PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

home-typewriter copy 1Hello everybody. It’s that time again. This week’s edition of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted!

And it is gigantic.

This week we take an in-depth look at the recent 1Q earnings reports from Southwest Airlines; Alaska Air Group; JetBlue; Allegiant Travel Company, and Hawaiian Airlines. 

What caused the big uptick in costs at JetBlue this quarter? Are the guys at Hawaiian crazy — or really smart? Allegiant management rolled out a new earnings call format, and Wolfe Trahan analyst Hunter Keay got involved in a rather spirited “discussion” about hedging with the folks at Alaska Airlines. 

As for Southwest, they are almost three years into the AirTran merger and they have just come to the realization that flight schedules at AirTran need to be optimized? Codesharing just began? There’s been some serious money left on the table there over the last several years.

In addition we give you our take on the US Airways Leadership Conference that we attended in Scottsdale last week. No, I don’t think the the invited guests from American quite knew what to think about all of it.

Meanwhile, up in Chicago, we update you on some rather ugly goings-on in United’s flight ops department. Ex-Cons out, United legacy folks in. The moves are not sitting well with many of our subscribers. We’ll tell you why.

It was a great week for airline stocks last week, and this week both the Dow and the S&P 500 have set new records.

All this and much more in this week’s 125-page plus edition of PlaneBusines Banter.