PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

This week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted. I know. We need to stop doing this in the middle of the night.

What can I say? Had a very compressed writing schedule this week, as I was in San Diego earlier this week attending the ISTAT Americas 2014 Conference. I’ll tell you about some of the juicy tidbits we heard earlier this week. Next week — even more.

In other news, the DOT issued its January Air Travel Consumer Report this week. Horrid. We’ll tell you which airlines posted the best of the worst, and which airlines simply fell apart.

Meanwhile, pilots at American Eagle continue to vote on the TA in front of them. We talk a lot about the proposed contract in this week’s issue and tell you what we think the Eagle pilots should do.

In other news, will someone please just turn off CNN now? We talk about the positively awful continued joke that seems to be the norm now in terms of covering anything aviation related on cable news. Especially when no one knows what really happened — but they still have to talk. About something. Even if they don’t know what in the hell they are talking about.

There were some intriguing tidbits that came from the ongoing legal fight between US Airways and Sabre this week. Thanks to our friends at TheBeat, we let you in on what those arguments were that made us perk up our ears. Or rather open our eyes. Or is it perk up our eyes and open our ears?

All of this and much, much more in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter!

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

Hello everyone. Wow. What a day. Just as we posted this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter, new important information has been published concerning the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. No surprise that the latest news comes yet again from Jon Ostrower and Andy Pasztor at The Wall Street Journal.

Jon and Andy, who have been the ones to break the story on this situation almost all week, just did it again as we published PBB. They have gone with a story in which they report,

“Officials suspect two different systems were shut off after the plane took off last weekend, one shortly after the other, people familiar with the investigation said. About an hour into the flight, the plane’s transponders stopped functioning, making it much more difficult for air-traffic control personnel to track or identify it via radar.

In the ensuing minutes, a second system sent a routine aircraft-monitoring message to a satellite indicating that someone made a manual change in the plane’s heading, veering sharply to the west. Such a turn wouldn’t have been part of the original authorized route programmed in the flight-management computer that controls the autopilot. Those system-monitoring messages are suspected to have been disabled shortly afterward, according to some of these people.”

This news comes after it was Jon and Andy who broke the story that there was evidence the aircraft had deviated from its original course and veered sharply west, after communications ended with civilian authorities.

I’m proud to call Jon a friend.

That’s a long way of saying — if you really want to know what is going on with this situation listen to Jon and Andy when they are on television being interviewed or read their stories. They are working the story like stories should be worked.

Okay, I’ll shut up now.

Speaking of stories, this week a lot of airline CEOs were in New York telling their stories to investors as JP Morgan held their annual airline, transportation, and industrials conference. Unlike years ago, however, they were anything but sob stories.

The biggest news for us out of the conference? No other major airline is guiding to a substantial reduction in revenues as a result of the winter weather cancellations. Except for the one we already knew about — United Airlines.

Delta Air Lines, in fact, upped some of their guidance. American Airlines says RASM should come in between 2% and 4% as they had already guided. Southwest said their quarter is still on track.

So the question remains — what’s the problem with United?

Speaking of, this week we welcome back contributing editor Brett Snyder, who returns with yet another Cranky Analysis. This week he looks at the Denver market. We know that Southwest now has the largest market share in the market, but have they been able to snatch any of United’s higher yielding revenue? The answer, and our look at a number of routes out of Denver surprised us.

All this, and much, much, more in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.

If you will excuse me now, I am off to San Diego for this year’s ISTAT Conference. Can’t wait to see some of our subscribers there. Have a great weekend everyone!

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

Good evening everyone. Long day here today, made even longer by the distressing news this evening concerning the Malaysian Airlines 777-200 that has simply disappeared somewhere between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing. Not a good sign when an aircraft such as the 777 is at cruising altitude and just drops off the radar screen. No call for help. No more transponder. No nothing.

Thirty minutes ago Malaysia Airlines Vice President of Operations Control Fuad Sharuji said on CNN’s “AC360”, “At the moment we have no idea where this aircraft is right now.”

I’m sure we’ll know more tomorrow. Er, rather, later today. (It’s already Saturday.)

In the meantime, we have lots to talk about in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter. This week we go in-depth to look at the 4Q13 earnings of Republic Holdings. Interesting call. But no surprise that a lot of the call dealt with larger industry issues — not the airline’s results.

Related to the future options for Republic’s regional operations, Friday the American Eagle ALPA MEC did a 180 degree turn and decided it was going to send out the last proposal that was made by American Airlines to the pilots directly — so that they can vote on the proposed deal.

Smart move.

Especially considering the airline, as it said it was going to do, had already sent out RFP’s to a group of regional carriers, including Republic, to operate the 60 Embraer jets promised to the American Eagle pilots if they accepted the proposal presented by the airline. As you may recall, the ALPA MEC decided not to accept the proposal. Now, American Eagle pilots will have an opportunity to vote on the proposal. As it should be.

