How airline ticket pricing is changing

U.S. Airlines American and United have started raising ticket prices for people traveling individually. Most frequently, the business travelers, the ones with the highest travel budgets, are flying individually. For this reason, whether a ticket is an extra $100 won't make or break if the business traveler takes the flight or not. They likely aren't paying for it and are writing the ticket price off, so they don't care. For airlines, this is great; higher ticket prices without changing anything is just printing extra money, assuming demand stays the same. I do fear that ticket prices for individuals are going to get too high. I took a look at United flights from Chicago to Peoria, and as of 5:15 PM on June 30th, the cost per person when booked as one is $280, and $174 per person if booked for two people. Meaning, for no reason, the price was gauged up an extra $106. According to Thriftytravel.com, United is offering a discount for those who aren't accompanied by someone over 15 to purchase the more expensive ticket. American Airlines is doing something similar. On the flight on July 2nd at 7:08 am from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Fort Myers, Florida, tickets as of June 30th at 5:30 pm are $390 per person if booked for one, but when booking for two, it's $240 per person. This is a huge difference, $150 per person. Again, showing the airline's attempt to grab money from business travelers. While this is only happening on very few routes, I think it's going to expand to more routes in the near future.