Was it a good first quarter for U.S. airlines? In the aggregate: not bad. The country’s nine largest publicly-traded carriers collectively earned almost $3b in operating profits, along with a solid 7% operating margin—once upon a time it was rare to see any black ink in the offpeak first quarter. The 7% figure, furthermore, was […]
Tag: Frontier
The great moderation. That’s what economists called the period of almost three decades without a major U.S. recession, finally ending with the financial crisis of 2008. But the opposite was true for U.S. airlines: three decades of almost nonstop crisis, finally ending with an extended period of relative bliss thanks to a series of dramatic […]
Sun Country is largely missing out on the golden age that U.S. carriers have been basking in since 2015. In the past 12 months (ending with the second quarter, the most recent to be reported) all the U.S. carriers posted operating profit margins ranging from a healthy 9% to an excellent 16%—except for Sun Country, […]
It takes a long time to descend from a high mountain. But U.S. airline profitability is indeed descending, still strong relative to the global average but getting further away from its peak. During the springtime April-to-June quarter, the sector’s nine major publicly-traded airlines collectively earned a 13% operating margin, down from close to 18% in […]
Frontier Airlines has had one of the most topsy-turvy histories of any airline, and its first-quarter earnings report was no exception. Sporting a wild animal on each tail, the airline has been soaring in recent years. In 2017, Frontier had the seventh best operating profit margin in the world. But something happened in Q1 2018, […]
For a second straight year, Delta’s operating profit margin has fallen year-over-year in the first quarter. The reason for the decline, once again, is rising costs. The good news: Rising revenues—from nearly every corner of Delta’s network—propelled the airline to a solid 8% operating profit margin. One of the rising costs is, of course, fuel. […]
Just a few years ago, the often-troubled SAS was merely inches away from seeing its light burn out permanently. Since then the airline has rallied. This past October the airline completed its best fiscal year in two decades. Is the airline merely surfing the buoyant European economy? Or is it building long-term success? Finnair is […]
The food scene and the tequila are great in Mexico. The airline industry? Not so much—at least at the moment. Everybody lost money in the first quarter of 2017. In the second quarter, only one airline—VivaAerobus—did merely okay. What has happened to the usually high-flying Volaris? Even Interjet has outperformed Volaris in the first half. […]
United is still trailing its peers, but can it catch up? That’s the question we weigh first in this episode. In the second quarter, American Airlines bested United with a 16% operating margin versus United’s 14%. One thing that went right for AA: Latin America. One thing that went wrong for United: Asia. Meanwhile, little […]
It was an earnings call so uncomfortable that anyone who listened or participated still recalls it well. “Is this really all you’ve got?” asked Jamie Baker, a Wall Street analyst. “I mean, in other businesses that I can think of, when there’s a company standing out like this, you sort of expect, you know, a […]