Airlines Face Growing Fuel Shortage Risk

Lost luggage, bad weather and now … no fuel?

While fliers haven’t yet had to add that problem to the list of headaches associated with air travel, it may not be far away. Airports in Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada recently came within a few days – and at times within hours – of running out of jet fuel.

Because of supply bottlenecks, airlines were forced to fly in extra fuel from other markets and scramble for deliveries by truck. But these are expensive, short-term fixes that do not address what airline executives consider to be the underlying problem: with passenger traffic rising above pre-9/11 levels, the nation’s aviation business is slowly outgrowing the infrastructure that fuels it.

Forbes