Hello everyone! The last issue of PlaneBusiness Banter for 2014 is now posted.

We are talking about a lot of things this week — labor, oil prices, dropping fares in DFW, the Business Travel News Corporate Airline Survey, our trip to Atlanta to present to the Delta Air Lines Corporate Sales year-end event, the BTN Hall of Fame dinner in New York last week, the arbitration award involving the Association of Professional Flight Attendants and American Airlines, the latest update on negotiations between the airline and its pilots, and oh…so much more.

Unfortunately it was not that good a week for airline stocks — after Spirit Airlines spooked the industry with its less-than-expected traffic report last week. While the airline said it was thought the industry might be moving to a “price based on fuel and not demand model” most analysts claim this is not the case.

But one thing is clear. Fares are dropping sharply in the DFW area, as capacity has ballooned — the result of the demise of the Wright Amendment, upgauging of service by Delta into Love Field, and new service from Virgin America out of Love Field.

We also have our signature holiday column this week — our letters from airline CEOs to Santa, the latest DOT numbers, and a really terrific guest column that follows up on the recent column on the American re-banking of its MIA hub by PlaneBusiness Contributing Editor Brett Snyder.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays….and Happy New Year!

PlaneBusiness Banter will return on January 12!

The Turkey Week edition of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted!

This week we get you up to speed on all the latest machinations in the airline industry, although it has been a pretty slow week. Something to do with that holiday on Thursday.

On the labor front, while originally the airline had said it was going to proffer arbitration last Friday,  as of this writing  the pilots and American Airlines are apparently still talking — no arbitration yet. Sounds like negotiations will continue next week.

Over at Southwest Airlines, the pilots asked the NMB for help with their negotiations last week. If I am not mistaken, this is the first time the pilot group has asked for help from the NMB.

In our column this week we talk about profit sharing. Why employees like it, why they understand it, and why we think that American’s stance against profit sharing is a mistake.

On the corporate travel front, we have the results from the latest Morgan Stanley Corporate Travel Survey. I’ll give you a hint. Delta Air Lines did very well.

On the stock front, shares of Virgin America once again led the group last week. All in all it was a rather so-so week for the sector.

On the exec front, Wal-Mart announced this week that former American CEO Tom Horton  is a new member of its BOD; while John Tague, former President of United Airlines, is the new CEO at Hertz. 

Frontier announced an order for bigger aircraft last week, Norwegian is back on the offensive, and the TWU, which represents the baggage handlers at Southwest Airlines, are making noise.

All this and much, much, more in this week’s Turkey Week edition of PlaneBusiness Banter. 

What is another word for….exhaustion? The latest edition of PlaneBusiness Banter, which I think probably runs at least 80 pages printed out — is now posted.

Yes, it is earnings time. That lovely time of year that rolls around every three months. This week we have in-depth looks at the recent earnings results from United Airlines, American Airlines, Alaska Air Group and Southwest Airlines. 

Short and sweet? No real big surprises, although Southwest and United spooked some investors with their less than expected PRASM guidance. But both airlines posted strong 3Q14 numbers.

As for American Airlines, the airline continues to post very strong margins and nice fat profits — while still very much in the early stages of its merger. Excellent job. Give these guys another year and who knows how much money they will be making.

Alaska Air Group? These guys just will not be stopped. Not by Virgin America. Not by Allegiant. And not, it appears,  by Delta Air Lines either.  Alaska posted an excellent quarter with nothing short of mind-blowing margins — while it continues to fight the increase in capacity in its home turf from Delta. 

Yes, in case you missed that movie a while back — we’re pretty certain the plotline went something like this. Delta says to Alaska, “Stop codesharing with American Airlines or we’ll huff and we’ll puff and we’ll blow your house down.”

Alaska responded, as best we can tell by essentially saying, “Bring it on.”

Fun to watch.

In addition to all the earnings fun this week, our curiosity was piqued by some comments that Scott Hamilton with the Leeham Group made this week. Those comments? Instead of buying new Boeing or Airbus widebodies, could Delta Air Lines maybe purchase some pre-owned Boeing 777-200ERs? Interesting thing to ponder. He might very well be right. That RFP is still hanging, and in Delta’s 3Q14 earnings call last week, CEO Richard Anderson discussed the RRP and talked about ownership costs, and this and that and ….the upshot is….. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Delta looking at some used widebodied aircraft. Certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

We presented at the Business Travel News “Travel Trends and Forecast” event last week in Chicago. My friends at United Airlines should be happy. Not only did I have two excellent flights on the airline last week, but there was a very palpable uptick in the positive feedback about the airline from the corporate travel manager group to whom I spoke. Much better than a year ago. The airline still needs to become more consistent in its operations  — but there is progress being made.

