- British Airways’ new A318 service between LCY and JFK will use provider OnAir for communications services like e-mail.
- The EU is investigating the deal of Lufthansa and Brussels Airlines for potential anti-trust issues.
- I’m sure most have seen it already, but click here for that hilarious Virgin complaint letter. (via @FlightGlobal)
- Brett Snyder reports on Allegiant’s fourth quarter results.
- DOT traffic data on Virigin America will finally be available on February 3.
- Boeing is expecting its layoffs to reach 10,000 this year.
- A date for Continental’s entrance into Star has been announced. One Mile at a Time has the details.
- It appears Southwest has reached an agreement with its pilots union.
Monthly Archive for January, 2009
There were some interesting stories that involved unions this week, so I thought I would post a summary here.
It was reported earlier this week that Spirit flight attendants were angered that the airline is planning to put advertising for alcoholic drinks on aprons for flight attendants. Now, I’ve yet to see a picture of the aprons (if anyone has seen any, please hit up the comments), and I think how they are designed play a big factor – the logos could me made to be relatively unobtrusive, or just plain obnoxious. I realize that Spirit’s attempts to bring in as much in-flight advertising as possible helps them keep low fares, but I’m not sure if this idea is worth it if it affects employee morale. The Spirit pilots put out a press release about the idea, and Online Travel Review has more on that.
Meanwhile, Sky Talk reports that Southwest mechanics have ratified a new contract, which includes an increase in pay, but I think the most important aspect of the deal is that “restricts the airline from outsourcing more than four maintenance lines overseas. Southwest currently has unlimited ability to send work outside of the United States.” I’m guessing that was a very important condition for the union, considering that Southwest is not planning any major fleet growth in the short term.
Finally, Alaska Airlines pilots capitalized on the airline’s earnings report yesterday and issued a press release. Here are some of the important parts:
The pilots of Alaska Airlines had wage cuts of up to 35 percent and significant work rule changes imposed on us nearly four years ago. For the past two years, our negotiators have been attempting to work with management to reach an agreement…The fact that our company was able to display such a strong financial and operational performance…makes it crystal clear that now is the time for Alaska’s management to work with us to reach an agreement that provides this pilot group with the contract they have earned—a contract that helps our company to continue to succeed well into the future. Ultimately, the decision is theirs, and it will be management’s actions that determine whether we will be able to reach a collaborative agreement, or if Alaska’s pilots will be forced down the path to a strike.
Interesting stuff- and I look forward to seeing what happens here. The pilots have a point – they took wage cuts to help the company survive, and now that the company is doing better, it is understandable that they would expect a better contact. Let’s see what happens.
Yesterday, US Airways announced it had applied to the DOT to run daily service between Charlotte and Rio de Janeiro with a 767. The flight would start in Philadelphia. Perhaps the service could provide some nice connections with new Star Alliance member TAM?
Two new announcements came from JetBlue this morning. First, the airline is planning to launch service to Montego Bay, Jamaica from JFK. The press release doesn’t mention how often the the service will run during week (unless I’m missing it). EDIT: JetBlue reports on Twitter that the service is daily. Service is slated to start on May 21, and tickets are slated to go on sale next week (February 4).
The airline also decided to launch service from LAX. The airline had previously announced flights from JFK and BOS, but decided to scrap the idea for awhile. The same city pairs will be served, but the schedule have changed. According to this article (found via Cranky Flier), there would be three JFK-LAX flights and one BOS-LAX flight. Now, each route will have two daily flights (though there will only be one BOS flight on Saturdays). Service will start on June 17. I wouldn’t be surprised if Virgin America’s routes influenced JetBlue’s thinking here.
There other airlines released earnings after Continental. First up is Alaska, with a fourth-quarter loss of $75.2 million ($2.08/share), but a profit of $16.4 million ($0.45/share). Yahoo! Finance reports analyst expectations for the report to be a loss of $0.04/share excluding items, so this is a good result, I think. The airline’s full year 2008 loss was $135.9 million, but excluding items the carrier profited $4.4 million ($0.12/share). The average estimate on Yahoo! was a loss of $0.32/share.
JetBlue’s release has this interesting tidbit:
JetBlue is evaluating the tax deductibility of the special charge, but has not yet finalized the amount given the technical nature of the issue. As a result, today JetBlue is only reporting its pre-tax results. Once the tax treatment for this special charge is finalized, JetBlue will report its net results in its Annual Report on Form 10-K, which will be filed in mid-February.
For the fourth quarter, the airline lost $49 million, including a “special non-cash charge of $53 million related to the valuation of JetBlue’s auction rate securities.,” but made $4 million with that charge excluded. For 2008, JetBlue’s loss was $76 million, but was only $23 million with that charge excluded. As the press release mentioned, these are all pre-tax results.
Finally, US Airways reported a loss of $541 million ($4.74/share) for the quarter, or $220 million ($1.93/share), excluding special items. According to Yahoo!, the average estimate for the results excluding items was a loss of $2.15/share. For the full year, the airline reported a loss of $2.2 billion ($22.06/share), or $803 million ($8.01/share) with special items excluded. The average estimate was a loss of $8.27/share, according to yaho.
Now that the majors have reported, hopefully I will have time to make some graphs comparing results over the weekend.
Continental just released their earnings (Alaska, JetBlue, and US Airways are next today) – loss for the year was was $585 million ($5.54/share), or $351 million ($3.32/share) excluding special items. The latter number seems to be pretty much in line with the average analyst estimate of $3.26 reported on Yahoo! Finance. The analyst call is at 10:30 EST – you can find a link to listen here.
