We went to San Fran, CA. in 1997-98 the ticket price was around $500 p/person round trip. My Mom n Dad just went out there a couple of months ago for about $500 round trip for both of them. How has everything in this country gone up in $$ except for airline tickets.
People in this country are going to continue to fly even if fares go up.
Just take gas for the car as an example, it takes double the amount of money as it used to in order to fill up your tank, yet peoples driving habits have not changed one bit. People have also gotten very used to going from Coast to Coast in 4-5hrs compared to 4-5 days. With the amount of time that people in this country actualy get off work for vacation(avg. of about 2 weeks), they are not going to spend half of it in a car traveling.
The other thing to consider is the fact that most of the people flying day to day are probally not going on vacation, but are traveling for some type of buisness where time equals money requiring them to be some where quickly. Also with alot of companys cutting their own budgets you are going to start seeing alot of people who were riding on corprate jets back on airliners. I know of 5 very large companys just here in S. Florida that are going back to airline travel and are selling their company jets.
Bottom line is that some how some way, everyone in the buisness including the LCC need to get together and raise ticket prices in order to keep this industry at least wings .