Why Airline Stocks Are Volatile Today

The pandemic continues to make headlines, and investors are struggling to figure out what to make of it. On a day when cases surged throughout the United Kingdom and European countries are reinitiating lockdowns, airline stocks were all over the place, with Spirit Airlines (NYSE: SAVE) and Azul (NYSE: AZUL) both falling more than 5% on Monday while American Airlines Group (NASDAQ: AAL) at one point was up 4.9%.

It has been a long two years for airline stocks. The early days of the pandemic all but wiped out travel demand, leaving much of the global industry scrambling to pay its bills, and even as demand has slowly returned airline balance sheets remain fragile. The last thing the industry needs is a return to the lockdowns and travel restrictions that marked the early stages of the pandemic, but the new omicron variant threatens to do just that.

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