GE Aerospace is sitting on one of the more unusual positions in American business right now: a company that benefits when planes fly more, watching flight growth go nearly flat, and still telling investors that its profit target of up to $7.40 per share for 2026 is within reach. CEO Larry Culp made that case Wednesday at an investor conference in Chicago, and the market logic behind his confidence is worth understanding.

The fuel situation is the backdrop. The Middle East conflict has driven oil prices high enough to squeeze airline margins and slow the pace of new departures. Over the past eight weeks, Culp said, flight growth has gone from expanding to "relatively flat." For a company whose engine-services revenue depends on planes actually flying, that sounds like a problem.

It isn't, at least not yet. And the reason comes down to how the maintenance business actually works.

The backlog is the buffer

Engine maintenance isn't like buying a plane ticket. Airlines don't decide in March to skip their June engine overhaul because fuel costs are up. The work is scheduled months, sometimes years, in advance. GE Aerospace has said that most of its 2026 maintenance workload was already locked in before the current fuel crunch hit. Shop visits, the term for major engine overhauls, are contracted ahead of time. Spare-parts orders are driven by fleet age and regulatory requirements, not short-term fuel prices.

Culp confirmed Wednesday that nothing in the commercial behavior of airline customers has changed. No deferrals, no cutbacks, no renegotiated orders. Spare-parts demand is still outpacing supply.

That last point matters more than it might seem. When demand exceeds supply, the seller holds pricing power. GE Aerospace isn't discounting to keep customers. The customers are waiting in line.

What the fuel spike does and doesn't do

Higher fuel costs pressure airline profitability. If that pressure is severe enough and lasts long enough, airlines eventually ground older, less efficient planes. Grounding a plane stops the wear that creates maintenance demand. That's the scenario that would eventually hurt GE Aerospace's services business.

But there's a lag. Even a grounded plane often needs servicing before it goes back into storage. And the company's forecast already bakes in elevated oil prices through the third quarter, with some easing by year-end. If that projection holds, the window in which airlines might actually cut fleet activity is short enough that contracted 2026 work mostly survives intact.

The company has forecast adjusted profit between $7.10 and $7.40 per share for 2026. Last month it said it expected to hit the high end of that range. Nothing Culp said Wednesday walked that back.

The bigger pattern

What GE Aerospace's position illustrates is how deeply the aviation industry has changed since the capacity chaos of 2020 to 2022. Airlines rebuilt their fleets aggressively once travel recovered, which means a large number of engines are now at the age where they need heavier, more expensive maintenance cycles. That structural demand doesn't pause because fuel is expensive for a quarter. It's already in the queue.

For ordinary travelers, the near-term implication is straightforward: airlines are absorbing higher fuel costs without cutting the maintenance that keeps planes safe, but they are also not expanding capacity quickly. Flat departures mean fewer empty seats, which means less pricing relief on tickets than passengers were hoping for heading into summer.

For GE Aerospace, the more interesting question is what happens if the fuel spike outlasts the company's year-end assumption. If oil stays elevated into 2027 and airlines begin grounding older planes in real numbers, the contracted-backlog buffer disappears. For now, Culp's confidence looks grounded in the structure of the business. The test comes if the map and the terrain stop matching.