Fantastic week last week for the airline sector. We’ll update everyone on who did what.

All this, and lots and lots and lots more — in this week’s edition of PlaneBusiness Banter. 

This week’s edition of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted.

Delta Air Lines kicked off the 3Q14 earnings season last week. The airline reported in-line earnings — beating analyst consensus by a couple of pennies.

Net income was $357 million or $0.42. Excluding items, net income rocketed to just over $1 billion, or $1.20. The analyst consensus forecast had been for EPS of $1.18, so the airline came in pretty much in line.

The airline disclosed no real surprises in its earnings call, but there were some fireworks when JP Morgan analyst Jamie Baker pushed CEO Richard Anderson on the subject of capacity.

If that wasn’t enough, one of the industry’s most energetic analysts, and the analyst who recently downgraded shares of Delta Air Lines, Hunter Keay with Wolfe Research, was not on the call. We’ll fill you in on why that was the case.

In other news, airline stocks rebounded last week from their Ebola sell-off madness, we get you updated on the craziness that is surrounding the tentative agreement vote for the American Airlines flight attendants, there was a recent change at the top at ExpressJet, and much, much more.

All in this week’s edition of PlaneBusiness Banter. 

This week’s edition of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted.

This week we talk a lot about Ebola. Not hysterically. Rationally.

Unfortunately we seem to be the exception.

Last week, heightened fears over potential demand destruction in the airline industry, as a result of fears over the death of one person in Dallas sent shares of airline stocks plummeting like rocks. With the news that a nurse who attended to the man who died last week had tested positive for Ebola breaking over the weekend, things didn’t get much better for airlines Monday either.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is watching as the price of crude oil and the price of jet fuel continues to drop to multi-year lows, and airlines continue to report good guidance, generally speaking, for 3Q14 numbers. Both of these should be resulting in positive moves, not negative, for airline stocks.

But last week traders were trading on headlines. Not fundamentals.

Monday it was the same story.

In other news, we’ll tell you what we found interesting at this year’s The BeatLive Conference which was held last week in New Orleans. Yours truly presented the look at the airline industry for the corporate travel audience, while Kevin Krone, SVP of Marketing at Southwest Airlines, was on “The Hot Seat” this year. Kevin did a great job — and while he said that the airline is now about to announce an upsell produce anytime soon — it is going to announce some “onboard improvements” in the not-too-distant future.

No other hints were given.

We update you on the DOT Air Consumer Travel Numbers for August; we get you up to speed on the new approach A4A looks like it is going to take as it hits Congress up once again for a comprehensive FAA reauthorization funding bill, we give our thumbs up to the JetBlue decision to hire former Wall Street analyst Kevin Crissey as its new director of IR, we tell you what airline analyst took the First Team analyst spot in the 2014 Institutional Investor surveys, and oh, so much more.

All in this week’s edition of PlaneBusiness Banter. 

This week’s edition of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted! Last week was a wild one in the airline industry between fears associated with the first case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States, weather, continued ATC issues in Chicago, end of quarter stock performance, and fireworks down in Dallas, where the Dallas City Council told Delta Air Lines it had two weeks to vacate Love Field.

Say what? 

We’ll get you updated on who has apparently done what to whom to get us to this point and what will probably come next.  (Hint….lawsuit.)

There were other legal wranglings last week including a suit that now will go back to a lower court involving some unhappy Spirit flyers; and American’s request to the DOT to transfer slots it awarded to Delta for its Haneda routes — to American. We’ll tell you why American thinks it should be allowed to  move the service to LAX, and fly a daily flight to Japan.

We update you on the latest concerning the flight attendant TA voting at American, and we also give you our take on why pilot negotiations seem to be falling behind the original 30-day timetable at American. Hint: We don’t disagree with what we hear are the reasons.

Southwest Airlines took the top stock performance honors for the third quarter. We tell you which airlines did well, and which ones did not — as we go down the results for the third quarter.

Speaking of, 3Q14 earnings are right around the corner. We give you the dates you’ll not want to miss. Essentially most of the big players (with the exception of Delta, which reports on Oct. 16) will report the following week. Oct. 22-23 are going to be very busy days.

