Thanksgiving Airline Ticket Sales?

Finding Affordable Flights

On the other hand, much of this hay-making strategy seems to be all about cutting capacity: Our estimates at FareCompare.com show more than 200,000 fewer seats daily by the end of the year and 70 million fewer seats for all of next year. Is it working?

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So far, so good: Flight cutbacks have kept pace with the withering demand. Take, for example, the typically slow air travel month of September: JetBlue had an eye-popping 28 percent increase in revenue per seat-mile. Fewer seats (11.5 percent) kept pace with fewer passengers (4.8 percent), which, in turn, kept flights packed and that gave JetBlue the pricing power required to keep airline tickets high.

But what about a backlash?

Face it, with this financial crisis, we've been seeing more and more travelers on the sidelines: About 10 percent more stayed home last month compared to September a year ago. And this week, an analyst with Credit Suisse noted that corporate bookings were down 10 percent to 20 percent and were expected to stay that way.

So, this could signal another potential disaster for the airlines, particularly the legacy carriers: losing a significant chunk of the ultra-lucrative business traveler sector, a sector that pays up to five times more for a ticket than leisure travelers do.

Luckily, history is on the airlines' side when it comes to recessions (1991) and crises (Sept. 11, 2001). If you remember your history, there was never a complete collapse in demand during these periods. And besides, the airlines today have new streams of revenue outside of the ticket sales -- yes, I am talking, in part, about those annoying (but oh-so-lucrative) baggage fees.

So, where does this leave the folks who are still taking planes? Look around and you'll see them digging through their kitchen junk drawers for calculators to help them answer the question: fly or drive?

And you can bet they'll be looking over the numbers especially closely when it comes to the upcoming holiday travel season, as the price of gasoline is dropping without a corresponding drop in airline ticket prices.