PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

home-typewriter copy 1Hello everyone. Another week. Another issue of PlaneBusiness Banter jammed packed with more in-depth earnings reports that you know what to do with. This week we have full 1Q14 reports on Allegiant Travel, Spirit Airlines, Republic Holdings and SkyWest. We also give you a brief rundown on the recent 1Q14 results reported by IAG, parent of British Airways; Lufthansa, and Air France-KLM.  Short and sweet? All three European airlines saw much improved numbers over those of 1Q13.

Next week we will wrap up 1Q14 earnings with full reports on WestJet and Air Canada. We’ll also take short looks at the earnings from Travelport, Amadeus and Sabre. Ah yes, the GDS folks.

But it’s not all RASM, CASM, and yield this week. Oh no.

I got to crawl around inside one of only four Airbus A350-900s XWB’s last week as the aircraft made its first appearance in the United States. What a beautiful airplane. We’ll even show you a cool close-up of the aircraft’s very sleek and oh-so-sexy curved wingtips. We really liked this airplane. A lot.

We’ll also get you up to date on the Virgin America-Southwest-Delta-DOJ-DOT-Dallas City Council-Love Field-Dallas City Manager Soap Opera. Short and sweet? There was still no decision as of late Friday night. If the city manager is smart, he will allow American to sublease the two gates involved to Virgin. That is the only airline the Department of Transportation has deemed “appropriate” for the gates per the DOJ’s American Airlines/US Airways merger agreement parameters.

If not — then I guess we can get ready for a long legal fight.

It was a strange week on Wall Street last week. While the Dow hit a new all-time high Friday, the Nasdaq continues to struggle. For airline stocks, it was not such a great week. We’ll go over the details.

Finally, as we discussed in last week’s issue, it does appear that JetBlue’s CEO Dave Barger is on his way out. A story that Bloomberg did last week seemed to confirm the Board has made the decision — we’ll give you the details on how we see all this finally playing out.

All of this and much, much more in this week’s quite hefty issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.