Tag Archives: United Airlines

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We’re baaack!

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends.

If it’s the week after Labor Day, that means it’s time for us to return to the fold and once again publish PlaneBusiness Banter.

This week we do our best to get back on track and update PlaneBusiness subscribers not only on the most recent industry news and notes, but we give you our take on some events that happened while we were making our way around the Western part of the country while on vacation.

American Airlines bankruptcy — check.

American Airlines CEO Tom Horton’s miscues — check.

APA’s sudden weak-kneed approach to management — check.

APFA’s strong stance on a US Airways merger — check.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane’s decision on Tuesday to allow the abrogation of the American pilot contract — check.

JetBlue’s brand new New York presence — check

JetBlue’s irritation at Tom Horton and American for continuing to imply JetBlue is in play — check.

US Airways and British Airways sign NDAs and begin due diligence process with American in regard to a merger — check.

United Airlines suffers horrible August — check…and check again.

United Airlines’ systems outage gives @FakeUnitedJeff A Treasure Trove of Material — check.

United Airlines’ systems outage shows airline’s glaring lack of Social Media presence — check.

United Airlines’ systems outage gives Social Media folks at American, Delta and Frontier Airlines a reason to shine — check.

Shares of SkyWest skyrocket in August…we tell you why — check.

Ryanair says it is willing to negotiate on Aer Lingus deal to get approval — check.

All this and more in this week’s issue — check.

Can you tell we’re in our pilot mode this week?

Subscribers can access this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter here.

Check.

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

home-typewriter copy 1.jpg Hello everyone. No surprise that we are publishing on Wednesday night this week. Has something to do with some activity that was centered around the DFW Metromess today. Yes, there were three American Airlines‘ union votes announced today — two passed and one didn’t. And the one that didn’t was the big one.

The pilots at American Airlines decided that they would rather put their fate in the hands of U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane than accept what many pilots apparently thought was an “unsatisfactory” contract.

As you can read in the blog post below, I thought the pilots should vote yes.

Meanwhile, the flight attendant voting period during which they need to decide if they are going to vote yes or no on their “last best and final offer” from the company continues.

As it is scheduled now, Judge Lane is supposed to rule on the airline’s request to abrogate the union contracts that have not been renegotiated next Wednesday as part of the standard Section 1113 procedure.

However, the outcome of the flight attendant vote will not be known by that time.

It will be up to the airline — whether it asks the judge to delay a ruling — or it simply allows him to abrogate the contracts that have not been agreed upon (which would then include the flight attendant contract) on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, this week is yet another big earnings week issue, as we take an in-depth look at the recent results of Spirit, Allegiant, Alaska Air Group, WestJet, and Republic Holdings.

We also give you overviews of the recent earnings news from IAG Group (owner of British Airways and Iberia), Virgin Atlantic, Lufthansa and Cathay Pacific.

Speaking of Allegiant, the airline said on its earnings call last week that it was very happy with the first month of its new service to Hawaii. The airline is using 757s to fly to Hawaii, and today, the airline announced even more service to Hawaii. Know what new routes were announced? Better yet, know which airline Allegiant seems to be targeting with their latest choices?

WestJet had an interesting announcement last week — for those of you who agree that passengers will pay for meaningful upgrades. The airline announced it was putting in four rows of “premium economy” seats on all of its 737s. It is also adding seats to its 737-800s.

Meanwhile, Spirit just keeps making money. Although I think the airline showed evidence of some growing pains in the second quarter — as costs were above where the airline wants them to be.

In terms of Republic Holdings, the hybrid holding company did quite well, as the Frontier Airlines’ restructuring process is really beginning to shine. So now what?

Meanwhile Republic continues to work through its issues with its Chautauqua, aka Chicken Taco, operation. Republic remains convinced it can make the 50 seat aircraft work –but it is going to have to be flown at exceptionally low rates to mainline airlines if that is the case.

While we don’t do a full earnings review of SkyWest this week, as they reported earnings today, I will tell you that the airline blew away estimates — sending shares of the stock up 23% on the day.

