Airline stocks might be good buy for short term.  Nowadays, airline companies run pretty tight ship.  Last week when I flew red eye from west coast to east coast, the plane was totally packed.  If red eye flights are full, I have to assume they (Continental) are doing pretty good job managing seat inventories.  Plus with summer here, there will be more demand for airline seats.  Only wrinkle in this picture is the high oil price.  If the airline has done a good job at getting proper gas price protection and bought the gas futures at last year's price, it will be sheltered from the high gas cost.  So that would be the key factor I would look for while researching these companies.