Thanks, fredmartens, for your perspective. I've been wondering about summer fares for a couple of months now. An SEA-LAS trip I want to take is about $60 more than last year, which is not TOO bad but a bit puzzling given that the flights are nearly empty. An SEA-LAX trip is over $100 more than last year for the same weekend in August. Again, there are loads of empty seats going both ways. I've been thinking about using Delta or UA for these trips, given their lower fares. I've also been faithfully watching the e-deals, but they aren't helping.

A WSJ article mentioned the other day about how leisure travelers are waiting much longer to buy to get good deals. Maybe I need to do more of that on discretionary travel that really could wait if it had to. A road trip in August (with A/C, of course) could be fun too.

(edited to fix typo and to add that I certainly don't begrudge AS some reasonable fare increases. I was expecting to pay maybe 10% more than last year. It's just that the fares look unreasonably high to me, especially given that UA has kiosks for checking in at SEA now and will soon have web checkin.)

[This message has been edited by Westcoaster (edited 05-16-2003).]