Skift Travel Business Spoken Edition

A sharp drop in fuel prices midway through the fourth quarter of 2018 was welcome. But it didn’t prevent U.S. airlines from paying 24 percent more for their fuel this fourth quarter versus last. So once again, industry margins declined. But not much. The country’s nine largest scheduled airlines that have reported (Frontier hasn’t yet done so) collectively earned a 9.7 percent fourth quarter operating margin, down just slightly from 10.4 percent a year earlier.