Monthly Archives: February 2009

PlaneBusiness Banter Out This Morning

Hi guys. The last earnings-filled issue of PlaneBusiness Banter for the quarter will be posted this morning. We’re going through the final editing process now.

Next week we’ll be back on our usual weekend publishing schedule.

Surprise of the week? Vegas? What problems with Vegas? Who’s having problems with Vegas? WestJet said in their call last week that they are still doing very well with their Las Vegas routes.

Go figure.

Be back here soon.

Continental Airlines Express Air Crash

The industry suffered yet another crash last night, as a Continental commuter aircraft operated by Colgan Air apparently dove into a house shortly before it was scheduled to land in Buffalo. All 49 crew members and passengers on the aircraft were killed, as was one person who was in the house.

The aircraft involved was a Bombardier Q400.

Bloomberg reports this morning that the aircraft, registration number N200WQ, was ordered by Pinnacle Airlines in 2007 and handed over to the carrier’s Colgan Air unit on April 16 last year. Colgan was operating it on behalf of Continental Airlines, Inc.

What Are You Doing?

Hello everyone. It’s Friday the 13th.

I had a note yesterday from a reader who asked simply, “What are you doing?”

I don’t think he was suggesting that I put a webcam on the blog, but I can understand his question, considering I haven’t been around here much this week.

Well, here is what I have been doing.

MySQL, PHP, response templates, subscriber list merges.

Yes, we’re getting down to crunch time on some major upgrades to our site, and because I have been so caught up with earnings as of late, this week was the week devoted to spending a lot of time on the website project.

And yes, you’ll start to see a couple of changes here on PlaneBuzz as well. Woo hoo. We’ll finally do something more than the out of the box template. I know. I don’t know what’s gotten into me either.

Must be the fact all our major banks in this country are probably insolvent.

Or something like that.

More in a bit.

Come and Get It: PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted

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This week’s 70-plus page issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted. Come and get it while it’s hot. This week we take a closer look at the recent fourth quarter earnings results reported by JetBlue, AirTran and Alaska Air Group. Two of the three got a thumbs up from us for the quarter. Which two were they?

We’ll also let you know which banks have the biggest exposure to ILFC.

We’ll also talk about the case of the mysteriously missing Southwest Airlines’ pilot TA.

All this, and more.

Subscribers you know the drill. You can access this week’s issue here.

Aren’t a subscriber? Tired of being laughed at because you don’t know what’s going on in the airline industry? Click here to become a subscriber. You’ll instantly amaze your co-workers with you knowledge. And hey, you’ll find out some of our secrets. Like — how come some airline CEOs get PlaneBusiness Brownie Points and some don’t? Or……Who was seen drinking down in the PlaneBusiness Double-Digit Losers Basement Friday night?

Send us a Valentine — airline style. Subscribe to PlaneBusiness Banter.

Good Day Earthlings

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I know. I know. I was AWOL Tuesday. I had a good excuse. I was recovering from writing 74 pages of copy in three days. I also was lucky enough to share my breakfast and his lunch with Terry Maxon, airline reporter for the Dallas Morning News. He and I commiserated about the sad state of the media business, airline union/management relations, the airline business in general, and well, just the sad state of the world in general. Heh.

Not really. It’s always good to sit down and talk with Terry. He makes me laugh. After my marathon writing session this weekend (which was interrupted only by the Super Bowl), I needed a good laugh.

Terry and I agreed that this quarter’s earnings calls for the airline industry, as a group, were one of the most mind-numbing that we could remember. Last week analyst Gary Chase with Barclays said it had been a “tiring” earnings season.

That was being kind.

Thank god for Allegiant’s earnings call. That’s all I can say.

As for the rest of the pack, it was a quarter to forget. For the most part. Enough tap dancing about how bad demand is, but you don’t want to admit. Enough talk about hedging. Enough talk about liquidity. Enough talk about how well you would have done, if it hadn’t been for ______________. (Fill in the blank.)

Or as Terry so eloquently put it in his Idle Thoughts for Friday last week, “After listening to all the airline earnings reports, I’ve decided that I’m rich, excluding special charges and one-time items.”

Back to business in our next post.