Tag Archives: Airline bankruptcy

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

home-typewriter copy 1.jpg Good evening everyone. This week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted.

This week we have a big, jam-packed issue — and it’s not even earnings yet!

First, we award our Wild Turkey Award for Airline Management Excellence to a very worthy recipient — Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta Air Lines.

We’ve only given out four of these in our 15 years of publishing PlaneBusiness Banter, but we tell you why we think Richard is more than deserving of the honor.

As part of the award, Richard will also be receiving a case of Wild Turkey Rare Breed whiskey, compliments of the person for whom the award is named — former Southwest Airlines Chairman and CEO Herb Kelleher.

Yep, Holly was in Atlanta last week.

I got to tour the new International Terminal at the Atlanta Airport, I got to crawl around one of Delta’s newly upgraded 747s, I met with almost every top member of the airline’s management team, and then there was a terrific dinner with some of the folks from Corp Comm — complete with green fried tomatoes and fried chicken.

What more could anyone ask for?

Meanwhile, while I honor the best in the business this week, in terms of airline CEOs, we still, unfortunately, have to talk about AMR and its CEO.

In this week’s AMR Bankruptcy Follies column, I take a look at the statement last week from the airline in which it says it is now going to look at “merger alternatives.”

We present a timeline of comments from the airline’s CEO Tom Horton for you to consider as we ask the question — is Horton really serious about doing this or is this just a ploy to placate the UCC?

We take a look at the June traffic numbers, and we’ll tell you why shares of SkyWest shot off the charts last week.

Oh, and yes, Boeing locked down the order with United. The FAA also proposed a $13.2 million fine against Boeing — for its slow response to fuel tank modification design work.

We take a look at the latest DOT Air Travel Consumer numbers from May — yet another bad month for United — and we talk about British Airways, Kingfisher, Qantas, Virgin Australia, and a whole lot more.

All — this week — in PlaneBusiness Banter .

PlaneBusiness Banter Now Posted!

home-typewriter copy 1.jpg

Good evening everyone.

This week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted. And a jam-packed issue it is.

This week we’re talking all things American Airlines (of course), we give you a look at the presentations last week at the Raymond James Global Airline Conference in New York, and of course, we have fourth quarter earnings reports from two airlines to dissect. Both Hawaiian Holdings, parent of Hawaiian Airlines, and Allegiant Travel Company reported earnings last week.

While we have been big fans of the Hawaiian Airlines story over the last several years, and particularly the last year, why is it that I was not that impressed with the airline’s earnings call? A hint: It has a lot to do with what is on the airline’s plate in 2012. Both in terms of revenues and costs.

As for Allegiant, the fourth quarter numbers were good, but the airline continues in the midst of its own transformation plan with seats being added to its aircraft and the carrier’s move into the Hawaiian-West Coast market still yet to launch.

Meanwhile, it was another great week for airline stocks on Wall Street. We tell you who posted double-digit gains for yet another week. (And a good number of airline stocks did just that.)

On the IT front, sources tell us that the HP “JetStream” PSS Extreme Makeover project at American Airlines is done. Not as in “It’s completed.” More like, “It’s done.” Toast.

We hear the project has finally been shelved — after the airline had spent tens of millions of dollars on it with little to show for its investment. In the airline’s bankruptcy filing, the airline said it owed HP some $30 million or so. In fact, HP has a seat on the airline’s unsecured creditors committee. The project was first announced in 2009.

Should be quite interesting to see what the airline does now. Will it crawl back to Sabre and try to work out some type of add-on to its existing Sabre system? Or will this give yet another vendor a chance to wriggle their toes in the door?

Meanwhile, up in New York last week Raymond James held its Global Airline Investor Conference. We’ll give you a peek at some of the presentations that were made by some of the usual suspects.

Malev shuts down, Ryanair moves in, and Singapore Airlines posts a 53% drop in fiscal third quarter earnings — all of this and much, much, more in this week’s jam-packed edition of PlaneBusiness Banter.

PlaneBusiness Banter is Back!

home-typewriter copy 1.jpg

Hello everyone. It’s time once again to jump into the fray. Our Holiday Hiatus is over. Time to close out the story on 2011 and start the story of 2012.

The first issue of PlaneBusiness Banter for 2012 is now posted.

This week we talk a lot about airline stocks. We look at how they performed for the last week, the last month, the last quarter and the last year.

The good news? The sector posted a huge fourth quarter. Not so good news — yearly stock performance numbers were horrible. But hey, the quarterly numbers are much more important.

In addition, contrary to a number of wire service and financial news site headlined “end of year” airline stock stories that are floating about the Internet — we tell you which airline stock really posted the best return to investors in 2011.

And no, it’s not Alaska Air Group — as many stories say was the case.

We also update subscribers this week on the American Airlines bankruptcy. The airline is starting to announce route changes, and has announced some fleet news. But, as Deutsche Bank analyst Michael Linenberg reminded investors in a note last week, timing for the airline’s Section 1110 filing the end of this month means that we should hear a lot more from the airline in the next 2 1/2 weeks concerning which aircraft the airline wants to keep, which ones it wants to walk away from, and which ones it wants to renegotiate with lessors.

On the traffic front, December RASM estimates from those airlines that supply such things are coming in mixed. We tell you who has reported better than expected RASM performance, and who has disappointed.

Following up on traffic — a reminder. Airline earnings reports for the fourth quarter and year-end will begin to roll out in a little over a week.

Both JAL and Hong Kong Airlines are talking about potential IPOs in 2012, while Lufthansa was apparently just pulling Virgin Atlantic’s strings over bmi. The German airline finalized a deal with IAG, parent of British Airways for the airline, er, slots over the Christmas holiday. Not surprisingly Sir Richard says he is going to continue the fight to keep BA from getting its hands on bmi’s slots.

Unfortunately I don’t think his screams are going to matter to UK regulators.

On this side of the Atlantic, flight attendants for AirTran and Southwest announced a seniority agreement right before Christmas — good news for the airline.

Did Boeing meet its 2011 delivery goal? No.

How many more aircraft did Airbus deliver in 2011 than Boeing?

Are those “tiny” hairline cracks that have been found in the wing assembly of the A380s really a safety issue?

All of this, and a lot more in our first issue of the year.

If you aren’t yet a subscriber to PlaneBusiness Banter — why not? Find out how you can become one here.