The new supplies of oil from the Bakken and Eagleford are extremely dependent on oil prices. Due to low production rates (relative to conventional oil) and density of wells required to effectively recover this oil, high oil prices are required. A drop in oil prices quickly affects operators at the margins of these plays or those w/ marginal wells. Operators onshore U.S. can stop drilling on a dime if it looks like prices won't give a decent ROI. This is a complete change from a conventional offshore play where you might have a billion dollars sunk costs in a platform and wells that you have to pay off no matter what the price is. This new unconventional production will not cause a significant drop in oil prices, because a drop in production would quickly follow a drop in price, leading to a price increase. The new supply can react almost in real-time to price changes whereas in the bad, old days of the industry, over-supply caused by huge sunk-cost-laden projects poured more oil onto an already oversaturated market. In 1999, you could buy a load of oil sitting in a VLCC tanker sitting off Rotterdam for $5/bbl. That's probably not ever going to happen again.

Airlines basically are not going to have the big swings in oil prices that, for example, allowed Southwest a huge advantage a couple of years ago when they hedged a multi-year fuel supply at low cost. I haven't looked into it recently. but I don't think any domestic airline currently has much of a fuel hedge advantage over the others. Now they have to compete on other factors.