Alison Sider

I mean, it's typically like their second biggest expense after labor.

So it is one of, and sometimes their biggest expense.

So how much more are airlines expecting to spend on fuel this year?

It's a lot more.

I think American Airlines said that their fuel bill is going to be $4 billion higher.

And the brunt of those costs will go to the consumer.

For the U.S.

airlines, especially the really big airlines, the vibe is kind of like it's a big deal, but they're managing.

Like they feel really optimistic, actually, that they can manage these high fuel prices by charging higher ticket prices.

And that there's so much demand for air travel that people will just pay it.

There have been, you know, five pricing increases in the last couple of weeks that airlines have put through, and they say that they're holding, and there's a sixth one kind of underway right now.

So ticket prices are already up like 20% right now, and they seem pretty confident that by the end of the year, they'll be covering, you know, almost the whole run-up in fuel prices, if not all of it, through higher fares.

Yeah.

I mean, the big one that we've seen in the U.S.

is bag fees.

I mean, at this point, they've tacked another $10 on to the bag fee.

And, you know, I think we can sort of expect that's here to stay.

We have seen fuel surcharges.

That's pretty much, you know, that's a lot by foreign airlines or on international routes.

That's where that really appears.