Originally Posted by
DAL 88 Driver
They did. What do you think happened in the summer of 2008 when fuel prices went through the roof? Those ticket prices that they just couldn't possibly raise without killing demand... well, suddenly, they couldn't raise them fast enough. And people kept flying! And then there's all those bag fees they've been able to successfully charge the past couple of years. I guess it all falls into the "where there's a will, there's a way" category...
In 2003 Delta bumped the fares 5 dollars per leg across the board. No other airlines matched. Normally Delta would have pulled down the fare increase however this time they stuck with it for two weeks. They lost 20 million dollars in revenue they never got back in that two week time frame. To quote the marketing head at the time "Our phones stopped ringing".