#market
6 articles tagged #market.
The 2026 fuel shock: airline profits halve, and the schedule becomes the margin defense
IATA now sees 2026 industry net profit at $23B — roughly half of last year — as jet fuel jumps from $90 to $152 a barrel. Demand is still strong and carriers are beating estimates. For investors, the gap between the two is the whole story.
Where aviation's software dollars go in 2026 — and the foundation underneath them
Airlines and airports are set to spend around $46B on IT, with AI everywhere. Almost none of it targets the schedule-data layer every operation runs on. For investors, that gap is the interesting part.
The 2026 capacity squeeze: fuller planes, thinner margins, and the pressure on schedule data
Airlines are flying at record load factors on a ~3.9% net margin while new aircraft stay scarce. When every seat counts this much, the schedule is where efficiency is won or lost.
What a schedule-data platform is worth: the economics of a foundational tool
Recurring need, near-zero marginal cost, high switching cost, and a position under the whole stack. The unit economics of a foundational schedule-data tool are quietly attractive — here's the shape of them.
The airline software stack — and where schedule data sits in it
Airline technology is a layered stack, from passenger apps at the top to the data that everything runs on at the bottom. Schedule data is that bottom layer — and it's the least-invested-in part of the whole thing.
The case for vertical SaaS in aviation
Horizontal software is a knife fight. The durable value increasingly sits in vertical SaaS — deep, domain-specific tools for industries with real complexity. Aviation, and its schedule-data layer in particular, is a textbook example.