Four airline CEOs addressed the role of fuel hedging at the IATA Congress 2026 in Rio de Janeiro and the need for ongoing resilience in the current energy crisis. Luis Rodrigues of TAP Air Portugal shared that it is not resignation it is just oh another one in different format we have had this since two thousand and twenty and that if you choose to work in this industry you better get the briefing right now, adding that hedging is vital of our response strategy to respond to this issue it is defending us a little bit now it may hurt us in the future but there is no magic formula to deal with.
Con Korfiatis of Oman Air shared:: “A lot of the airlines have set formulas that they work to x% I heard Michael O’Leary say few weeks ago that he’s 80pc hedged for jet fuel, so a lot of would like to be in his shoes right now. They have an aggressive hedging policy in Europe. They hedge quite heavily. In the Americas and the Middle East, not so much.”
Adrian Neuhauser of Abra Group shared that it does and that we have taken a view and this is very hemisphere split as everyone is aware right but in general in the Americas we tend not to hedge or to have pretty broad ranges in which we are unhedged Europeans tend to be more hedged and that this is the perfect experiment right our theory is and it goes to your point you have this hidden business people do not see it it creates an asymmetry you have a shock like what you have today and it creates a misalignment right in a world where nobody is hedged fuel goes up we all try to pass it through and that what we are seeing today is when that happens the consumer responds we are able to pass it through adding that in a world where people run different strategies you cannot see them it becomes a strange competitive misalignment all of a sudden somebody has a hedging windfall does not feel the need to pressure pricing up the other people are at a disadvantage it is very unfortunate and that if he was great at trading oil he should be trading oil not running an airline.
Güliz Öztürk of Pegasus Airlines shared that no that is a more structured actually type of business within the company when we have a strategy we have a hedging committee it is down for twenty four months exactly the strategy the principles are so we are hedged sixty three per cent now but hedging is also a commercial tool like you have said correctly because what the competition does is also important and that the forty per cent that you are not hedged it puts the pressure yes that forty per cent also good.
Con Korfiatis of Oman Air shared that there are various strategies you can take towards hedging many airlines have set hedging policies and they are reviewed at least a couple of times a year and depending on the environment more often a lot of the airlines have set formulas that they work to x per cent and that hedging itself is a calculated financial risk assessment and you basically take a bit of an each way bet you do not totally ride the market but at the same time you do not want to be caught out on a bad hedge if you are one hundred per cent exposed as well, confirming that his airline is unhedged completely and noting that as a state owned airline if you are an oil producing nation.
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