Despite a string of price increases this year, demand for summer flights remains strong and the USA's big airlines are continuing to fill more than 80% of their seats.

This week, six (American, (AMR) United, (UAUA) Delta, (DAL) Northwest, (NWA) Continental, (CAL)US Airways (LCC)) raised prices again for flights on many domestic routes where there's no non-stop competition from low-fare carriers. The result, says travel price guru Tom Parsons of BestFares.com, is that the cheapest tickets available on many routes in July are 100% to 300% higher than a year ago.

The biggest year-over-year price jump that Parsons has found: Detroit-Providence, where the cheapest ticket today sells for $595 round trip, or 365% more than the $128 price for the same ticket last June.

Other examples: The lowest-priced round-trip fare for non-stop service between Houston and Pittsburgh is $460, up 132% from $198 a year ago. Between Philadelphia and San Diego, the lowest non-stop round-trip fare is now $780, up 228% from $239 last June.

Veteran airline executive Tom Plaskett says, "If you accept (BestFares') data on its face, the order of magnitude of these price increases is really unprecedented. Nothing close to that has ever happened before."

Plaskett, a former Pan Am chairman and Continental president, ran the American Airlines marketing team that pioneered advance-purchase fares in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Air Transport Association data show that the average fare being paid today for domestic flights is close to its peak in 2000.

In April, U.S. domestic passengers paid an average of 13.28 cents to fly one mile. In March, that number, called yield, was 13.87 cents per mile. For all of 2007, the average yield was 12.66 cents. From 2002 to 2007, the average domestic yield never rose above 12.69 cents.

This year, yields have risen dramatically. The domestic average yield through the first four months of this year was 13.34 cents per mile flown, the highest since 2000's average domestic yield of 14.57 cents.

Airlines are raising prices and reducing capacity in response to record oil prices. ATA spokesman David Castelveter noted that while average fares are way up, the price of crude oil is 217% higher than in 2000, and the cost of refining a gallon of jet fuel is up sixfold.

"These are historic rates for fare increases, but even with that, airlines are failing to keep up with their rising fuel costs," he says.

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