I've been looking at Denver, Newark, Jo'burg flights on United for the last several months, trying to gauge the cheapest days and trip durations for my trip next May. Fortunately, tickets aren't yet for sale on the dates I will be travelling but the cheapest options were around 180k to 190k points around the beginning of the year. Now the cheapest Options are 265k to 270k points. At least 30% more expensive. Fuel is a much smaller percentage of a short, domestic flight than an ultra ling haul flight like ATL-JHB of Newark-JHB. So those long flights are going to see much larger % increases, or they'll just be cut all together. Its happened in the past with these very long routes. Flights from both US coasts to Singapore are the first example that comes to mind. Planes are more fuel efficient than they've ever been, but airlines simply wont fly these routes if they can deploy the same planes/crews on more profitable flights else where. If oil prices keep climbing, I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of these routes started to get cancelled all together.