Airfare wars: A long, bumpy ride

March 21, 2000
Web posted at: 10:15 a.m. EST (1515 GMT)

From Stephanie Oswald
CNN Travel Now Correspondent

(CNN) -- March has been an especially volatile month for airfares. Thanks to rising fuel costs, carriers have been raising, lowering, and re-raising their ticket prices.

Industry analysts don't expect a break in turbulence any time soon, either.

"This cat-and-mouse game tends to continue," says Terry Trippler, an airline expert at 1travel.com.

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"It happens on the weekends, when one airline will attempt to raise fares, and then by Monday morning -- if everyone does not go along -- it starts to collapse."

Continental's attempt to raise fares March 10 crashed when other airlines failed to follow. But Northwest's hike, begun a week later, seems to have stuck. The other big carriers also pushed up prices, Trippler notes -- but not the smaller ones.

Airtran, Frontier, Southwest and Vanguard are smaller carriers that are holding the line on prices, Trippler says. "Are they buying their gas somewhere else?" he questions. "Are they getting a better deal?"

But even if fuel prices drop, that won't translate into instant low airfares for consumers, warns Daniel Yergin, of Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

"There is a four- to eight-week period in which you get the supplies and really start moving it to market," he says.

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Top six U.S. airlines match Northwest fare hike
March 17, 2000
Northwest hikes fares across the board
March 16, 2000
Airlines bail on fare hike
March 13, 2000

1travel.com
Cambridge Energy Research Associates
TravelGuide - Web Handbook: Air Travel links

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