Joel Rose

Those higher costs are going to eat into their profits or make it harder for airlines to turn a profit at all this year.

But there are some things that the airlines can do to manage the costs.

I talked about this with Shai Gilad.

He's a former airline pilot now, professor of management at Georgetown University.

And Galad says airlines do have some levers they can pull for that.

Like what?

Well, they can cut flights, they can trim their schedules.

The big legacy carriers can also change which planes they fly on a given route to manage their capacity effectively.

And all of the airlines are trying to some extent to pass higher fuel costs onto their customers in the form either of fare hikes or higher bag fees.

And customers do seem to be willing to pay, at least so far.

But U.S.

airlines say they are watching demand very closely and that they'll be ready to make deeper cuts to flights later in the year if it makes sense to do that.

Nothing good.

I mean, even if the U.S.

and Israeli war with Iran were to stop tomorrow, oil prices are likely going to stay high for a while.

And airlines are not going to be in a hurry to lower their fares back to pre-war levels.

Airline leaders have signaled they expect some of these price hikes to stick even into next year.

So the advice I'm hearing is don't wait.

If you have not booked your summer tickets yet, just go ahead.

It is not worth waiting to see if those prices come down.