that's a good question.
The industry will survive and bounce back to where it was before, but never the same though. I have read several analyst reports which predict a return to pre-sept 11 levels of travel in the next 1-2 yrs regardless of the new hurdles facing the travelling public. I just hope now there will be more tolerance for things like runway additions etc but I doubt it.
I have seen some short sighted people say things like oh.. seeing as travel's reduced there's no longer a need for airport expansions or increased ATC system capacity and they want to cancel all the years of hard work but this is very short sighted and i don't think will prevail. I hope not.
Weasil