El Al seems to have a problem on some of its flights — orthodox Jewish men who refuse to sit next to …gasp….women! Meanwhile, United Airlines announced it has hired its third CIO since the merger of United and Continental. Will the third hire be the charm?

The biggest news from last week — the continued decline in the price of oil and jet fuel.

The importance of this cannot be underestimated in terms of the industry and lower costs.

We’ll tell you more about why we think this is not a short term thing.

All this and more — in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter. 

A great Monday afternoon to everyone! How are you? The latest edition of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted!

This week we have a busy issue as we talk about the impact of the FAA fire at its Aurora Center outside of Chicago, (we also give you our take in a column about just why the FAA is NOT the problem here — it’s a much broader issue involving a total lack of recognition of how important aviation and transportation is to our economic well-being in the U.S.)

The FAA is simply the most convenient whipping boy.

Let’s move up a level, shall we? Let’s talk about funding. Or better yet, lack of.

We also discuss the fascinating back and forth that occurred last week — after Delta announced across the board raises for its employees and an advance on their 2014 profit sharing benefit.

While we acknowledge that this is great news for Delta employees — this just wasn’t a case of Richard Anderson donning a Santa hat two months early.

There were a couple of things going on here, including the IAM’s current card campaign going on for the Delta flight attendant group, and American Airlines’ tentative agreement with its flight attendant group — which was just about to be sent out the door — when the employee memo at Delta went viral.

That TA had given flight attendants at American “industry leading” numbers. Well, after the announcement from Richard, that was no longer the case.

The result? The APFA went back to management at American and got…more money.

Meanwhile, if we’re strictly talking pay rates, the flight attendants at Southwest Airlines still top everyone.

Oh, let’s see. We have new A380s arriving at DFW this week, we have Emirates apparently putting the screws to Airbus to get them to re-engine the A380, we have another new livery to show you (and this one is gorgeous) and oh yes, we talk about Sean Menke’s new gig at Hawaiian Airlines.

As for stocks, it was a lousy week for airline stocks last week. Meanwhile, analysts are busy tuning up their 3Q14 estimates, as this quarter comes to a close.

Oh, and yes, Wolfe Research analyst Hunter Keay downgraded shares of Delta Air Lines last week. Not unexpected. We agree with the reasons he gave. We go over these in this week’s issue too.

All this, and much, much, more in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter!

Good evening everyone. The latest issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted.

We are a day late this week. (But not a dollar short!) I thank everyone for their patience. Yours truly was part of a fabulous event on Sunday in Philadelphia. I was part of a case study presentation given to the Arthur Page Society – a group comprised of top level executives and corporate communications officers of Fortune 500 companies. The topic? The role communications played in the American Airlines/US Airways merger.

Leading the presentation was American Airlines CEO Doug Parker and EVP of People and Communications Elise Eberwein. In addition to myself, the panel included Laura Glading, President of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants; Scott Shankland, former national officer with the Allied Pilots Association; Gregg Polle, Managing Director, Moelis & Co.; Paul Denis, Partner, Dechert LLP; Hilary Rosen, Managing Director, SKDKnickerbocker, and Kelly Sullivan, Partner, Joele Frank.

It was a great experience. In addition, it was striking to sit back and reflect on just exactly was accomplished. It’s a deal that I doubt will never be repeated in this industry. Or maybe any other industry.  By that I mean — a smaller company successfully pulled off a hostile takeover of a larger company — while that larger company was in bankruptcy protection.

What was the “secret sauce”? As I talk about in this week’s issue, it wasn’t the price. In fact the deal was not “priced” until very late in the process.

No, it was — communication. Intense, constant, coordinated and strategic communication.

Yep. It was a cool way to spend a Sunday.

In other news, it was a blockbuster week for union news last week, as we had a TA announced with the flight attendants at American Airlines; the APA was certified by the NMB as the bargaining agent for the pilot group (bye bye USAPA); the customer service workers at both US Airways and American will now be represented by the same joint representation that was in place at US Airways — the Teamsters and the CWA; Piedmont pilots approved a new contract; and United Airlines rolled out a very impressive “Early Out” offer for flight attendants that pays out as much as $100K. (Depending on years of service.)

Whew!

On top of all this, I was in Washington last week, where I moderated a panel at Airlines for America’s Aviation Summit. Great experience. Great list of speakers throughout the day. I give you some of the better quotes from the sessions in this week’s issue. Oh and I’ll also introduce you to the man who controls more shares of stock in U.S. airlines than any other investor.

Yep. True.

All this and much, much, more in this week’s edition of PlaneBusiness Banter!