Delta Airlines has received two doses of bad news in the last couple of days. First, Japan Airlines decided to stick with an alliance with American rather than switch to one with Delta on Monday, and then just yesterday, the Department of Transportation made a ruling on the Delta proposed slot-swap deal with US Airways. [...]
United States airline January traffic statistics as released by each carrier. The main statistics released on a monthly basis illustrate the carriers traffic illustrated here as a percentage increase or decrease from the same month one year earlier; carrier capacity illustrated here as a percentage increase of decrease from the same month one year earlier; [...]
Reports from Japan are that the leadership of Japan Airlines has decided to stick with their One World Alliance instead of jumping ship and joining SkyTeam. This is an enormous coup for American Airlines, a founding airline partner of One World. However, it is a disappointment for SkyTeam member and world’s largest airline Delta Airlines.
Both [...]
Delta Airlines and it’s global airline alliance SkyTeam have offered an aid package of $1 billion to struggling Japan Airlines, JAL. Immediately, though, current OneWorld partner with JAL, American Airlines, said that together with other OneWorld partners British Airways and Iberia, they would top that offer of aid hoping to convince JAL to stick with [...]
Although airline mergers are always percolating in the industry rumor mill, there has been a noticeable uptick in recent weeks as analysts talk about possible tie-ups. With the acquisition last year of Northwest Airlines by Delta Airlines looking like it should be a success, creating the world’s largest airline, and capacity still over-pacing demand, the [...]
September 2009 proved to be a good month for the nation’s airlines posting the best on-time rate in six years. Combined, the airlines achieved a 86.2 percent on-time rate with that percentage of flight arriving at their destination within 15 minutes of their scheduled time. The ratings and airline rankings are provided by the United [...]
The airlines continue to struggle to fill planes and keep fares high enough to make money. October saw low-cost airlines continue to post traffic and capacity increases with AirTran, Allegiant, and JetBlue the only carriers that grew in size and traffic.
Allegiant continues to grow at very strong rates. Allegiant Air is a low-cost model airline [...]
American Airlines has announced the closing of a maintenance facility in Kansas City, Missouri that it acquired with other assets in the TWA bankruptcy liquidation.
The closing of the base is to better match maintenance facilities with fleet size as the American fleet is shrinking as are other network airlines. The American Airlines fleet is now [...]
United Airlines has announced the addition of one-daily round-trip flight between San Francisco and St. Louis. American Airlines announced last month that they would substantially dismantle the remnants of the TWA St. Louis hub that it acquired years ago leaving many key destinations without non-stop service.
Just yesterday, Southwest announced an addition of flights to various [...]
The third quarter had few surprises with the smaller, low-cost centric airlines posting profits, and the bigger guys posting losses. Some of the losses were smaller than expected, and some were rather large and foreboding.
WINNERS
Alaska – Net Income $83 million
Hawaiian – Net Income $31 million
Frontier – Net Income $16 million (consolidated July/August only)
JetBlue – Net [...]
Southwest Airlines, on the heels of American Airlines reductions in St. Louis, has announced new service there. Southwest will add nine daily flights to six new destinations from St. Louis. The new flights will begin in May and will be available for sale sometime this December.
The new St. Louis flights include:
Two daily flights to/from Nashville, [...]
American Airlines is under more pressure from FAA investigators who continue to look into fuselage issues with the large fleet of AA’s MD-80 series aircraft.
Newspapers reported an incident in which an American Airlines MD-80 was found to be in such poor condition that it was not permitted to fly its scheduled flight and was ferried [...]
American Airlines, seeing a threat from both JetBlue and AirTran, has announced the addition of Washington Dulles flights to and from San Juan, Puerto Rico. This service used to operate before cutbacks at San Juan for American. The new service will launch on November 19 and operate daily using Boeing 737-800 aircraft.
JetBlue recently launched daily [...]
Below is a recap of U.S. airlines September operational performance. There was a delay since Southwest did not release their figures until this morning.
AirTran – Capacity up 7.2%; Traffic up 11.0%; Load Factor 77.0%
Alaska – Capcity down 1.4%; Traffic up 1.4%; Load Factor 77.9%
Allegiant – Capacity up 50.2%; Traffic up 46.1%; Load Factor 85.2%
American – [...]
The Depart of Transportation has released the August 2009 on-time report for U.S. airlines. The rankings are as follows:
Hawaiian – 94.7%
Alaska – 85.8%
SkyWest – 84.4%
Frontier – 83.8%
ExpressJet – 83.4%
Southwest – 82.8%
Continental – 82.4%
US Airways 81.4%
United – 80.1%
American Eagle – 79.6%
Mesa – 79.2%
Pinnacle – 79.2%
Delta – 78.6%
American – 77.2%
JetBlue – 76.0%
Northwest – 74.4%
AirTran – 74.2%
Atlantic Southeast [...]
Japan Airlines has decided to put current discussions about investment and cooperation with Delta Airlines and American Airlines on hold. JAL is struggling to implement an aggressive but much needed restructuring to stave off continuing record breaking losses.
This is good news for American Airlines and the Oneworld airline alliance as it keeps JAL in their [...]
Many of the U.S. network and low-cost airlines have taken measures in recent days to beef up their cash and/or credit positions. United and American have sold additional stock. Delta has re-negotiated debt. AirTran has negotiated better credit card processing terms. All of these have negotiated with their creditors to ensure they are well positioned for [...]
