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Comment by OgsyedIE | Hacker News Reader

"You're going to begin to see demand destruction based on the pricing environment." - Bob Jordan, CEO of Southwest Airlines, April 23rd

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"We've finally gone too far on pricing" is a wild thing to hear a CEO say out loud in 2026.

It's not that the prices are up to milk the consumer. Look at Southwest's thin profit margin. Costs are up

Costs aren't just up on the shocks of this year. The daily production of all diesel and jet fuel per capita has been declining month on month since 2008.

The per capita part is very important to explaining the figure, don't ignore it, but if you break oil (and related products like kerogen, bitumen and NGL) into light, medium and heavy we hit peak medium oil in 2008.

> The daily production of all diesel and jet fuel per capita has been declining month on month since 2008.

Isn't that explained by improvements in efficiency? i.e. it takes significantly less fuel to move the same mass than it did in 2008?

I'm not following

According to the commenter, price up while production per capita down makes the product unaffordable or less interesting to a lot of people. It is implied by the commenter that fuel producers should produce more and aim for lower prices.

I think parent is trying to say that while it may seem that prices are high underneath the big wave of secondary effects can be seen coming already.

Jet fuel has more than doubled in cost just this year. That wasn't in anyone's plans.

It was definitely someone's plan though

A Big Beautiful Plan, if you will

The full quote implies more uncertainty

> So based on that, we believe what is most fair is to put current trends in because you cannot predict at what point consumers and demand is going to be -- you're going to begin to see demand destruction based on the pricing environment.

https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/04/23/so...

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