But its not a mandatory thing. Theyre not required to invest in a contract for fuel prices. Its really a roll of the dice for them. They can hypothesize where the prices will be, but they dont actually know until they get there (just like trading futures). But theres a balance there as well. If you wait it out to see where prices go and the price of the perceived future cost of fuel increases, you wont be able to get fuel on contract at a lower price if you waited too long. Conversely, if you get a contract at a certain price, the fuel can decrease in value. That would leave you paying more for fuel than what its actually worth. On the other end of the entire thing, it makes it a little easier for the CFOs to budget for the upcoming years because theres one less variable to deal with.
