With all the talk of the airline mergers, pricing competition is a huge problem. I've got a suggestion for how to deal with this, and would love to get other people's ideas.

I think airlines should be required to submit any proposed rate increases to a holding service for 21 days before they can be rolled out. The rate increases submitted are kept secret until the end of the 21 day period, when they become active. They are, however, allowed to lower fares without any notice.

Here's why I think this might work. Any time an airline raises a fare, they know that the earliest their competitors could match it would be two weeks away. For two weeks, they're guaranteed to be non-competitive in the marketplace. This would put a huge hurt on the airlines, and they'd have to really want to raise fairs, because they know they'll lose a lot of business in those three weeks.

I seem to recall that UA said that if it got the merger with US, it wouldn't raise any fares for 2 years, but that doesn't strike me as a long term resolution...

Any other ideas?