General do you really believe there is no room to cry poor???? Remember Fuel is going back up again. Now they are saying 5 bucks a gallon and over 120.00 a barrel by 2012. Oh, there's plenty of Poor Crying coming!
How much Poor Crying, WSURF? ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT? Maybe from your own mouth....read the last sentence, please.
United, Delta predicted to lead way as airlines post $4B in profits
Triangle Business Journal - by Chris Baysden
Date: Monday, January 17, 2011
The top U.S. carriers will report their largest profit – nearly $4 billion – in a decade in fourth quarter earnings reports starting this week, according to estimates by industry analyst Web site AirlineFinancials.com.
The $3.95 billion profit will come on revenue of $122 billion from the eight largest U.S. carriers: Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, United, US Airways, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Alaska Air and AirTran Airways. With the exception of Alaska, all of those carriers serve Raleigh-Durham International Airport.
AirlineFinancials.com projects that United will report both the highest net profit ($1.5 billion) and revenue ($34 billion) figures for the year. Delta will be second with a $1.4 billion profit on $31.7 billion in revenue.
American is the only large carrier expected to report a loss, which the Web site projects will be $404 million on $22.2 billion in revenue.
While those are huge profit numbers, the top carriers have been battered with $35 billion in net losses since 2001, the Web site says. This also will be the first time in a decade that the industry reported three consecutive profitable quarters.
The airlines have turned things around by cutting capacity nationally over the past couple years -- a move that helped them regain pricing power – and by improving the amount of ancillary revenue they generate (such as by charging customers to check bags). The budding economic recovery also helped by increasing passenger demand.
The result: Passengers are paying more to fly. The average fare at RDU in the first half of 2010 was nearly $209, up 15 percent from $181 in the same period a year ago, according to information provided by UBM Aviation. Those are the latest figures available.
There is some good news for RDU passengers though. After seeing declines in recent years, the airport is finally starting to see a boost in capacity thanks to new flights, UBM Aviation numbers show. The total scheduled seat capacity at the airport dropped from 560,252 in January 2008 to 496,590 in January 2009. That declined again to 459,657 in the first month of last year. But seat capacity surged up to 497,579 this month.
That increase could help to moderate the fare hikes seen in the past year – but there are a lot of other factors at play as well. Those include what happens to the price of oil, whether or not the tentative economic recovery holds, and how fast passenger demand grows.
RDU will release its 2010 passenger numbers at its monthly meeting later this week. Through the first 11 months of the year, the number of enplaned passengers at the airport grew 5.5 percent to more than 393,000.
The significant capacity increases at RDU are more the exception than the rule, according to Bob Herbst, who runs AirlineFinancials.com. He says that some airports are benefitting from reshuffling, but he only sees about a 3 percent increase in capacity systemwide.
Herbst thinks that the first quarter will be another good one for the major carriers, but he notes that with such thin profit margins – about 3 percent – a spike in fuel prices or labor trouble could quickly cause the industry to go back in the red.
“The airline employees have given up a lot over the last decade and they want it back,” Herbst says.
It won't all come back at once, but some of it will be coming back, and SCOPE can come back too. We have the payrates for large RJs, and it's time to send them our way! AMEN!
Bye Bye--General Lee
