I might be well off the mark here
Yes. Quite likely a million miles off the mark.
Any airline of any respectable size anywhere in the world most likely has hedging strategies in place for forex and other risks (e.g. oil).
If you think about it, ticket income is only a tiny proportion of forex risk an airline is exposed to (e.g. they've got landing fees, local staff etc. etc. etc. etc.).
Also if you think about it, you can buy airline tickets 12 months in advance. Without a hedging strategy in place, airlines would be potentially exposing themselves to a lot of forex risk.
Hence its an almost guaranteed fact that they hedge the risk on the financial markets through derivatives trading.
And yes, if you think the word "hedge" sounds familiar... yes, the concept is the same as what a Hedge Fund does. Except the goal at a fund is to achieve growth. The goal at an airline would be risk management and capital preservation, if you achieve a little profit on the side then great, but its not the primary goal for their traders. Hence the hedge funds would employ higher risk strategies than airlines.
For example (a very basic example, as strategies can be complex) :
If I were doing a spot (i.e exchange today, right now) transaction, I'd be selling GBP to get USD, so I'd be using today's spot Bid price for that (not shown above, currently about 1.68277)
However, if my research and analysis strongly suggested the rates would rise in six months time, I could enter into a 6 month dated futures contract to buy GBP at today's quoted six month foreword asking price (shown above) of 1.68032, and because the whole thing is done on a leveraged basis I wouldn't need to stump up the million quid until six months down the line.... I can lock in the rate at zero cost today.
You may note that I've bought GBP which is the opposite of what I wanted, i.e. selling to get USD.
But that's the whole point. If all goes according to plan and the futures contract has gone up in value, then I've made a profit on that hedge. The profit on that hedge covers the act of me now being exposed to the unfavourable spot rates six months down the line. I would dispose of the futures contract prior to expiry and hence I would take the profit and not have to go through with the futures contract, and would undertake the spot transaction I wanted in the first place (selling GBP). That spot transaction would effectively take place at the rate I locked in six months prior (1.67992 shown above), because although I would be doing the spot transaction at an unfavourable rate, the profit from the hedge would cover the difference.
Hope that makes some sense, and hope my swift write-up hasn't lead to too many errors in my description !
P.S. Basic video I've found on eweToob about derivatives for those who want more background :