Interesting thoughts from Thomas Stewart at the Harvard Business Review blog on the way airlines continually wage war on their customers. He says it usually happens when companies get in a panic when companies get in a panic about profits. And that's certainly happening now with oil prices travelling the way they are, and US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson saying there is no quick fix to the solution. Basically it's about supply and demand and there's not enough of one to meet the other.

And in terms of the airlines, the news is going to get a lot worse, and not all the majors are going to survive, say Dean Foust and Justin Bachman at BusinessWeek. We can expect more foreign ownership of carriers and you can kiss good bye to cheap air fares.

In Australia, commentator Clive Dorman says something similar. "If the airline industry was a child of yours, you would be at your wits' end," Dorman writes. "As it makes its way to adulthood as a corporate citizen, it constantly finds trouble. Euphoric sweet spots where all is right in the world are inevitably followed by crises of ever-growing magnitude: wars, global disease outbreaks, economic recessions and now the mother of all shocks, for the fourth time in 40 years, the oil problem.

"The next few months will say much about the future shape of an industry that, just 12 months ago, looked forward to seemingly endless growth, powered by the new phenomenon of the LCC (low-cost carrier)."

Dorman's observations focus largely on the Australian market but his insights pretty well apply to an entire industry now in deep trouble.