Jet Fuel Premium Collapse as Airlines Ground Fleets

-The U.S. airline industry plans to ground 413 aircraft, eliminating 8.8 percent of seating capacity, as increasing fuel costs spur losses of as much as $13 billion, the Air Transport Association says.


- The decline in airline fuel consumption parallels the drop in gasoline sales to a five-year low as drivers take vacations closer to home and use mass transit. Crude oil declined 35 percent in the three months after Sept. 11, 2001, a time when airline traffic plummeted 30 percent.

- In 1991, when U.S. jet fuel consumption slid 8.2 percent, crude oil fell 40 percent from a high of $32 a barrel in January to $19.12 by the end of the year. Jet fuel traded at a 1.55 cent discount to heating oil by Dec. 11 of that year, down from a 3.85 cent premium six months earlier.

2009 forecasts
- Lehman Brothers expects crude oil to average about $90 in the first quarter of next year.
- Airline cutbacks may help send the price to $107 a barrel in 2009, Merrill Lynch & Co. said in a July 7 report.

Oil climbed to a record $147.27 a barrel on July 11 amid rising fuel demand in China and India, and the potential threat of an Israeli air strike on Iran.

- The reduction in U.S. fuel consumption may not be sufficient to reverse oil's climb toward $200, said Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank AG. ``The difficulty is that demand is still rising in China and the Middle East and the rest of the world'' while oil production may be leveling off, he said. ``What price does it take to have demand growth go to zero to match zero supply growth? That's very scary because it might take a really high price.''