Knight,
After the Bush Presidency is done, the "Free Market"-at-all-costs era will be over. The U.S. will go back to regulation. Hopefully it will be with a lighter (and more deft) touch but the era of the Wild West market will be over. Airlines (and other industries) will go back to being less exciting and steady profits.
Oil prices will continue to be problematic but the cost of flying will reflect the real cost of flying instead of the fairy-tale prices of the last 40 years. Flying will go back to being relatively high cost where the folks that *have* to be there will pay the price.
I really see us in an era comparable to the end of the 1920's in America. They were called the "Roaring Twenties" for a reason. And the U.S. economy crashed in 1929 for those same reasons.
For all the doom-and-gloom crowd...America came back from those lows stronger than ever. Don't count it out just yet. Once we remember that it our country, our form of government and our people that make us great -- not our corporations -- we will find our way again.
Don Brown