Fuel

The Airline Weekly Halftime Show: Cheap fuel, revenue distress and a tumultuous macro environment mark the first half of 2016

Fuel

The Airline Weekly Halftime Show: Cheap fuel, revenue distress and a tumultuous macro environment mark the first half of 2016

July 2016
1 min read
Seth Kaplan

Issue Overview

It’s Independence Day in America, and the beginning of the year’s second half for all the world’s airlines, which thus far have a lot to celebrate. Collectively, the airline industry enjoyed a profitable first quarter thanks chiefly to lowish fuel prices, something absent during most of the past two decades. The second quarter should produce even greater profits— airlines will start reporting their Q2 earnings soon. And IATA expects the industry to earn nearly $40b for the full year. The biggest fireworks show, appropriately enough this July 4, is in the U.S., where airlines are relishing cheap fuel largely unadulterated…