As always, all this, and more — in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.

Also — a friendly reminder for our subscribers. This is our last issue for August. We are now officially on vacation. Our next issue will be published after Labor Day!

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home-typewriter copy 1.jpgHello everyone. This week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted. This week we take a detailed look at the recent earnings releases from United Continental Holdings, Delta Air Lines, US Airways and JetBlue.

We also see how both Ryanair and Air France/KLM fared during the last quarter.

Meanwhile, we have PlaneBusiness Earnings Summaries posted for Republic, Spirit, Hawaiian and Allegiant. Next week we’ll get you caught up on all the airlines that have reported so far for the quarter.

In breaking news tonight, it does appear that there is a tentative agreement between United Airlines and its two pilot groups. Not a lot of details out there yet, but this is certainly good news for the airline. Clearly the deal will have to be approved by the rank and file and we have no idea what will happen at this point. All we know is that it is good news that an agreement is in place.

United was also in the news this week as the airline rolled out its new beautiful Boeing 787 out in Seattle.

While that was good news, the not-so-good news for Boeing was a test of a 787, slated to be delivered to Air India which saw debris from its engine start a grass fare at the Charleston International Airport. Unlike the Trent 1000s that ANA just had to have work done, these were GE engines.

Allegiant Travel announced this last week that is is going to be taking on Airbus A319 aircraft — some are coming from Cebu, others from easyJet. Looks like this is the first move by Allegiant to begin shifting away from the Maddogs.

Even more airplane news as Delta brings the hammer down on SkyWest (Delta CEO Richard Anderson told everyone — repeatedly– in the airline’s earnings call last week that yes, this could be done. And yes, it was done.)

Airline stocks had a so-so week last week, with shares of United getting hammered. Analysts don’t like it when airlines produce revenue results that lag everyone else.

In the AMR Bankruptcy Follies this week, we talk about Tom Horton’s latest Magical Mystery PR tour and how he sounds just a tad desperate as he attempts now to “reposition” the message. We argue he only makes things worse — both for him and the airline.

Oh, we have a lot more than this to talk about, but this gets us started.

Subscribers can access this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter here.

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

home-typewriter copy 1.jpg Good evening everyone. This week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted.

This week we have a big, jam-packed issue — and it’s not even earnings yet!

First, we award our Wild Turkey Award for Airline Management Excellence to a very worthy recipient — Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta Air Lines.

We’ve only given out four of these in our 15 years of publishing PlaneBusiness Banter, but we tell you why we think Richard is more than deserving of the honor.

As part of the award, Richard will also be receiving a case of Wild Turkey Rare Breed whiskey, compliments of the person for whom the award is named — former Southwest Airlines Chairman and CEO Herb Kelleher.

Yep, Holly was in Atlanta last week.

I got to tour the new International Terminal at the Atlanta Airport, I got to crawl around one of Delta’s newly upgraded 747s, I met with almost every top member of the airline’s management team, and then there was a terrific dinner with some of the folks from Corp Comm — complete with green fried tomatoes and fried chicken.

What more could anyone ask for?

Meanwhile, while I honor the best in the business this week, in terms of airline CEOs, we still, unfortunately, have to talk about AMR and its CEO.

In this week’s AMR Bankruptcy Follies column, I take a look at the statement last week from the airline in which it says it is now going to look at “merger alternatives.”

We present a timeline of comments from the airline’s CEO Tom Horton for you to consider as we ask the question — is Horton really serious about doing this or is this just a ploy to placate the UCC?

We take a look at the June traffic numbers, and we’ll tell you why shares of SkyWest shot off the charts last week.

Oh, and yes, Boeing locked down the order with United. The FAA also proposed a $13.2 million fine against Boeing — for its slow response to fuel tank modification design work.

We take a look at the latest DOT Air Travel Consumer numbers from May — yet another bad month for United — and we talk about British Airways, Kingfisher, Qantas, Virgin Australia, and a whole lot more.

All — this week — in PlaneBusiness Banter .

