Airline Weekly Lounge

By just a tenth of a percent, United’s fourth quarter operating profit margin bested that of Delta—and likely that of American, which reports later—making United, for the quarter, No.1 among the Big Three U.S. carriers. So, has the natural order shifted from United being a perennial laggard to leader? We’ll see. But, make no mistake, United is performing well. Not performing well is Cathay Pacific...

Rising labor costs at Delta dented its fourth quarter results significantly—but not enough to prevent the airline from posting a terrific profit for 2016. And the big story within the story is that revenues have stopped falling. All in all, Delta remains bullish, which is a nice way to kick off earnings season. Also in this episode, we consider a rumored Etihad-Lufthansa merger. One airline that c...

SAS has tried and tried to turn itself around, but to no avail—at least judging by its recent earnings report. In fact, on profits alone, the airline’s third quarter was a step backward. What’s going wrong, and can it be fixed? Meanwhile, Frontier Airlines posted a tremendous profit in the third quarter, with an operating margin among the best of the best. And let’s consider JetBlue for a moment....

Call it our year-in-preview show. In this first episode of 2017, we look at some of the more interesting stories that are ushering in the airline industry’s new year. Of course, 2017 doesn’t promise answers to all our questions. But we can hope, can’t we? Some of those questions: Leisure demand was one of the defining stories of 2016—will the trend continue? Is the burgeoning low-cost longhaul mod...

If anybody needed a reminder that the airline business is an interesting business, they got it last week as Air Berlin announced it will be handing over a big chunk of itself to arch competitor Lufthansa. Will Air Berlin be saved by shrinking itself? Not stopping there, Lufthansa decided it would also become the full owner of Brussels Airlines. Are either of these acquisitions a good thing for Luf...

South African Airways finally published its fiscal year results for the 12 months ending March 2015. Yes, that’s 2015. And the result—a $442m net loss—wasn’t worth the wait. But with the Ebola scare and high oil prices now in the past, how is the airline doing today? The short answer: We’re not too encouraged. But its competitor Comair is doing pretty well. Kenya Airways seems to be on the mend. U...

Because Frontier Airlines is a non-publicly-traded carrier (which, for one thing, means it doesn’t have earnings calls), it’s all the more interesting to interview the airline's CEO Barry Biffle. Of course, we asked about a possible merger with Spirit or a possible IPO. Not surprisingly, we didn’t get too far there, but Biffle did open up on some interesting topics, such as Frontier’s successful s...

Despite a major oil bust and the weakening currency that followed, Canada’s airlines continue to plod along. Make no mistake, macro issues are leaving a mark on the earnings reports of Air Canada and WestJet, but the story is more about resiliency than infirmity. Meanwhile, a similar story—one that also includes an oil bust, a weak currency and nonetheless profitable airlines—is playing out in Mex...

Qantas reported a best-ever annual result. Not bad for a company that’s 95 years old. And not bad for a company that was barely breaking even just a few years ago. Virgin Australia, on the other hand, with a 2% operating margin, isn’t breaking any records—well, any records you’d want to break, that is. And then across the Tasman Sea is Air New Zealand… way out there… all alone… with nothing to kee...

Korean carriers Asiana and Korean Air are being squeezed between rapid growth from Chinese carriers and new capacity coming out of Japan. But nonetheless, the two Korean carriers posted some of the most improved earnings among widebody carriers worldwide. Japan Airlines and All Nippon, meanwhile, both regressed in their year-over-year earnings despite a strengthening yen and lower fuel costs. Dism...

One of the bright spots in the Lufthansa Group’s second quarter earnings report was its Swiss unit, which bested Lufthansa mainline, the Austrian unit and even the healthy maintenance unit. Meanwhile, Eurowings was the worst performing airline of the group, with a negative one percent margin—but that was a great improvement from the first quarter. All in all, it added up to Lufthansa underperformi...

The second quarter year-over-year profit margin improved at Air France/KLM, but only because of a huge windfall from fuel. In fact, the real story is that the airline group is largely missing out on profits that normally would come from such a lift from fuel. Another airline group, IAG (the parent company of British Airways, Iberia, Vueling and Aer Lingus), did better despite the Brexit vote. But...

