Airline hypocrisy: Do ticket taxes dampen demand?

I will never understand why so many people who run airlines can't seem to understand why the flying public does not like or trust them. Most U.S. airlines last weekend stepped -- yet again -- in the middle of a steaming pile of bad PR that they created for themselves. How? By raising all of their fares in exactly the same amount as the federal ticket taxes and fees that lapsed because of Congress's legislative constipation. When or if the taxes are reinstated by Congress, will fares drop by a like amount? We wait and hope.

In the meantime, the chorus of protest over what Congress and the airlines are doing is getting louder by the day. Two U.S. senators yesterday accused the airlines of hypocrisy by complaiing for years that ticket taxes dampen demand for air travel, and then raising fares so that customers are paying the same, presumably demand-dampening, amount. Another story, from Consumer Reports' Bill McGee, adds additional comments from others in the travel business who are affected by the situation. And here is the AP story from Washington, which repeats some of the information in the first two articles but adds additional perspectives.