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.

With an increase of $6.21, the string of year-over-year increases — that was interrupted in November and resumed in December — continued in January. However, as we have seen recently, the increases were not across the board.

Starting with the Jan. 3 rate pull, the weekly average quote increases were: $13.90, +$6.96, +$6.43, -$3.37 and $1.51.

As indicated in the charts above, the individual cities were anything but consistent, as well, with Houston up $31.77 and Chicago down $8.30. The other cities ranged between these extremes. These fluctuations make predictions difficult, but there is reason to hope that we will see strong rates through the summer.

We are continuing to gather rate quotes for the top 50 U.S. airports and are planning to replace the six-city sample with the larger one in June when we will have 13 months — allowing us to do a year-over-year comparison. The larger sample should reduce or eliminate the effect of a major fluctuation in one city on the overall average.