Hello everyone.
This week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter is now posted. No surprise that this week’s issue is headlined by the events from Monday. We talk a lot about the AMR Monday Meltdown. We give you the facts. Then we give you our opinion.
Before shares of AMR went on their freefall Monday, there was good news for another airline last week. A US District Court Judge awarded US Airways a preliminary injunction against its pilot union, USAPA. You may recall the airline asked for the injunction the end of July, as it claimed the pilots were engaged in an organized attempt to “slow down” or disrupt the airline. Apparently Judge Conrad agreed.
We also talk a bit more about Stelios and his plans to start up a new airline. Last week we quoted one European airline analyst who said he thought the rumblings were merely Stelios’ latest attempt to extract more funds from the easyJet management.
That’s not what we heard this week. We let you in on all the details as to why the founder of easyJet may just be serious about a new start-up.
Travelport narrowly avoided a trip to bankruptcy court last week, as parent company Blackstone managed to convince debt holders to accept an extension. However that extension came at a price. Blackstone was forced to pay the highest interest rate paid so far this year for a debt restructuring, according to Bloomberg.
It’s hell when a scheduled IPO never happens and a company has a horrific LBO overhang. And that is exactly where Travelport is, as parent company Blackstone was forced last spring to pull Travelport’s expected IPO. Meanwhile, Travelport’s market share of the GDS market continues to shrink.
Emirates is coming to town. The airline announced two new U.S. destinations last week, and outlined a list of other U.S. destinations that are on the airline’s hit list.
Allegiant Airlines announced a couple of strange moves last week as the airline announced it was going to start flying between Phoenix (Mesa) and Las Vegas, and it announced it was pulling out of Long Beach completely. Wait, wasn’t the reason they were in Long Beach in the first place because the airline wanted to launch its Hawaii flights from there?
We talk about third quarter airline stock performance this week as well. A hint — we don’t have a lot to talk about as only one airline stock posted a gain for the quarter. One.
As for last week, the results on Wall Street weren’t quite that bad, but it wasn’t anything to get excited about.
As usual, all this and more — in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter .