Fuel outdoes labor costs at some airlines

Flipping normal industry economics upside down, some airlines in the USA are paying more for jet fuel than for the people they employ.

AirTran, America West, JetBlue and US Airways each reported paying more for fuel in the April-June quarter than for labor.

Typically, fuel is a distant second behind labor as a company expense. But that’s changing as oil prices have zoomed to more than $60 a barrel, and airlines have aggressively cut or restrained labor costs.

“It’s very, very unusual,” industry consultant Dan Kasper of LECG in Cambridge, Mass., said of the reversal of fuel and labor.

USA Today