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home-typewriter copy 1.jpg Hello everyone. Happy Fourth of July! This week’s holiday issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted.

This week we take a look at the latest news from American Airlines bankruptcy, including the extension for exclusivity that the airline and the Unsecured Creditors Committee have agreed to. Does this change anything? We think not, and we explain all the fine print of what it does mean.

Meanwhile, as expected, the board of directors of the Allied Pilots Association voted to send out the last best tentative agreement with the company to the rank and file for a vote. All of that will take us into August — one of the main reasons the exclusivity date was pushed back.

The “intensive” two week closed doors locked-down negotiations between the pilots at Continental, United, and the airline came to a close last week. But no contract was to be had. We are still optimistic, and we think the timing of the announcement concerning the results of the Delta Air Lines‘ pilot contract had a bit to do with what happened here as well.

Meanwhile, while all this was going on, Holly was in Chicago last week, attending and speaking at the Association of Travel Marketing Executives conference. More on all that in the our next issue. While I was in Chicago, I also got to take a tour of the United Airlines new network operations center. Wow. What a trip that place is. More on all that in this week’s issue as well.

In our AMR Bankruptcy Follies column this week, we tip our hat to our customary “Ode to a Hot Dog” column and give it a new twist, as we explore the top ten reasons American Airlines’ CEO Tom Horton doesn’t like hot dogs.

And oh, then there were the first quarter earnings that Virgin America issued on Tuesday afternoon. Yep, that’s right. The old “Vanguard” method. You know how that works. You issue bad earnings news on a day when no one is paying much attention. Like on the afternoon before July 4th.

That’s okay. We were paying attention, as were some of our subscribers.

The numbers were, in a nutshell, horrible. We ask — how long can this operation continue?

All this and more, including our second quarter airline stock performance review (in which US Airways handily took top honors) in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

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Good evening everyone.

This week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted!

We are a bit late in posting this week — the result of PlaneDad move-related duties. I am happy to report that he is now in his new home in Texas, but the whole process took more time this week and last than I had anticipated.

Hopefully we’ve gotten the most time-consuming issues behind us.

Meanwhile, this week in PlaneBusiness Banter, there are two main stories we’re talking about. One — the reaction of United Airlines to the city of Houston’s decision to allow Houston Hobby to expand — allowing Southwest Airlines and other airlines to fly internationally from Hobby. While we knew this was going to be the city’s decision, even we were somewhat taken aback with some comments made by the airline and its CEO, Jeff Smisek after the city council vote took place.

We talk about what the airline could have done — as opposed to what it did do – in this week’s issue.

We have a new edition of AMR Bankruptcy Follies this week. This week’s we’re talking about Chinese food and mystery meat. I’ll let you guys figure it out.

We also heard from a number of our subscribers about the “Town Hall” meeting AMR CEO Tom Horton conducted last week at the airline’s headquarters. Funny. The entire presentation, particularly the Q&A session contents are not all on the official “Scrubbed” version of the session that the airline has posted for public consumption.

But essentially, I think Mr. Horton needs to be reminded that he is not the one who is going to decide whether American merges with another airline or not, or who that airline may be. That responsibility lies with the bankruptcy court, particularly the Unsecured Creditors Committee.

Etihad broke out the checkbook again last week, while David Neeleman’s Azul bought out rival Brazilian airline TRIP. This also means that SkyWest, which had invested in TRIP will get a payout. Over time.

Will Pinnacle Airlines move back to Minneapolis? Yes — if the folks in Minneapolis have anything to do with it. I also tend to think it will probably happen, as Delta continues to downsize its presence in Memphis.

Oh, and that big sell-off in airline stocks Monday? Don’t pay any attention to it. If you are a savvy investor you saw it for what it was — an overreaction to the Delta May PRASM estimate numbers. But Delta is an exception to the rule. We’ll tell you what two analysts had to say about the situation.

All this and more in this week’s edition of PlaneBusiness Banter.

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

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Good morning earthlings!

I hope you are enjoying this holiday-shortened week. I know I am. Meanwhile, this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted.

