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Transportation

Going down: oil prices, airline capacity

    by Tom BELDEN
    Published 
Two more news stories found online this morning update the trends, both short- and long-term, that we've been reporting on lately. Oil prices continue to go down, falling below $90 a barrel in Asian trading. That's good and bad: Good for airlines, truckers, motorists, all of us, that have struggled this year to cope with the sharp increases, and bad for what it says about the economy. Oil futures are falling mostly because of worries about a worldwide recession.
A report from OAG (orginal name: Official Airline Guide) tallied the losses of airline flights and seats in the fourth quarter and it's greater than the record-keeping service expected it to be two months ago. The totals are 265,000 flights and and 21.4 million available airline seats -- that's 9 percent of flights and 11 percent of seats compared with a year ago. That, along with the plunge in oil prices, airline fees and higher fares, explain why analysts have taken the
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    Tom BELDEN