My understanding from reading the earnings call transcript and the 10Q is that the gain was a one time "mark to market" gain from our fuel hedging strategy. The airlines are starting to pay attention to fuel hedging for obvious reasons but the intent is to "smooth" an airline's fuel costs over long periods of time. Sometimes the hedges make money, sometimes they lose money. This quarter we made some "paper" money from the hedges. In the past we've lost money (paper and real!). Since we are an airline and not a hedge fund speculating on commodities, we need to make money from flying airplanes and not fortuitous swings in whatever commodity we're using as a proxy for jet fuel.
The reality is that we had a big loss, just like just about everyone else did, and this is unsustainable, but we're not knocking on death's door as we all read so frequently on this forum.
