Actually this is very significant... SWA has the vast majority of its fuel hedge in the 50-60$pbl range, and took a loss. Call it what you want, it is still a loss. If you have to pay money to buy hedges that is still money even if you don’t use the fuel now. DAL said they could turn a $200M 4Q 08 profit if they could pay current spot fuel price today. However they know the must spend money to hedge the future, so they plan a modest loss to even in Q4 08.
SWA costs are very very high per ASM. Most all the legacy carriers (well maybe not UAL) can make a large profit at 70$pbl not to mention a huge profit at 50-60$pbl even in a slow economy. SWA CANNOT.
Welcome to the real price of oil and welcome to the BIG SHOW SWA.
I think you will see changes on the horizan at SWA!!!