As fuel prices slip, experts says don’t expect the price of airline tickets to drop.ATLANTA — When fuel costs rise, airlines often hike fares. So now that oil prices are headed back down, will carriers cut prices?
Don’t count on it, say analysts and Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines.
“For the full year, fuel prices remain very high,” Delta spokesman Eric Torbenson said. In the first quarter of this year, Delta said is fuel bill was $250 million higher than it was in the same quarter of 2011. Its average fuel price in the quarter was $3.11 per gallon, up from $2.86 a year earlier.
Average domestic fares in the final quarter of 2011 were 10 percent higher than a year earlier, according to federal data.
Fares are expected to “remain high despite a significant decline in jet fuel costs,” Dahlman Rose and Co. analyst Helane Becker wrote in a note to investors last week.