Things in the Sky

Earlier this week, I had already discussed Alaska’s July numbers, but I realized I could analyze those a bit more. The airline noted that PRASM (passenger revenue per available seat mile) and RASM (revenue per available seat mile) were affected positively by the first bag fee, and the company estimates it earned $4.9 million from that in July. Meanwhile, Alaska estimates that a new agreement on the company’s Mileage Plan card will give the company an extra $2.5 million each month for the rest of this year.

These items, obviously, give the numbers a bit of a boost, so I decided to play around with them to remove that extra revenue. For RASM, I got 12.72 cents, and I calculated 11.64 cents for PRASM (compared to 13.07 and 11.87 cents, respectively). Comparing my numbers to last years’, I found a 1.99% decrease in RASM and a 3.25% decrease in PRASM (compared to a 0.7% increase and a 1.3% decrease).

Obviously, the removal of those other revenue make the comparisons to last year look a bit worse. Nevertheless, the decreases I calculated are still superior to the double-digit declines that some other carriers have reported.