I obviously wish fares would go up and I am in no way defending executives but there is a simple and fundamental flaw with unilateral fare increases: lack of pricing power.

When the merger deal between NWA and DAL appeared imminent, one of the arguments against it was that it would lead to a CAL/UAL merger and thus create some all powerful oligopoly between the above mentioned and AMR. When that argument was put out there, the Wall Street Journal concluded that even if these new "Mega 3" existed with NO reduction in capacity, they would only control about 30% of the domestic market (I would copy the article but it costs money and I'm an RJ FO). Needless to say only having 30% market control among 3 producers is an awful pricing situation for an industry to be in, but those are the cards we are dealt.

One argument could be made that even though they would only control 30% of the total market they would dominate the smaller secondary connector markets via the regional feed. The problem with that is that if you raise fares for Ma and Pa in Peoria, they will drive to Chicago and hop on SWA or some other undercutting carrier to go on vacation. The higher end business pax will pick up some slack and the low level business pax may very well get squeezed out of the market, leading to no net gain in revenue.

Knowing all of this, our robbing executives have chosen to squeeze as much out of us as they can and run away with the cookie jar rather than getting caught with their hand in it. They had a chance to quash the LCCs with more mainline flying and they didn't. They had a chance to keep us competitive by creating an alternative to driving to the hub with economical turboprops but they didn't. Hopefully they will realize this in time and create a permanent fuel "hedge" in the form of airplanes that will forever burn less fuel as well as raise rates slowly and surly as the LCCs cost structure reach more equally competitive levels. But what do I know...I'm just a pilot.