The boys at USAPA were up to their old tricks again this week — filing law suits and denying jumpseats to American Airlines‘ pilots. It’s that Real Men of Genius gene. Can’t be altered.

We talk about all of that, and the joint letter that the president of APA and USAPA sent out on Friday in regard to both the seniority squabble and the unfortunate jumpseat incidents.

Boeing apparently has another problem with its problem child — the 787. Jon Ostrower had the story first Friday in the Wall Street Journal. Wings. Cracks. We’ll update you on all that.

We also review a lot of earnings this week — not just Republic. We talk about the recent results from IAG, parent of British Airways; Travelport; Amadeus; Embraer, and Volaris.

Oh, and how could we forget Delta Air Lines. The airline rolled out its new award chart this week for its revised SkyMiles program it announced the week before. You may recall the airline said it was going to do this “later this year.” Yes, well, that didn’t sit well with a lot of people. I have to say, I agree. The airline should have rolled out everything at once.

But the award chart really doesn’t answer a lot of questions, including those dealing with international travel. In addition, the airline has not said how it is going to increase or decrease award availability in each tier of the new program.

So — still very much a work in progress.

All of this and much, much more in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

Hello earthlings. How was your week this week? It was a fairly comfortable one here in the Metromess weather-wise, although Verizon FIOS pushed me to the limits of my patience until late Wednesday, after a Verizon networking failure prevented me from accessing a lot of sites — including PlaneBusiness.com!

I just love IT failures.

Anyway, enough of my chit-chat.

This week we have a good issue. First, we take an in-depth look at the earnings reported last week by Spirit Airlines. Short and sweet? The airline posted great numbers, and 2014 is looking mighty fine. Wall Street obviously agreed, as shares of the airline that everyone claims to hate, picked up a nice double-digit gain last week.

Republic Holdings reported earnings this week. We give you the basics from their earnings report, while next week we’ll do our usual in-depth dive into the earnings call.

With that, the U.S. airline industry earnings season will officially be over.

This week we talk a lot about three hot topics — the pilot situation here in the U.S., Delta’s announcement about its new frequent flyer program that is based on amount spent, not miles; and United Airlines’ guidance bombshell the airline dropped after the close of trading Thursday.

Needless to say, we’ll give you our take on all three.

In other news, we give you a sneak peek at the fabulous new ad campaign for American Airlines’ new transcon service. We like it. A lot. As a retro fan that believes a company’s heritage and how it got to where it is is incredibly valuable — from a marketing standpoint — I think the blend of old and new used in the campaign is brilliant. It almost, ALMOST, makes me not hate the tail so much.

It was a good week for airline stocks last week, but this week is not going to end on such a positive note. As we talk about in this week’s issue, it remains to be seen how much of United’s bigger-than-expected revenue drop in January was due solely to weather, or if the airline is still having revenue management issues. We’ll begin to put the pieces together as other airlines begin to give better guidance for the quarter in the next two weeks.

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

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

Hello everyone. This week’s edition of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted!

This week we talk again about the regional/major airline business model and why it’s broken. Meanwhile, after the American Eagle pilots said no to the proposed TA with American Airlines, pilots at Republic Holdings finally came to terms on a tentative agreement. A coincidence? We think not.

Then there is SkyWest. We talk at length this week about the airline’s recent 4Q13 earnings release and analyze the airline’s earnings call. Long and short? I think the excuses for the ExpressJet operation have run their course. As analyst Helane Becker suggested last week, perhaps it is finally time to pull the plug on the ExpressJet operation which has never been profitable since SkyWest acquired it.

We take a long in-depth look at the 4Q13 results from Air Canada this week as well. What a mess those were. We didn’t see the improvements in CASM and RASM the airline promised last quarter, and the margin performance we saw in 3Q13 evaporated in 4Q13. Meanwhile, WestJet, as we talked about last week, continues to make what we believe are strategically beneficial tweaks to their original LCC model.

Meanwhile, the Real Men of Genius are back. Yep. The union that represents the fractured group of pilots at US Airways, USAPA, is back and up to stupid tricks again. We get you up to speed on their latest antics this week — although our patience for such things has about run its course.

It was a decent week for airline stocks last week, although shares of both Air Canada and Bombardier fell off the cliff. Meanwhile, we share the latest “Question of the Week” results from Morgan Stanley’s latest institutional investor poll concerning United Airlines.

A little bit of this. A little bit of that. And more. All in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

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

This week we take a deep dive in the recent earnings calls at both WestJet and Hawaiian Airlines. We also give you earnings summaries for SkyWest and Air Canada. More on them in next week’s issue.

But clearly the big story this week concerns pilots. Regional airline pilots. Mainline airline pilots.

