[pathseeker]

> There's still no certainty. For an airline, your prices have to be competitive. If you've locked in an oil price, and it turns out to be a high one, then your fares will be more expensive than your competitors (assuming that they didn't hedge in the same way). So the only certainty there is failure.

A huge chunk of airline tickets are sold in advance. The oil futures can literally lock in the prices for only sold airfare if you're that paranoid.

Also (probably more important), the cost of oil on a given ticket is quite low and it would take a drastic change in oil prices for it to be obvious to customers comparison shopping.