September Airport Rates Down in All Regions

With the help of Jim Tennant of The Tennant Group and Michael Meyer of Rate-Highway Inc., we are conducting rate surveys on a weekly basis and providing analysis and comments where appropriate. We publish this monthly recap in our electronic edition and more comprehensive looks in the print editions.

The September nationwide weighted average ICAR quote continued to be down from the same month a year ago. In this case, it was down $5.92.

Additionally, all U.S. regions were down. The Southwest was down only $0.86, while the Northeast and Midwest dropped well over $10. The Southeast and Northwest rates dropped between $2 and $3.

In previous columns, we looked at the pricing of the three major airport brands by tracking the eight-week moving average of the three brands at the top 20 airports.

For many years, the Hertz brand was the highest of the three, but starting in late 2013, Avis or National or both were higher than Hertz almost every week.

Looking at the last 13 weeks of eight-week moving averages, Hertz is in the middle all but three weeks while Avis and National are each lowest about half the time.

Neither Avis Budget nor Enterprise Holdings seem to be holding down rates as a strategy. Everyone appears to be pricing its major brand against the others very competitively.