It wasn’t long ago that Warren Buffett dismissed airlines as businesses doomed to earn meager profits—or none. He even joked, in a 2008 letter to his Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, +0.20%) shareholders, that the best thing a clairvoyant economist in 1903 could have done for future investors would have been to go to Kitty Hawk and shoot down Orville Wright.
Nine years later one of airline stocks’ biggest fans is … Warren Buffett. Last year, Berkshire Hathaway bought stakes in all four major U.S. carriers—American Airlines (AAL, -3.48%), Delta (DAL, -0.88%), Southwest (LUV, -0.56%), and United Continental (UAL, -1.23%)—in an investment now worth about $9 billion.
