Good evening everyone. This week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted.

Last week the bulk of the major U.S. airlines we follow reported 2Q14 earnings. We will have a few stragglers come in this week and next, but in terms of the big boys, all of them rolled out the numbers. In this week’s issue we’ll take a long look at the results reported by American, Delta, and United Airlines. 

Which one of these three was the biggest surprise? United Airlines. In terms of the airline’s earnings call, I thought it was the best since the merger. In addition, as we told PlaneBusiness Banter subscribers more than a month ago, we continue to hear nothing but good things about Greg Hart, the COO at United. This quarter did nothing to change that opinion, and we were glad to hear him on the airline’s earnings call.

As for Delta Air Lines, the airline produced yet another strong quarter, showing once again why it indeed at the top of the heap. Excellent job by the guys in Atlanta.

American Airlines also rolled out a very strong quarter — particularly so considering the airline is in the middle of a huge merger integration.  If you are wondering why shares of AAL took a bit of a dip last week, it is because it’s RASM guidance was not as strong as some analysts had forecast. The big culprit here — the airline’s situation with Venezuela. Not only does Venezuela owe the airline hundreds of millions of dollars, but the airline will not see revenues impacted going forward as a result of its substantial reduction in service to Venezuela.

Short-term problem.

Long-term? The airline continues to look good. The airline also surprised investors with news of a stock buy back and a dividend payment. (United also announced a stock buy-back program.)

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

Hello earthlings. It’s that time again. Time for the latest issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.

Not going to talk too long this evening, as frankly, it was a rather depressing issue to write this week as a result of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. We talk a lot about the flight in this week’s issue, and about the travesty of the fact that as of this posting not one international aviation authority or investigator has been allowed at the scene of the crash in Ukraine.

As I said, it’s a rather depressing situation.

But that’s not all we talk about this week. We have the usual update from Wall Street, we prepare you for the 2Q14 earnings onslaught that begins this week, and we have a great Cranky Analysis column this week that takes a look at the airline everyone loves to hate — except investors. That airline is, of course, Spirit Airlines. PlaneBusiness Contributing Editor Brett Snyder digs in the data this week and comes up with some interesting stuff (as he always does) including the answer to the question of whether Spirit merely “stimulates” a market when it goes into it, or whether it steals market share from other airlines. (I’ll give you a hint. It depends on the airline.)

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

Good evening everyone! This week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted!

This week we are talking about everything from Spirit’s “Hate” campaign to the Frontier Airlines’ Captain who ordered pizza for everyone on his diverted flight. But in-between we talk about  a lot of serious stuff too.

After Delta’s announcement that it had seen a bit of weakness on the international front the week before, and the thrashing that Wall Street did to the sector as a result, all eyes were on the rest of the “Big Four” last week as they issued traffic updates, RASM updates, and in some cases, margin estimate updates.

So what did we learn?

We learned that Delta Air Lines and American Airlines will post the best margins for 2Q14. We learned that while United Airlines did forecast a better than expected RASM performance for 2Q14, the airline will still lag both of its major peers in terms of RASM performance and margin performance.

Oh, and if the revenue brains at United are still trying to digest Imperial Capital analyst Bob McAdoo’s recent long research report in which he made the case why United should shut down its hub at IAD, last week he came out with another long look at United and its revenue woes. But this time he focused on the West Coast. We’ll tell you what he thinks the airline should be doing there and how much money they are losing because they aren’t.

But that all of this didn’t matter to Wall Street investors, as they jumped back into shares of United Airlines last week with a vengeance after the airline upped its previous RASM guidance. The stock ended the week up 15%.

Meanwhile, for all the aircraft geeks out there, the Farnborough International Airshow opened Sunday. Lots of news already from there, including a confirmation of a huge Boeing 777X order with Emirates; a much-needed Bombardier CSeries order from a British leasing firm; and Boeing confirmed Sunday that it is going to adapt the 737-800 MAX so that it can have a maximum seating capacity of 200.

Whew.  We figure this means that big Ryanair’s order can’t be that far behind.

The move to appeal to the ULCC crowd is not unexpected from Boeing. Airbus had already announced it June increases in maximum capacity seating for both the A320 and the A321.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. We talk about Norwegian, and their new service to New York; we talk about the pros and cons of why Norwegian should be allowed to operate its new subsidiary in the U.S.; we talk about the latest DOT Air Travel Consumer numbers (hint: Delta continues to lead the big four; Southwest continues to lag; and Alaska Airlines had another great month) and much, much more.

All in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter!