In my opinion, hedging can never eliminate risk. The hedging idea essentially is taking a certain amount of capital and placing it on a commodity in hopes that we are purchasing it at it's lowest point and then selling off the surplus at it's highest point.

Granted, I honestly do not know the ins and outs of speculation, or rampant speculation at that, however I do know that oil, anyway you look at it, has become an uncontrollable, unpredictable cost variable in our delicate business model. The general rules of oil speculation that have traditionally taken place over the past decades no longer seem to apply.
Example, unemployment is up, businesses are down, and we've have just entered into the fall season. In the past, any one of these three events would have caused a downward push in fuel prices. Yet for some reason prices are still surging, OPEC has refused to increase production because they have admittedly said that fuel demand has not increased at all and that the upward price trends are a direct result of speculation.

What if I were to begin purchasing all the Flu Vaccines at the beginning of each Flu Season, there by create a decrease in supply while the year to year demand remained the same? In that scenario, I would be speculating on the increased demand for Flu Vaccine, so I then decide to start selling it off slowly at a much more inflated rate, thereby causing patients to pay 3-4 times what they should be paying for it. I know it's not a perfect correlation, but if this scenario would ever pay out there would be anarchy, and rightfully so.

Our cost structure in providing our services to our customers is heavily reliant on our ability to stabilize, secure, and solidify our production costs.
The best business model in the world will not be able to make a airline profitable, unless rampant speculation comes under stringent regulation and oversight.