I know I don’t blog about it, but I’m an avid follower of airline earnings season. It might not show, but I’ve been an airline nerd since my single digit years, and I’m not going to change now. I don’t really blog about airline earnings for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that Dan Webb just does a so much better job than I would ever do! That said, I am going to add a couple thoughts.
The big legacy airlines lost money in the first quarter. No big surprise, I suppose. It could have been worse for most. I won’t speculate about the meaning of the losses at each airline, but I will say this. Expect higher fares, more surcharges and fees, and airplanes that are at least as full as they’ve ever been. I’m no expert, but I think most airlines have finally gotten religion on capacity, and they are going to start racketing it down in the face of $100 dollar plus oil prices for the foreseeable future. Bet on it. Most of the big airlines continue to fly fleets of near fully depreciated airplanes like the MD-80 and classic 737’s….. expect a lot of those to turn into a beer can near you real soon.
It’s going to be an interesting year. I’ll watch from here, and blog about it every now and then. 🙂
