The official uniform of Wall Street traders is now our worn, but still usable Ratty Old Bear Suit.
As of today, both the Dow and the Nasdaq have now fallen more than 21% since October. The Dow ended today down 236.77 points, or 2.08%, while the Nasdaq was down 59.55 points or 2.6% on the day.
While oil prices ended up only a penny on the day, closing at 136.05, airline stocks still got hammered.
The biggest losers in the sector included: AirTran, which took a huge 17% drop today, closing at 1.82; Continental, where shares dropped 11%, closing at 9.16; Delta Air Lines, which posted a 9.6% drop to 5.28; Northwest Airlines which saw shares drop a hefty 16% to 6.30; and Mesa Air Group, which saw its shares down by 12% to 37 cents on the back of a less than positive June traffic report.
As for the hefty drop in AirTran stock, was this a “delayed” reaction? Or is there something else out there about to drop? The airline announced yesterday that it plans to furlough 180 pilots, 300 flight attendants, cut capacity further, and cut other wages by 10%.
As for the Mesa drop, the traffic report for the airline was telling. Especially the go! results.
For June, the airline reported that load factor fell to 78.62% from 81.02% a year earlier.
Traffic fell 15% to 526.2 million revenue passenger miles in June 2008 from 621.1 million revenue passenger miles in June 2007. Capacity also fell 13% to 669.3 million available seat miles in June from 766.6 million available seat miles in the year-ago period.
As for go!, the airline reported a load factor of 68.6%, which is down about 3.5% from a year earlier. Yes, while total passenger numbers were up – the airline threw so much capacity in the market after Aloha shut down that its loads were actually lower than when Aloha was still flying.
Brilliant. And probably not very profitable at current fuel prices.
Not a good day for the things with wings …at all. Of all the airline stocks we track, the vast majority posted losses on the day.
Technorati Tags: airlines, AirTran, Aloha Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, go! airlines, Mesa Air Group, Mesa Airlines, Northwest Airlines