Robo
I am no expert when it comes hedging (well i can just about trim a box hedge) a friend of mine is very much into it, not fuel but cover position for stock & shares, as i understand it you can't buy a future position for free, you pay a margin whether you call or not and it needs to be money comitted either provided by you or bank (See article in todays Sunday time re XL airways) the one big things most airlines have is positive cash flows which reduces the funding cost, much as a mortgage offset or one account, but you can't use forward funds to trade whilst insolvent.
Get the hedging wrong or not covered and the result are not nice as Gold Mouth MOL has found, get the currency wrong and it cab get very ugly, the problem with have in the UK at the minute is the pound has weakend against both the Euro & $ most LoCo have little exposure to the $ oil aside but a fare bit to the Euro, it does of course mean visiting the UK is much cheaper, if you can think of a good reason to come here that is and i can't think of one, unless your a duck