Riddle me this. "Analysts" keep saying that oil prices will only keep going up. OK, I get that. But if airlines start folding (and therefore not using fuel), then the demand will decrease, correct? And in an alleged "market economy" what's supposed to happen to the price if the demand decreases? Let me remind you what happened to the price of gas after not a single airliner took to the skies between 9/11/01 and 9/15/01.
Commercial aviation consumes a surprisingly small amount of what oil the US uses, so I don't think the impact would be as large as you would think. Also, the world economies are demanding increasingly large supplies of oil, so even if we demand less, this is largely mitigated.