Southwest, Frontier Lower Fares

Photo: Razvan Socol.

In a move not seen in several years, two airlines lowered their fares within days of each other.

Frontier on April 21 lowered fares by a minimum of $14 roundtrip; five days later, Southwest lowered its fares by $10 roundtrip. The decreases were applied to short-, medium-, and long-haul domestic flights.

In both cases, the price cuts were for tickets purchased at least seven days in advance.

Air fare analyst Rick Seaney, CEO of FareCompare, said the drops were unrelated to any fare sale activity.

Delta also initiated a fare change on April 26: It raised one-way fares by $5. That hike is still in play.

Southwest’s move undoes a fare hike in February that was initiated by none other than Southwest itself.

While the term “fare war” doesn’t get much use these days in most parts of the country, Southwest’s home turf of Dallas has been a rather bloody battleground since Southwest was liberated from the Wright Amendment in 2014.

In addition, Spirit Airlines and Virgin America brought lower fares into the market.

In the last couple of weeks American Airlines reinstated its Advantage fares. First introduced by US Airways, they are discounted connecting flights designed to undercut nonstop fares in a market.

“We went for about three months with no AAdvantage fares in the market,” American president Scott Kirby said during the carrier’s first quarter earnings call. “That three-month period coincided with a relative decline in revenue expectations across mostly all airlines. So we were starting to wonder if our decision to cancel AAdvantage fares was really the correct revenue decision.”

While American pondered the issue, Delta reinstated its version of the discounts. American quickly followed suit.