This is going to be another one of those periods where most of the startup airlines go under, allowing some of the majors get to raise fares and keep providing bad service for a while longer. Even an airline as relatively healthy as Southwest is cutting back some flights. Fuel prices are the major problem - expect fares to go way up across the board as the competition drops out.
Makes sense to me. And Southwest just lost a lot of flights with the loss of their codeshare agreement with ATA. I even heard that Southwest was calling American Airlines with a corporate credit card to reaccommodate some of their passengers who were scheduled to fly on ATA.