There's a lot of things going on geopolitically right now that could push our economy off a cliff. The Chinese economy is becoming increasingly unstable and the situation with Russia & Ukraine could escalate quickly with Europe; look at at all the developments the past couple weeks with NATO and Russia -- huge escalatory moves. Of course, all the political posturing could result in nothing substantive in the overall American economy, but it so easily could send us into a tailspin as well. While there are a lot of factors that could result in the U.S. airlines shedding the impacts of an economic recession (short-staffed, retirements, seemingly still high travel demand, relatively low unemployment rate, etc.), there's significant headwinds that could easily turn this into a circa-Y2K situation.

It feels like there's two realities right now -- one grim, one bright, but eventually the two have to intersect. The divergence is largely due to COVID and the subsequent disruptions to supply chains, labor markets, infusion of cash into economy via quantitive easing, etc. There will be a reckoning though. For our sakes, hopefully it's a soft landing...