US: Airline workers enjoy good times amid doubt resurgence will last

US airlines are posting record profits, awarding hefty pay raises and winning over longtime skeptics like Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. The missing ingredient: proof that the industry can weather a downturn. Previous airline booms were followed by busts that eventually forced all the biggest full-service airlines into bankruptcy. The difference this time is an eight-year era of mergers that stabilized the industry by shrinking the number of major carriers to four from nine. Adding to that is a profit-boosting, 56% drop in the price of jet fuel since early 2014. Airline labour groups have taken advantage of the good times to claw back some of the pay surrendered as the industry restructured and racked up $53b in losses in the decade ending in 2011. New contracts have added at least $1.35b to the operating costs of the four biggest US carriers this year, and will add $1.9b more in 2017, according to Savanthi Syth, a Raymond James Financial Inc. analyst. That’s raised concern that the payouts may come back to haunt the companies. “You have to be a little leery of just going crazy when it comes to pay and benefits,” said Jerry Glass, president of consultant F&H Solutions Group and a former US Airways executive. “This is an industry that is always hit by some kind of extraneous event. We don’t know when, we don’t know how severe it’s going to be, but it will happen at some point.”<br/>