Good weekend, readers. Seems we are at war again. So much for kumbaya. We spent a quarter digging out, threw ourselves a World Cup party, and now here we are. I hear people talking about the Strait of Hormuz in casual conversation in Brooklyn. Oil hit $100 a barrel this week. And because it’s also earnings season, we get to listen to the CEOs opine (or deflect) on the matter.

Let’s start with the good news, because there was some. Emirates president Sir Tim Clark told reporters at the Farnborough Airshow that the airline will fly at 92% of planned capacity from August 1 — a recovery faster and less painful than the airline feared at the height of the Iran war. Clark said the carrier's cash and profitability had not only held but improved, both "growing well beyond where we thought we'd be at the end of the first quarter." Last week its seat factor — average occupancy — ran at 82%, better than before the crisis. The comeback, Clark said, came down to Dubai's tight coordination between airport, military, and government. "These are the kind of things that have never fazed us in the past," he said. The man has been through the Gulf wars, the pandemic, and much else. Doesn’t seem he’s about to be rattled now.

That's the exhale. Here's the inhale.

Even Clark isn't relaxed about one thing: fuel. Emirates hedged and added cover when prices dipped, "before they rose again in recent days." Over at IndiGo, India's biggest carrier, it swung to a net loss of $24.5 million — reversing a $225 million profit a year earlier. Jet fuel spiked 120% year-over-year during the quarter, and the war had cut the airline's daily Middle East departures to as few as 20-30 at the worst of it, down from about 150. IndiGo had clawed back to 90-95% of pre-war capacity by late June. It thought it was out.

Then, in the days right before its earnings call, the fighting flared up again. Fuel prices, which had started to moderate, began climbing once more. "We were hoping that this is behind us… We've recently started to see some flare-up," CFO Gaurav Negi told analysts, calling the pressure "too significant" to even set a profit target.

The hotels feel it too. Indian Hotels Company CEO Puneet Chhatwal tied his Dubai slump straight to the war — his Palm Jumeirah resort is making less than half its usual revenue. And because so much travel to the Maldives, Sri Lanka, London, and Cape Town connects through Dubai, jittery travelers steering clear of the region have dinged bookings to all of those places, too. 

What this quarter showed is how quickly the industry can climb out. What the last few days showed is how little say it has in whether it stays out. Until next week, readers.