PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

home-typewriter copy 1Hello earthlings. How is everyone this evening, er, morning? (Depending upon where you are.)

This week’s mega-earnings issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted. Yes, it’s one of those long ones. It’s earnings season.

This week we take a long look at the 1Q14 earnings posted by American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines last week. What did Meatloaf say, “Two out of three ain’t bad?”

That’s about it. Both Delta and American reported record profits while United Airlines reported a huge loss.

Yes, things were actually better for United right after the merger than they are now. Which is not a ringing endorsement for the current management team at the airline.

Meanwhile, we had a total of eight airlines report in last week — we have PlaneBusiness Earnings Summaries for all. Next week we take a long look at the reports from Alaska Air Group, Southwest Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, and JetBlue. 

JetBlue didn’t have a particularly good quarter either, although it avoided most of the negative press last week, as a result of United’s poor showing.

We also talk a bit this week about the situation at Love Field. Does Virgin America have the right to those two gates that American Airlines is being forced to give up by the DOJ or not? This became a sticky question last week. While Virgin arrived at Love Field with PR firm and airplane in tow, and announced its schedule, which will begin after the Wright Amendment goes away in October, the City of Dallas still needs to approve the transfer of the gates. However, apparently the DOJ told American that Virgin America was the only candidate that was appropriate for the gates.

Just another North Texas airline saga. To be continued.

David Neeleman’s Brazilian airline Azul said last week that it plans to begin flying to the U.S. in 2015. Neeleman also said he hopes to codeshare with...JetBlue.  Guess the hatchet has been buried. Maybe.

While we saw most airlines report very nice 1Q14 numbers last week, it was disappointing that we didn’t see bigger moves in some of the shares. I think Wall Street is somewhat tone deaf when it comes to airlines. Truly. Or simply uninformed.

We talk about all of this  — and more — in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.

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