Issue Summary

If there's one phrase that airline executives have repeated this year, it's "inflection point" (followed closely by "pent-up demand"). The pandemic's inflection point would mark when Covid-19 began to recede, pent-up demand was unleashed, and the recovery really began. Remember this time last year? Then, airline executives said the first quarter of this year, when effective vaccines became available, would be the inflection point. In the face of new variants and new outbreaks, the inflection point moved to the summer. And for many airlines in North America, South America, and Europe, the summer was good. Demand was strong, until the…