The good thing about last week? I got to travel to Chicago, where I met with a whole lot of folks at United Airlines. Including CEO Jeff Smisek. While most of my meetings with the airline’s top executives were off the record, and strictly on background, we will be doing one of our legendary Lounge Lizard Interviews with Jeff Smisek sometime later this summer — whenever his schedule and mine can come up with a day that works for both of us.

I look forward to it.

While I can’t dangle any tasty tidbits of information from my sessions publicly, I can say that they were incredibly helpful to me, and I want to thank both Dave Hilfman, SVP of Global Sales at United, and Nene Foxhall, Executive Vice President Communications and Government Affairs at United for extending the invitation to come up to Chicago and hang out. It makes a huge difference when you can sit down and talk candidly with a company’s executives.

But that is not all we are talking about this week. No, in fact, we are at a very important point in the AMR Bankruptcy 1113 process. What I write this week may surprise some of you. Essentially the faster the unions and the airline can come to terms on three contracts, the faster any and all alternatives to the airline’s “Standalone” plan can be presented and considered.

I explain all of this and why it thus behooves the union leaders to attempt and negotiate something with the airline sooner rather than later in this week’s issue. (And yes, I think this is going to be very confusing to attempt to explain to the rank and file members.)

Meanwhile, airline stocks had a fantastic week last week — mainly because of a bullish report from JP Morgan analyst Jamie Baker. We told you last week the pull back was a buying opportunity, and indeed it was.

Sad news for the SkyWest/ExpressJet family this week, as Tanner Holt, the youngest son of ExpressJet President Brad Holt was one of four men killed in the crash of a Cessna 172 at the St. George, UT airport on Saturday. Tanner was a pilot with Comair.

Not content to shake things up by buying a refinery, Delta is apparently playing some “Kill Spirit” games by offering some rock bottom fare buckets on a few routes where they compete with Spirit. We’re not sure this is such a good idea, and we’ll tell you why.

Then there is New York Senator Chuck Schumer and his claims that airlines are separating mothers and their babies. Really Chuck? Really?

As usual, all this — and more, in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter .

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

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Good evening everyone.

This week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted.

This week we have another mega-earnings issue, as we take a close look at the recent earnings calls from Hawaiian Airlines, Allegiant Travel Company, Spirit Airlines and Republic Holdings. Republic was the only one of the group not to post a profit for the first quarter.

Of course Spirit was in the news last week for other reasons — namely its decision to hike the charges for carry-on bags and for their initial refusal to refund a $197 ticket to a terminally-ill ex-Marine. By the time the week was over, the bag charge increases were still in place, but the airline’s CEO Ben Baldanza personally refunded the cost of the ticket and the airline contributed $5K to the Wounded Warriors organization.

For once the airline discovered that bad publicity was not better than no publicity.

In other news, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines slugged it out again in Houston Tuesday before an overflow crowd at the Houston City Council chambers.

Southwest wants to fly internationally out of Hobby Airport, and has asked the city for permission to build a new international addition to the current airport at a cost of roughly $100K.

But United is not amused. Especially since it just broke ground in January on a $700 million expansion and improvement of its facilities at IAH, which will include more international gate expansion.

Most interesting factoid from Tuesday’s testimony and questioning — on the day United Airlines broke ground on its new IAH expansion in January, Southwest’s Gary Kelly was talking to the Houston mayor about its desire to fly internationally out of Hobby.

Oh, this is such a cruel dog-eat-dog business.

This week we also have our latest AMR Bankruptcy Follies column. This week we look at the position of the bondholders in the bankruptcy process — why they want to get as much as possible back from the airline and how this return could be maximized as a result of a US Airways merger with American while it is still in bankruptcy protection.

Last week shares of Republic and Spirit were the laggards for the airline sector, but the price of oil plunged. That’s good news. So far this week — oil prices have continued to move downward.

As always — all this and more — in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.

PlaneBusiness Banter is Now Posted!

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Good evening Earthlings.

This week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted.

