Mr. Derchin: Our outlook for 2010 is positive. We're coming off a very difficult two years, which included very volatile fuel prices, a deep global recession and major credit crisis. The airlines have certainly been tested over the last couple of years. All the major ones have come through in relatively decent financial shape. Having been able to raise billions of dollars to boost liquidity, the airlines are, by airline leverage standards, on sound financial footing going into 2010, which we think will be a better year from an economic standpoint. In looking at the key earnings drivers, capacity is under tight control, growing at most very modestly. We believe that demand will recover, not in a huge way, but certainly off of a very weak 2009. We believe that because of a better balance between supply and demand, we're going to start to see fares going up, particularly in the domestic market. And we believe that as long as fuel remains high, we're going to be in a rising fare environment over the coming months. On the cost side, we see continuing problems in oil. We are looking for jet fuel prices to be higher in 2010 than in 2009, averaging about 90 per barrel. We see the airlines making a concerted effort to try to reduce non-fuel unit costs which they can control, which will be a little bit easier when you're not shrinking as much as they have. To sum up, we are looking for 2010 to be a modestly profitable year for the industry, setting the stage for a nicely profitable year in 2011 and beyond, assuming the global economy continues to recover.
TWST: So you believe profitability will come back for the airlines?
Mr. Derchin: Yes, we do. It's been a few years since the airlines made money as a group. As you know, this industry has two components to it: the traditional network airlines, who have been losing money throughout the recession, and the low-cost, primarily domestic airlines, who actually have been making money despite the recession. And so what we see occurring next year is the low-cost carriers making more money than they did in the recession and the network carriers moving from red ink to modestly black ink. That, by the way, assumes that jet fuel averages about 90 a barrel, which is up from roughly about 80 in 2009. So it does assume an increase in oil prices, but not a horrendous one.
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