United Has Raised Fares Multiple Times This Year and Thinks Higher Prices Will Stick Around

It’s a tumultuous time in the airline industry. The war in the Middle East has caused fuel prices to soar, putting pressure on carriers worldwide, who rely on relatively stable oil prices to set fares and forecast revenue and profits.

The price of oil isn’t the only factor that determines what we pay for airline tickets, but it’s a major one. And in response to the precipitous spike in oil prices, airlines everywhere have raised ticket prices and fees to offset the higher costs they must shoulder to keep their operations profitable.

We got a little more insight into the situation, specifically at United Airlines, during the carrier’s 2026 first-quarter earnings call yesterday.

CEO Scott Kirby spoke at length about how the increase in oil prices has led the carrier to raise fares multiple times and why he thinks these increases may persist, even if oil prices fall back to prewar levels.

Here’s what that means for you.

United CEO Thinks Fare Increases Will Stick Around, Even if War Were To End Immediately

Speaking on United’s first-quarter earnings call, CEO Scott Kirby explained that his airline raised fares a whopping 5 times toward the end of the fiscal quarter. Of course, it also raised baggage fees. Taken together, the airline said that these measures helped it start to offset its increased fuel costs.

Looking ahead, Kirby believes United can continue to raise ticket prices throughout the year, enabling it to offset 40% to 50% of its fuel costs in the second quarter, 70% to 80% in the third, and 85% to 100% in the fourth quarter.

While it should be the expectation that a for-profit company does what it takes to preserve its profitability — even if that means passing costs onto consumers — Kirby believes that the longer this war persists, and oil prices stay high, the more it can lock in fare increases on a long-term basis.

Kirby explained that if oil prices returned to prewar levels today, the carrier could maintain 20% of the fare increases it’s already implemented, and he believes it could maintain as much as 80% of those increases so long as the war keeps oil prices elevated.

The way it’s able to do this is by strategically reducing capacity across its network to more precisely match market demand, which chief commercial officer Andrew Nocella noted, “is hanging in there.”

So by keeping capacity tight, United can maintain its pricing premium, which is bad news for all of our wallets … unless, of course, demand falls off a cliff, in which case it would put downward pricing pressure on fares. But as things stand right now, that’s not happening.

Final Thoughts

Airline fares are rising, and United doesn’t expect them to come back down anytime soon. The longer the war in the Middle East rages on, the higher fares will get, and the more likely they are to stay high well into the future.

Obviously, we expect airlines to take measures to ensure their continued profitability, but this is bad news for consumers, no matter how you slice it.