With the roll out of the new FAR 117 regs the duty regs are not the problem — it is the minimum 1500 hours needed in hand before a regional can hire a pilot that is the problem. The impact of a change in regs that was intended to improve the safety of regional airline flying has cast a very ominous light on a system that has been broken for years.

Layered over this is the news this week that the American Eagle ALPA MEC has refused to accept the tentative agreement put forth by American Airlines. The deal will not go to the general membership for a vote.

What’s next at Eagle and American? We talk about that more this week.

The company had already warned that a turn down of the deal would lead to American cutting back on the flying at the airline to the extent that American Eagle would become “Comair II.”

The American Eagle MEC pilots have drawn the line in the sand, saying they are not going to make any more concessions, and there are other jobs to be found in the industry.

Pulling back up to the 35,000 foot level, as I said previously, could the FAR 117 regs end up finally bringing massive change to a business model that never has been based on sound business practices, i.e., the regional airlines provide feeder service to the mainline airlines at low cost?

It’s a serious problem.

In other news, the airline sector enjoyed a pretty good week last week, Morgan Stanley analyst John Godyn ponders whether airlines need to hedge fuel or not (subscribers know where I stand on this) and Norwegian Air just obtained its operating license for its international operation in Ireland.

Then there are the December DOT numbers. As we alerted PBB subscribers to last month, Southwest Airlines suffered a systemwide operational meltdown in December. The DOT report for December merely affirmed this. Meanwhile, Delta Air Lines continued to lead the big boys pretty much across the four major DOT metrics in December, as well as for 2013.

All this, and much, much more, in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

Hello everyone. It’s that time. This week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted.

This week we have a 51-page analysis of the recent American Airlines earnings call. Read it. You’ll learn a lot about how to do a merger in this industry.

We also talk about the recent 4Q13 earnings numbers from JetBlue and Allegiant.

Short and sweet? While I love to fly on JetBlue, as an investment the airline leaves a lot to be desired. CAPEX and costs are both looking to put intense pressure on margins in 2014.

In addition, pilots at the airline, who just received a 20% pay raise, filed authorization cards Monday with the NMB for a representational election with ALPA. (But you’ll hear nothing about this in the earnings call!)

As for Allegiant, there’s no wonder that shares of the airline dropped sharply after the airline’s call. It was, as one analyst put it, “horrible.” We’ll give you the details.

Last week was not a particularly good one for the airline sector, as most stocks we track lost ground. But one stock picked up a double-digit gain. That stock was American Airlines, AAL. It was up 10% for the week.

United Airlines announced over the weekend that it was shutting down its Cleveland hub. While most of the mainline service will remain, all the regional flights will be eliminated. Not surprised. United only had to keep the hub in operation for two years after the merger before it could make the decision that it was not financially viable. I doubt the hub ever hit any of the pre-agreed upon financial goals.

This move, according to Imperial Capital analyst Bob McAdoo will not only be good for United, but for American and Delta as well. We explain why.

Some of us AvGeeks also had fun Thursday afternoon. Led by Leslie Scott at Delta Air Lines and John Walton at Route Happy, a group of aviation nutcases began a Twitter conversation that started out as an airline geek version of Upworthy or Buzz Feed headlines. Hashtag is #buzzfeedthesky. Hopefully we can keep this going. It was a lot of fun. Especially when we morphed into AvGeek pick up lines. Unfortunately I was in final edits for PBB, so I didn’t get to contribute that much this afternoon.

All of this and much, much more in this mega-earnings edition of PlaneBusiness Banter.

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

Good evening everyone. This week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted! Finally! Apologies for the rather late posting this week. Moi came down with the flu on Sunday and well, my mind was pretty much mush until about noon on Wednesday. Considering this was a big earnings week with coverage of four airlines, including Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Alaska Air Group, not to mention those airlines that reported THIS week, including American Airlines, well, you can see what I was up against. And why I strongly considered never getting out of bed. At all.

We also get you updated on the latest DOJ settlement-related news. Yes, Southwest Airlines is clearly the big winner in the slot divestiture sweepstakes.

We had some union-related news this week, as the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, Association of Flight Attendants and American Airlines announced that the three had agreed on the terms of a bargaining agreement. The deal will see flight attendants at US Airways, who are currently represented by AFA, move over to APFA, if approved by the US Airways flight attendant group. That group will also be voting on the proposed fast track bargaining agreement that has been agreed upon. That agreement is designed to produce a new joint contract for the flight attendants at American no later than next spring.

The Air Line Pilots Association was also in the news over the last week or so. A number of subscribers seemed to believe that the recent $53 million settlement in the TWA pilot lawsuit would adversely affect the union. This is not the case. In fact, dues for ALPA pilots were just reduced in January. That is not going to change. We’ll dissect the situation for you.