The last week has been brutal. I’m not kidding. First, we had two airlines report earnings last week, and we have the full review of the earnings call this week from Southwest Airlines and Alaska Air Group.

Our short take? Alaska turned in a respectable quarter — especially considering the airline used to simply assume it would post a loss in the first quarter. Not anymore.

This was also Alaska CEO Bill Ayer’s last earnings call. Ayer, one of the best CEOs in the business — will remain as Chairman. Should investors be worried about this change at the top of one of the most well-run (and profitable) U.S. airlines? No. I’ll tell you why.

As for Southwest, the airline has us totally confused.

It keeps pushing back dates for various merger-related integrations with AirTran. That we get. The airline clearly, as many of us said at the time the deal was announced, did not and still does not have the technology underfoot to make this deal work.

That includes the technology necessary to enable Southwest to fly internationally. Or to merge fully with AirTran. And then there are the fees that AirTran charges as part of their operation. An operation that, in a number of ways, performed better than Southwest in the first quarter.

Now they say they are going to keep all fees that are currently a part of the AirTran model in place. For at least 2-3 years.

Say what?

So now the “we’re going to migrate the AirTran operation into that of Southwest as quickly as possible” mantra has changed.

But why? The airline could switch off the fees at AirTran overnight.

Could it be Southwest is finally beginning to understand the value of “the upsell?”

No. Otherwise they wouldn’t be putting more seats in its 737-700s.

See what I mean about confusing?

About the best news out of Denton Drive last week was the news that the airline has finally made a decision about upgrading at least some of its IT incapability.

The airline announced it was going with Amadeus — and will use that company’s res product to enable it to start international operations. But not until 2014.

(Actually I think we’ll see Amadeus take both the international and the domestic PSS projects on at Southwest before this is all over.)

But clearly the major news last week was the announcement Friday that the three major unions at American Airlines had signed term sheets with US Airways — in effect telling management at AMR they want no part of a standalone airline — and pretty much throwing out a vote of “No Confidence” towards the current AMR management.

Needless to say, the fact the pilots did this pretty much confirms what we had said here last week — that the “Hale Memo” was a farce. Clearly Mr. Hale just signed his name to something that had no truth attached to it whatsoever.

And then the powers that be at AMR wonder why it is that their employees don’t trust them. Funny how that works.

We talk a lot about what happened last week, tell you what you can expect to see happen in the next weeks and months, and why you shouldn’t think that things have stopped happening just because they aren’t happening in public.

No question about it — the actions of the three union leaders and their boards last week was amazing. Something we’ve certainly never seen in this industry before.

No surprise — shares of US Airways climbed sharply last week on the news of the union agreements.

In addition, did you hear about the lawsuit that AIG, parent of ILFC has filed against Steve Hazy, the founder of ILFC, and currently the CEO of Air Lease Corp.?

The really bizarre part of the story — all the major players were in New York at the Plaza Hotel for the Air Finance Conference this week when the news hit.

I would think that might have made things just a tad uncomfortable.

As always, we have all of this and more — in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.

PlaneBusiness Banter is Now Posted!

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Good evening everyone. It’s time once again for this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter. Or rather, this week’s “Turkey Trot” edition of PBB.

Yours truly got hit by a nasty upper respiratory infection this last weekend, so I have to tell you — the “Turkey Trot” edition almost didn’t make it to the table.

But I couldn’t have all our subscribers venturing out over the river and through the woods without some good reading material.

This week we’re talking about a hodge-podge of things — lunatic legislation introduced just in time for Thanksgiving travelers that seeks to either prevent airlines from charging for fees, or then taxing airlines more that do charge for fees; a USB investment research report that pretty much calls the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme worthless; American Airlines’ withering market cap; American Airline’s withered state in general; SkyWest’s new flying for US Airways; Travelport and American’s latest court news; one analyst’s take on the latest Southwest Airlines‘ schedule uploads for 2Q2012, and what these changes mean for competitors; Hawaiian Airlines’ decision to take Manhattan; the DOT’s September Airline Consumer Travel Report; and oh, a whole lot more.

Subscribers can access this week’s issue here.