It makes perfect sense if you realize that the airline execs are maximizing their bonuses for the next quarter or four, and not optimizing for the health of the company for the next 10 years. Being stuck with a company and losing a job if the company goes bankrupt is for losers like us, not for those who will leap off with the golden parachute and land another cushy job somewhere with their "years of experience driving growth and providing value to the shareholder".
Executives build the company that the investors want them to build.
By far, the biggest costs of running an airline are the planes and the fuel. But the investors don't want to bet on the value of physical planes, nor do they want to bet on the price of oil. If they wanted to place those bets, they'd just invest in Boeing or Exxon. Instead, they usually want to bet that one airline will perform better than her competitors over the next year or so.
So, airline executives lease their fleets and buy tons of oil futures. This gives them a better shot of hitting their targets even if the price of oil skyrockets, it makes their fleet easier to scale up or down according to demand, and it makes their stock more attractive to investors who want more predictable performance.
> Executives build the company that the investors want them to build.
Assuming they're mindless drones of the faceless "investors" with no free will or intent of their own.
> But the investors don't want to bet on the value of physical planes, nor do they want to bet on the price of oil. If they wanted to place those bets, they'd just invest in Boeing or Exxon.
You're putting the cart before the horse since that's a choice by the exec. If they wanted to derisk themselves they could as well hedge by buying puts on Boeing or calls on Exxon.
Overall, who decides what a good business is? Unfortunately, that's come down to a gang of Wall Street suits who would much rather punish good businesses for not catering to their attention span deficient trading/gambling habits. We would much rather have some jack of all trades making business decisions based on their next year's bonus/chalet/yacht rather than people who depend on those businesses (customers and employees), so of course we get to this state.
