is the 4th summer airfare sale in the past 40 days by AirTran).
This morning (Tuesday 19-June) at 10:00am all the major airlines except Continental and US Airways matched this airfare sale in overlapping AirTran markets.
Continental did lower a small number of airfares to protect their Cleveland and Newark hubs.
This sale comes on the heals of an business fare increase (less than 14-day advance purchase) 2 weeks ago which gave the major airlines fuel to match the increase.
As an example of the scale of the matching in the 14-day advance purchase airfares:
- American matched 52 markets, average decrease $80, largest decrease $307
- Delta matched in 75 markets, average decrease $26, largest decrease $202
- United matched 835 markets, average decrease $42, maximum decrease $586
Regards,
Rick Seaney
CEO, FareCompare.com