Airline stocks had a rough week for the week ending 1.24.14, but this week was better – in no small part as a result of the very positive “buzz” American Airlines created on Wall Street with its earnings. Analysts liked what they saw. A lot. Oh and American CEO Doug Parker is one brave man. He went on Mad Money with Jim Cramer Wednesday. Live!

But this week the big news is earnings. We tell you why Delta is still the leader of the pack; why Southwest mystifies us; why Alaska Airlines is one hell of a great operation (and a cash cow to boot) and how United Airlines is still struggling with its transition issues.

All this, and more, in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter!

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

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

This week we’re talking about the deal United Airlines announced Wednesday with the Continental AFA MEC. It guarantees a spot at the Continental operation for those sUAL flight attendants who are on the furlough list. Bold courageous move on the part of the CAL AFA MEC, and the airline for that matter. Great for the flight attendants whose jobs were in jeopardy. Nobody likes to see jobs go away. A win-win. Kudos!

We’re also talking about Sabre. The company filed its IPO registration papers with the SEC this week. The thing about private companies filing for an IPO? They have to come clean about all that stuff they previously didn’t have to talk about. Including the fact the company hasn’t been profitable since 2008. Or that American Airlines got a bigger check than had previously been assumed to as part of the settlement of their lawsuit with Sabre two years ago. But that’s just the tip of the tidbits.

We are also talking about why it is that ALPA, United, American, US Airways and Delta are fighting Air Norwegian’s latest expansion efforts into the U.S.

We finish up our look into 2014 and what we see as important, and we also talk about the attempt by TWU to get a restraining order against Southwest Airlines, after the airline declared an “emergency” concerning sick leave. Yep, you know the situation we’re talking about. The meltdown at Chicago’s Midway Airport earlier this month where a large number of Southwest’s baggage handlers apparently didn’t show up for work. The judge here in Dallas refused to rule, said the matter was something for arbitration.

On the stock front, it was a so-so week, with shares of Air Canada taking the top spot and shares of Bombardier at the bottom. (The announcement that Bombardier’s CSeries aircraft rollout has been delayed, for the fourth time, did not make investors happy.)

All this and much more, in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

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

This week we are heavy on labor-related news and commentary. American Eagle and its pilots came to a tentative agreement not too long after we published last week; U.S. District Court judge Roslyn Silver finally ruled in the US Airline Pilots Association Addington case. She also ruled on whether or not former America West pilots are entitled to a seat at the table in the American Airlines’ pilot seniority discussions.

She also, in no uncertain terms, made her displeasure at the antics of USAPA’s attorneys quite clear. We have a link to her complete ruling in this week’s issue.

Meanwhile, as part of her ruling, Judge Silver advised that USAPA had to remove itself from any seniority discussions as soon as the group is no longer the bargaining agent for the airline.

In a related move, the Allied Pilots Association at American Airlines held their board meeting this week and filed a request for single carrier status with the NMB.

Then there is that lovely dysfunctional bunch up in Chicago. No, this time I’m not talking about management at United Airlines. I’m talking about the Association of Flight Attendants, the union that represents the flight attendants at the airline.

This week United announced that it would be forced to furlough hundreds of s-United flight attendants, as voluntary efforts to bring down the airline’s FA headcount had not succeeded in generating enough response. The United operation is still overstaffed on the FA side.

The company was forced to make this decision to go with involuntary furloughs, which it did not want to do, only after AFA essentially refused the company’s fourth offer to provide for a “crossover” that would allow s-United flight attendants to move to the Continental Airlines side of the operation.

Well, actually they didn’t refuse outright. They just insisted on onerous conditions such that the airline couldn’t agree to a crossover.

United has actually asked AFA to do this four times now. FOUR. AFA allowed it to happen once. And by all accounts, those who made the move are happy they did so.

We give you our take on why we think it is that AFA labor leaders at United don’t want more crossovers.

A hint: the union is hurting its own members in an attempt to keep its political turf intact.

In other news, Brett Snyder, PlaneBusiness contributing editor, is back this week with another Cranky Analysis column. This week he digs into the data to see just how bad a holiday season Southwest Airlines experienced. The results? It was bad. The airline suffered serious operational issues systemwide. We give you the data. And then some.

Lots of news this week concerning American Airlines and US Airways. They will begin phasing in codesharing next week, and the airlines announced which routes the two are cutting, as a requirement of the DOJ slot divestitures at DCA and LGA. We like the decisions they made.

Oh, and then we had a Southwest Airlines plane land at the wrong airport. But you already know all about that.

It was a good week for the airline sector last week, and analysts continued to fine tune 4Q13 estimates this week as earnings will start rolling out next week.

We also have the November DOT Air Consumer Travel Report numbers. They look very much like the October numbers. We’ll tell you who was naughty and who was nice.

All this and much, much, more, including a ton of letters, in this week’s PlaneBusiness Banter.