For the fourth quarter, the airline lost $266 million ($2.33/share), or $96 million ($0.84/share) excluding special items. This also seems in line with the $0.89/share average estimate on Yahoo.
AirTran also released earnings yesterday – and ended up posting a loss for the quarter and year. I think it’s important to note, though, that hedging did play a big role in that loss – operating income for the quarter was almost $54.9 million. You can read the analyst call here.
Delta has repainted a Northwest A330-300 (N801NW) in its new livery. Many thanks to Nick Vollaro for allowing me to use his photo.
Click here for a larger version
EDIT: Martin Rottler spotted the aircraft in MSP, left a link to his photo in the comments section, and is letting me post it. Thanks!
Josh May also has some good shots (photo one, photo two), but unfortunately he did not give me permission to post his photos here.
I can’t say I really like the way the aircraft looks. Like all of the new Delta birds, I think there’s way too much white than there should be, and I also think the titles on the A330 are to small. I wonder how this livery will look on the shorter A330-200.
What are your thoughts on this new paintjob?
It was reported a few months ago that Virgin America was considering servince Orange County (SNA), and yesterday the airline officially announced the service, starting on April 30. There will be 5 daily flights to San Francisco, and right now it looks like the routes will be flown with A319s.
Southwest recently announced the launch of the same route, with five daily flights as well. With those additional 737s and A319s, the route is getting almost 1,300 more seats, which should (hopefully) lead to some lower fares for consumers.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some changes in schedule from American and United on this route. I actually would not be surprised if American just decided to drop the route all together, but I think United will keep a good amount of service for connections out of its SFO hub, but I think mainline service might go away.
I do wonder how well Virgin product will do on this route. As usual, the airline’s press release talks about its entertainment system (Red) and inflight Wi-Fi, but on a relatively short flight, how many passengers will care about that over buying a lower-priced ticket? Virgin does have a bit of a scheduling advantage, in my opinion. The flight flight from SNA leaves two hours before Southwest (6:45 compared to 8:45), and the last flight from SFO leaves almost two hours later than Southwest’s (8:15 compared to 6:20). That could provide some more flexibility for some.
Virgin’s announced starting fare for the route is $59, while Southwest’s announced price was $69, though I did see some $49 fares on the route when I started to make a booking on Southwest’s website.
Speaking of Southwest’s fares, the airline announced another fare sale yesterday. Might be worth checking out.
EDIT: inFLIGHTout has a good post about how American and United’s fares on the route have been dropping as a result of the new flights.
This morning the airline reported a loss of $340 million ($0.50/share), excluding special items. The loss with those items was $1.4 billion.
As I usually recommend with earnings releaes, head over to PlaneBuzz for some great analysis.
It has been rumored that Air France would be unveiling a new look soon, and after browsing around on the FlyTampa forums, I found a video with the new design (I’m embedding a slightly different version as the one on the forum contained a long introduction made by the YouTube user):
Now, I’ve yet to see an official announcement from Air France about the redesign, but that video does look fairly official, and looks like the same design linked to on the JetPhotos forums (site one, site two).
I think the new logo looks decent, it’s nice and clean, but I don’t like how the mock-up on the video keeps the famous “barcode” tail. While it is a very recognizable symbol, I think keeping the tail essentially the same makes the livery look like a hybrid.
What do you think? Leave your opinion in the comments.
Last week, it was reported that the Microsoft Flight Simulator franchise could have reached its demise, due to a recent round of Microsoft layoffs. This game is perhaps my favorite ever, and I’m quite disappointed to see a very successful franchises go down the tubes.
This is certainly a very sad development. First, there are some payware developers that depend on flightsim addons for income (such as one of my favorites, FlyTampa). While this news won’t dramatically affect their business immediately, it could have some negative effects in the long run. It could also have negative effects on some of the fantastic freeware groups as well, such as Project OpenSky, The Fruit Stand, AI Aardvark, Alpha India, and World of AI.
But this is also disappointing for me on a personal level, as FlightSim is where my love of aviation really flourished. Yes, I was interested before I started playing, but Flight Simulator 2000 really helped my interest grow. I’m convinced that if it weren’t for this program, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I will always remember my parents telling me that I was playing the game too much when I was younger. AI traffic came in FS2002, and it is how I have learned a great deal about all of the world’s airlines and their fleets. Most importantly, I was also able to meet some fantastic people along the way.
The best part, in my opinion, was being able to modify the simulator so much. There are so many additional aircraft (and panels and sounds to go with them) and sceneries that are freely available. In addition, AI traffic made the whole experience that much more realistic. It often took hours to get things just right, but it was always worth it.
So, what’s in the future for flightsim users? Well, I think there’s still a good amount of life left in Flight Simulator 2004 and X. And, if Microsoft doesn’t continue development, there’s X-Plane and FlightGear. I hope that the latter becomes very successful, as it is open-source software. Last time I tried it it still had a way to go to catch up to the Microsoft product, but it’s getting there.
Anyway, it’s very sad to see this happen, but I will keep playing. Luckily I was able to have some good quality time with the sim over winter break (SEA-CDG, followed by PVD-BWI-ORF-JAX-FLL-SXM), which was very overdue.
I was able to be on the media call for Southwest’s fourth quarter, but unfortunately I was unable to ask a question, but I was able to pass it along to Paula Berg over at Southwest, and she was able help me out. I asked how bookings of business select and refundable fares were in the fourth quarter. I was wondering if the economic environment had any negative effect there. Business Select revenue was $19 million during the quarter, only a million less than the third quarter (it is unfair to compare to fourth quarter 2007 as the product was still new then. 24% of fares booked were full fare in the fourth quarter of 2008, compared to 26% for the same period in 2007. Overall, not as bad.
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