alt Hacker NewsDo they? Afaik, they don't [1].
> WONG: However, Gerry says most of the major airlines in the U.S. eventually soured on fuel hedging. One reason - the Wall Street transaction fees to make these hedges got expensive.
> WOODS: Plus, Gerry says the airlines found that they could make money the old-fashioned way by raising prices. Today, none of the major airlines in the U.S. are hedging.
Hedging is one of those things that sounds cool but then when your service is x% more expensive than a competitor and you lose customers you just stop doing it. It's kinda like being on AWS; when everybody has an outage together nobody asks "oh what can be done differently".
[1]: https://www.npr.org/2026/03/27/nx-s1-5759203/fuel-hedging-on...
That's the US. Meanwhile in Europe the practice is alive and well:
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2026/03/25/ryanair-to-ho...
> European carriers have hedged about 80 per cent of the fuel they need for this year and typically take out new hedges on a rolling basis to lock in future prices.