PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

home-typewriter copy 1Good evening everyone! We’re baaack!

Yes, vacation is over, and it’s time to get back to work. Or at least that is what I kept telling myself last week. As a result, this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted.

This is one of our “catch-up” issues. It’s rather difficult to compress three weeks into one issue, but I tried to talk about those topics we thought were most noteworthy. Or at least mention them!

On the stock side, August was a great month for airline stocks. The dog days of August are often times not that friendly to the things with wings, but that was not the case this  year. The only negative about August was the sharp decline in jet fuel inventories that occurred right before Labor Day in the Northeast. The shortage caused jet fuel prices to jump more than 6% that week, as inventories fell to record lows.

All is now back to normal on that front as a number of  tankers have been able to get into New York Harbor and offload their cargo.

In other news, Southwest Airlines and Frontier Airlines will both roll out new liveries this week. Pics of both were leaked over the weekend. We posted the Southwest Airlines livery last night. Here is a shot of the new Frontier livery. The green livery with the feathered “F” harkens back to previous branding at the airline — years ago.

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In other news, we talk a bit this week about the union activity over at American, get you updated on that, although I did not get into detail about the decision by American to pull flying from Envoy and give it to PSA. A number of the folks we wanted to talk to just simply weren’t able to be tracked down before we published. I’ll revisit this move by the airline this week.

Speaking of this coming week, look for analysts to be watching the traffic reports issued by the airlines very carefully this week. Delta reported less than robust PRASM numbers for August last week, and analysts will be watching everyone else to see if it is a one-off for Delta only, or if the rest of the industry is showing any signs of weakness as well.

Tomorrow morning, I am off to the Southwest Airlines Media Day. More on that in next week’s issue.

Have a great week everyone. Talk to you again next week.