Learning to fly

Ever since the first commercial airline started in Germany in 1910, airlines have been struggling to stay out of the red. From the end of World War II to 1994, the sum of the industry's profits and losses was less than zero. From 1995 to 1999, the industry's best years ever, airlines earned only three and half cents for every dollar of sales, according to New York Times magazine. By nature, airlines are a cutthroat, highly regulated, manically cyclical business with labor relations and deregulation