This week’s edition of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted.
This week we talk a lot about Ebola. Not hysterically. Rationally.
Unfortunately we seem to be the exception.
Last week, heightened fears over potential demand destruction in the airline industry, as a result of fears over the death of one person in Dallas sent shares of airline stocks plummeting like rocks. With the news that a nurse who attended to the man who died last week had tested positive for Ebola breaking over the weekend, things didn’t get much better for airlines Monday either.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is watching as the price of crude oil and the price of jet fuel continues to drop to multi-year lows, and airlines continue to report good guidance, generally speaking, for 3Q14 numbers. Both of these should be resulting in positive moves, not negative, for airline stocks.
But last week traders were trading on headlines. Not fundamentals.
Monday it was the same story.
In other news, we’ll tell you what we found interesting at this year’s The BeatLive Conference which was held last week in New Orleans. Yours truly presented the look at the airline industry for the corporate travel audience, while Kevin Krone, SVP of Marketing at Southwest Airlines, was on “The Hot Seat” this year. Kevin did a great job — and while he said that the airline is now about to announce an upsell produce anytime soon — it is going to announce some “onboard improvements” in the not-too-distant future.
No other hints were given.
We update you on the DOT Air Consumer Travel Numbers for August; we get you up to speed on the new approach A4A looks like it is going to take as it hits Congress up once again for a comprehensive FAA reauthorization funding bill, we give our thumbs up to the JetBlue decision to hire former Wall Street analyst Kevin Crissey as its new director of IR, we tell you what airline analyst took the First Team analyst spot in the 2014 Institutional Investor surveys, and oh, so much more.
All in this week’s edition of PlaneBusiness Banter.