This NY Times article relates some airline industry executives’ frustration with the glowing media reports that low-budget airlines such as Southwest Airlines and JetBlue have been receiving recently. The article is a good summary of where the airline industry stands at this point, and includes the following classic Warren Buffett analysis of the industry generally:

Now anyone who really, truly understands the economics of airlines is probably too smart, or unstable, to be working for either an airline or a newspaper. As Warren E. Buffett has often pointed out, if one tabulates all of the airline industry’s finances since the day the Wright Brothers bounced into the air at Kitty Hawk in 1903, one will discover that, cumulatively, there has not been a single penny of profit. (Mr. Buffett has also suggested that, in hindsight, shooting down the Wright Brothers on that beach would have been a reasonable financial, if not moral, move.)