Traveling? Now is The Time To Book Flights

Led by Southwest Airlines, several airlines are raising prices again.

Southwest raised fares last  Wednesday by $10 per round trip on about 10 percent of its routes. United Airlines expanded the increase later in the day to cover most of its U.S. flights.

"We raised fares to cover the increasing cost of doing business," United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy said Thursday.

Delta Air Lines said it matched United's price hike. American Airlines said that it raised prices on some routes, US Airways and JetBlue Airways said they matched Southwest's increase, and Virgin America eventually matched the broader United increase.

There have been four broad fare increases by U.S. airlines this year, about half as many as last year, and none in about a month. A Delta-led attempt to raise prices failed last week, a sign that airlines could be worried about filling seats in a sluggish economy.

J.P. Morgan analyst Jamie Baker, who tracks airfares, said there was "a somewhat higher probability" that the latest Southwest-United increase will stick.

Southwest carries more passengers than any airline within the U.S. and is by far the largest carrier at Buffalo Niagara International Airport. 

Fare increases often stick or fail depending on whether Southwest goes along. Baker said United might have been emboldened to raise prices broadly by the more limited Southwest increase.

While airlines raise fares, they also constantly run sales that undercut the impact of higher base prices. American, for example, told customers Wednesday that it was offering a two-day sale on flights to some U.S. cities.

Be Prepared To Wait......More than You Ever Have

NEW YORK (AP) -- The number of long delays in July involving planes stuck on airport tarmacs was more than the previous eight months combined, the government said Monday.

Twenty eight planes were stuck on the ground at U.S. airports for more than three hours that month, the height of the summer travel season. Eighteen of those planes were operated by U.S. carriers.

Sixteen of the U.S. flights were going in or out of Chicago O'Hare on July 13, a day of severe thunderstorms. All of the longest delays were on regional carriers that operate smaller jets for larger airlines.

There was only one international flight that sat on the ground for more than four hours, and it's susceptible to a big fine. Caribbean Airlines flight 526 from Georgetown, Guyana to New York's JFK Airport sat on the ground for four hours and three minutes. U.S. and international airlines can be fined up to $27,500 per passenger if a flight is stuck for more than three hours.

The last time there were more three hour delays in a single month was October 2011. There was just one long delay last July.

Overall, flights were less on-time in July than they were in both June 2012 and July 2011. United Airlines, which has a base in Chicago, had the worst on-time rate. US Airways had the best on-time rate for a network carrier, but Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines topped the overall list.

As more flights were stuck and passengers grew frustrated, they complained much more. The Department of Transportation received just under 2,500 complaints in July, almost double a year earlier and up 50 percent from June.

They also had more reason to complain about lost or damaged bags. The mishandled baggage rate fell from a year earlier but was up from June.

Will American Pilots and Mechanics Strike?

American Airlines is sending layoff warning notices to more than 11,000 employees although a spokesman says the company expects job losses to be closer to 4,400.

The notices went out to mechanics and ground workers whose jobs will be affected as American goes through a bankruptcy restructuring.

American Airlines spokesman Bruce Hicks said Tuesday that fewer than 40 percent of those getting notices will lose their jobs. Hicks said federal law requires the company to notify anyone whose position could change, including those who could get "bumped" by more-senior employees whose jobs are eliminated or outsourced.

American said in February that it planned to cut 14,000 jobs, including 13,000 held by union workers. But if Hicks is right, the final job losses will be about a third of that.

Over the summer American accepted slightly smaller cost-cutting measures as it negotiated new labor contracts, and it agreed to give bonuses to flight attendants and ground workers who quit. So far 1,800 flight attendants and 800 ground workers have applied to take the money and leave.

Layoff notices went to nearly 3,000 workers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where a maintenance facility will close, and nearly 3,000 more at a base in Tulsa, Okla. Also receiving notices were about 1,200 workers in Miami, 1,100 in New York and Newark, N.J., 900 in Chicago, and smaller numbers elsewhere.

"As bad as this is - and we knew this day was coming - we've been able to lessen the pain," said Jamie Horwitz, a spokesman for the Transport Workers Union.

Separately, the leader of the pilots' union blasted the company, saying it is "paying lip service" to negotiating a contract while using the bankruptcy process to wring punitive cost-cutting concessions from pilots.

Eight other labor groups approved long-term contracts that will help AMR cut annual labor spending by about $1 billion. Pilots, however, voted overwhelmingly against the company's last contract offer, and a federal bankruptcy judge allowed American to impose new pay and working rules on pilots.

The acting president of the Allied Pilots Association, Keith Wilson, said in a message to members that he would meet this week with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and other senior officials in the Obama administration and Congress. The union has asked federal officials to approve steps that could eventually lead to a strike, but that permission hasn't been granted.

Hicks said American is ready to resume negotiations "when the union is ready."

Still, pilots are holding a strike-authorization vote. And according to the company, they are calling in sick more often than usual, contributing to an increase in canceled flights. American has trimmed its September and October schedule by up to 2 percent to make sure it has enough pilots to operate flights.

Hunter Keay, an analyst for Wolfe Trahan & Co., said he does not think the threat of cancelations will lead travelers to avoid American. But he said there has been "a clear deterioration in labor relations" at American.

An American merger with US Airways Group Inc. could produce a bigger airline with more revenue and more labor peace, Keay said. US Airways has lobbied for a merger but American executives have been reluctant.

American and parent AMR Corp., which is based in Fort Worth, filed for bankruptcy protection in November.