Earnings season is in full swing and really there’s too much to talk about within the average commute or treadmill run. So we’ll talk fast. And in this episode, our fast talk starts with American Airlines’ billion-dollar quarter and, naturally, how that compares to rivals Delta and United. Speaking of which, United posted a second-quarter operating margin that was competitive with Delta and AA (al...

Delta Airlines gets a lot of play in this episode, but it’s not because we’re obsessed with Delta. Rather, there are two practical reasons: First, Delta is the the earliest of the big airlines to report. Secondly, with Delta’s global reach, you can learn a lot about the whole industry from this airline. What did we learn? Revenues continue dropping, but so did costs. Delta remains bullish on its W...

Brazil’s Azul is no doubt an innovative airline. But has it become too clever by half with its low-cost longhaul venture? A couple years into the experiment, we discuss it in this episode. Meanwhile, its competitor Gol is asking for relief from its bondholders. When the economy recovers, what are the prospects for both of these airlines? Further north, a rumor has been floated that Delta is intere...

Turkish Airlines and its cross-town rival Pegasus were seeing trouble in their business before the attack on Istanbul’s Ataturk International Airport. In this episode we try to assess—or at least speculate—how the attack will further hurt the two airlines’ prospects. Also, could Turkish’s business model, which relies heavily on sixth-freedom traffic, be especially vulnerable here? But this episode...

In the wake of Brexit, will the U.K. be able to remain in the European Common Aviation Area? We don’t know. But we do know that if the U.K. is relegated to some other status, it would obviously impact airlines inside and outside the U.K. In this episode we do a quick survey of airlines such as British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Flybe, easyJet, Norwegian and Aer Lingus and attempt to size up each of...

Wherever you go in the airline industry, you’re never too far from Singapore Airlines, a carrier that played a primary role in—count ‘em— four of the bigger storylines last week. Singapore is pulling out of Brazil. In India, Singapore will likely be a key beneficiary of the end of the 5/20 rule. Singapore and United oddly seem to be rumbling on a San Francisco route. And Virgin Australia is asking...

Scandinavia’s SAS posted a pretty rough quarter despite huge tailwinds from its healthy home economy and cheap fuel. Fierce competition, labor concerns and operational problems all share the blame. Is SAS’s long-haul strategy the answer? Or will it take a merger? Meanwhile in Africa, Fastjet is failing fast, posting an ugly 2015 full-year result. Clearly, it is tough to be a start-up airline on a...

United last week revealed its new premium experience named Polaris, which includes its business class cabin. Ironically, the big design features in the cabin are all about missing the experience, because United wants its passengers to sleep right through it. But in addition to being optimized for sleep, the cabin is also optimized for something else: seat density. Does United have the right formul...

Ryanair is like a runaway train, in that nothing seems to be able to stop it. Despite unfavorable hedges, terrorism, air traffic control strikes and plenty of economic weakness, the airline still managed to turn a profit during the historically weak first quarter. A 6% operating margin never looked so good. How did Ryanair’s performance compare to that of Wizz Air and easyJet—two airlines that als...

Why are we seeing such different results from the two big Korean airlines? Korean Air again overcame systemic challenges to deliver a standout performance in the first quarter. And although the fuel situation certainly helped, the story wasn’t only about fuel. If you don’t believe us, just ask Korean’s chief rival Asiana, who struggled mightily in the same quarter. And although there’s no sign of...

Emirates last week posted an operating margin nearing 10% for its fiscal year. That’s significantly better than the 7% the year before and a whole lot better than the 5%, 4%, and 3% posted in the years prior to that. Is the airline permanently out of its funk? Turkish Airlines meanwhile is struggling in the face of serious revenue declines brought on by fears of terrorism, among other things. To m...

Is growing Eurowings a safe bet? Lufthansa’s low-cost unit had a rough first quarter and that might not be the last. Eurowings is growing like gangbusters, propelling itself into the teeth of a crowded airline market and doing so with an unproven low-cost longhaul model. Lufthansa’s competitor Air France/KLM meanwhile posted a first-quarter loss, pulled down by its own low-cost unit Transavia. Per...

Delta’s new CEO Ed Bastian thinks it’s great that the competition is trying to catch up to Delta in terms of operational performance. He also says, without hesitation, that the competition—namely American Airlines—won’t catch his airline and makes the case in this 30-minute interview. The interview covers a lot of ground and touches on Delta’s fleet philosophy, its network and its joint ventures a...