So $110 oil has achieved what terrorism, SARS and the Iraq War could not: The failure of three airlines collectively representing around 1% of US domestic capacity. It is easy to forget that despite the horrendous financial losses, only one US scheduled passenger carrier of any consequence actually ceased operating after 9/11: Midway, which was already in Chapter 11 protection and going down for the third time when the planes struck.

Ever since the words "scientific" and "consensus" became conjoined at the hip, a cadre of Western thought leaders and policy-makers has been looking forward to the day when they can tell the rest of us how we are going to live our lives. That the phrase "scientific consensus" means little--until Copernicus and Galileo, the "scientific consensus" was that the sun revolved around the earth--does not matter in the least to this group, whose members are not above vilifying anyone who does not share their calamitous views on global warming and the solutions they offer.

THE ASSEMBLY LINES INSIDE PRATT & WHITNEY'S ENGINE FACILITY IN Middletown, Conn., seem unhurried and rather subdued when we arrive. It's Tuesday, nearly 5 p.m., and, aside from two men working in the near distance, there isn't much activity amid the initial workstations. "Looks like they knew we were coming," a fellow tour member says.

The open skies treaty between the EU and US that takes effect at the end of this month might better have been called the "Open Heathrow" treaty, since that is where 99% of the action is taking place, with five new entrants set to begin serving the airport come April 1. That Heathrow should be the vortex of activity is not surprising given that for the purposes of the US-UK market it has been closed to all but four airlines for decades. Plus, as Senior Editor and Europe Bureau Chief Cathy Buyck notes in her fine feature beginning on p.

Winston Churchill famously described Russia as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." It is a formulation that is equally applicable to the Chinese government and particularly to the fluid relationship between the government and the industries and enterprises it both owns and regulates. Over the past few months, the aviation community got perhaps its deepest and most detailed glimpse into that world and how it is evolving as Air China and its parent China National Aviation Holding Co.

But then, we'll guess that Lufthansa did not plunk down $300 million for 19% of JetBlue and a seat on the low-fare airline's board of directors because it's looking for a superior ROI or dividend yield that it can't get elsewhere. With all due respect to JetBlue (a fine airline that has hit some turbulence), there's only one US carrier that has demonstrated long-term equity appreciation and a reliable dividend stream and it is based in Dallas, not Queens.

Anyone who spends much time in or around the airline industry is familiar with the concept of faith. In the early days of air travel it was as fundamental as believing that the runway would be there when you broke out of the clouds and that the propellers would keep spinning until the tires touched the ground. Faith continues to play a significant role in guiding our industry, although thankfully the subjects almost never involve a wing and a prayer anymore.

To the US airline industry's list of negative achievements in 2007the worst ontime performance in a decade, a 65% rise in passenger complaints compared to 2006we can add a new one: President Bush has found it necessary to take time away from more pressing matters such as conducting a war in order to chastise airlines. That is what he did in September, declaring that passengers are "just not being treated right," calling carrier behavior "egregious" and vowing to address the problem of flight delays and cancellations.