And I quote the Associated Press,

“Frontier Airlines Feb. traffic Climbs”

While Frontier Airlines saw the number of revenue passenger miles “climb” 10.6% for February, it also saw that 10.6% increase come as the airline pushed 13.8% more capacity out the door.

Translation? The airline’s load factor dropped back to 70.8% for the month, down from 72.8 percent in 2006.

So you could have just as easily said, “Frontier Airlines Load Factor Drops in February.”

Big difference in perception.



Speaking of Frontier, Mike Linenberg, analyst with Merrill Lynch, put another “Sell” rating on the airline’s shares today.

I say “another” because Linenberg had previously had a “sell” rating on the stock last year. In his note on the change, Linenberg said,

“Frontier indicated that the snowstorms that hit its Denver hub in late December and early January will affect its March Q results. As such, we are widening our Mar Q loss per share from $0.10 to $0.27 (consensus loss forecast is at $0.14) to reflect the lower demand and higher costs resulting from the inclement weather.

Looking forward into 2007, we think Frontier’s margins will continue to be under pressure as the company embarks on a growth plan that is well above the industry’s growth rate and too aggressive given its recent financial performance (see Chart 1). Moreover, we view Frontier’s main hub as arguably one of the most competitive and challenging revenue markets in the country as United, Southwest and Frontier are all committed to their strong growth and presence. Given the earnings outlook concerns, we are lowering our FY 2008 (March YE) diluted EPS forecast from $0.20 to a loss of $0.10 (vs. consensus EPS of $0.12).”

Ticker: (Nasdaq:FRNT)

Yo.

So how is everyone today?

It’s a beautiful day here in our neighborhood, but alas, our ISP has been having problems with its mail servers all weekend.

So this means no mail for any planebusiness.com associated web address since Friday night. Oh, we can get to all the messages that are backed up — they are all accessible via the web mail option. But it’s been one of those IT mornings that I so love around the Worldwide Headquarters this morning, although there’s not much we can do on our end. Now it’s just a sit and wait process.

Meanwhile, in the airline industry, a couple of newsy notes.

One, another airline analyst bit the dust today.

David Strine, who was voted Institutional Investor’s best airline industry analyst last year — is leaving Bear Stearns. Shame. He is one of the best in the business. But, if I were in his shoes, I’d try to make the most of my award last year, and go on the buy side, too.

Which is exactly what he is going to do, apparently.

I really enjoyed reading David’s research — I’ll miss his take on the industry. He was one of the best.

This past weekend was the much-anticipated reservations cutover at US Airways. As you know, the airline has been running with the two separate res systems from both airlines — but this last weekend they made the switch to one SHARES system for both operations.

And, just as we had surmised going into this — it has not been a pleasant undertaking.

Not surprisingly, the worst problems appear to be occurring with the old US Airways’ hubs — particularly Charlotte. Although problems also are now being reported in Pittsburgh and Boston. This figures, as the airline is migrating from the US Airways’ SABRE system into the resident America West SHARES system. Or rather, the original AWA SHARES system on steroids.

Makes our little pididdly IT issues look like chicken feed.

The last major reservations cut-over for an airline was AirTran last year when they shifted to a new version of the Open Skies reservations platform – and that was not a walk in the park either.

Makes me think about my dad telling me how they used to manually move little pieces of paper and wooden blocks around on a big board on a wall in New York. That is how they scheduled reservations for Eastern Airlines.

Granted, this was in 1946.