Do business people hate Southwest now?

[Sacha]

The stuff in the WSJ today was no biggie?! Did you read it?......more important...did you understand it?....

No airline will benefit from what is coming down the road....Southwest always benefited when the economy went into recessions....mild recessions. Big difference as to what we might face if something doesn't change. But anyone who derives the majority of their revenue from International could really get hurt if Greece collapse's and the EU disintegrates. Reread my main point that it is laughable that someone who is so exposed to that kind of real danger would come on forums such as these and take such joy over belittling SWA and it's pilots over something as inconsequential as a survey of which airline business people prefer. Especially since SWA has not now or most likely never will be a business travel airline. It's the same mentality of someone who points to a Cat calls it a Dog. What makes you think it's a Dog? Because I said so.....

 

[General Lee]

The stuff in the WSJ today was no biggie?! Did you read it?......more important...did you understand it?....

No airline will benefit from what is coming down the road....Southwest always benefited when the economy went into recessions....mild recessions. Big difference as to what we might face if something doesn't change. But anyone who derives the majority of their revenue from International could really get hurt if Greece collapse's and the EU disintegrates. Reread my main point that it is laughable that someone who is so exposed to that kind of real danger would come on forums such as these and take such joy over belittling SWA and it's pilots over something as inconsequential as a survey of which airline business people prefer. Especially since SWA has not now or most likely never will be a business travel airline. It's the same mentality of someone who points to a Cat calls it a Dog. What makes you think it's a Dog? Because I said so.....

Yeah, and lower oil prices as of late will KILL your Texas profits..... The problem with your thinking (there are many problems, actually) is that most of the Legacies have successful ops in different parts of the World, and they tend to balance each other out. Asia is doing VERY well right now, and Europe is a bit softer, (like you have turned, age 64) But Europe always gets better in the Spring, and Summer flights to Europe are usually full. If the economy over there has tanked, usually that means better deals for travellers, and more people go there to capture the deals. See, you're dumb. You also forgot about the 10 successful fare increases, which helps all airlines, and your airline has participated in most because they have a big bill to pay called Airtran.



Bye Bye---General Lee

 

[Sacha]

You mean like after 9-11? You had so much demand worldwide for the Delta product you declared bankruptcy....Pensions....gone...Payrates....less than Valujet....

Frightful how stupid you really are.....

You need to change your moniker from General Lee to Jefferson Davis...

Lee was brilliant...Davis...not so much...

 

[General Lee]

You mean like after 9-11? You had so much demand worldwide for the Delta product you declared bankruptcy....Pensions....gone...Payrates....less than Valujet....

Frightful how stupid you really are.....

You need to change your moniker from General Lee to Jefferson Davis...

Lee was brilliant...Davis...not so much...

Looks like your Q3 quarter last year was better than this year. Oh well, I have read DL's Q3 profit was estimated at $790 million or so.

Earnings Preview: Southwest to report 3Q results
Published: Tuesday, 18 Oct 2011

DALLAS - Southwest Airlines Co. reports third-quarter results on Thursday, and analysts expect the discount airline to post a profit on higher traffic and revenue than a year ago.

WHAT TO WATCH FOR: Investors will be listening for any hints about travel demand in late fall and winter.

Southwest may have raised alarms when it launched a sale Tuesday with fares as low $35 each way, suggesting that it needed to fill seats during the usually slow period.

WHY IT MATTERS: Airlines packed in passengers during the summer. Average occupancy — so-called load factor — was sky-high. But vacation season is over, and concern is growing that the weak economy could convince vacationers and companies to cut back on travel.

Any major drop in traffic and revenue — something worse than the usual seasonal decline — would add to fears that 2012 will be more challenging than 2011 for the airlines, which are already burdened by higher fuel costs.

Airlines have been cutting flights — reducing the supply of seats — to keep prices up, and it seems to be working. The Air Transport Association, an industry trade group, said Monday that full planes meant that revenue per mile on U.S. flights rose 14 percent in September.

The U.S. market "continues to impress," said Helane Becker, an analyst for Dahlman Rose & Co. She said Tuesday that Southwest, which carries more U.S. passengers than anyone, should benefit from the strong revenue market.

Investors will also want to hear about progress in combining Southwest and AirTran, which the company bought in May. Airline mergers are notoriously difficult because of differences in technology, planes and labor groups.

AirTran pilots have slowed the process of joining with Southwest pilots — they're represented by separate unions — which could indicate that the merger is going more slowly than Southwest had expected.

WHAT'S EXPECTED: Analysts surveyed by FactSet expect Southwest to report net income of $88 million on revenue of $4.17 billion. Excluding one-time items, the adjusted earnings should be 13 cents per share, according to the analysts.

LAST YEAR'S QUARTER: In the July-September quarter of 2010, Dallas-based Southwest reported net income of $205 million, or 27 cents per share, on revenue of $3.03 billion




Bye Bye----General Lee

 

[Flopgut]

The stuff in the WSJ today was no biggie?! Did you read it?......more important...did you understand it?....

That's right. No biggie. Sounds bad, to a nutball like you I know. But anymore in the legacy flying world, it's just your average day of the week. Greece will get fixed and the Eurozone experiment will learn a lesson.

SWA is very much a business travel airline of late Sacha. But we're coming to get our customers back. We're going to offer more and have a better price than you can. Don't know if you caught this from an earlier thread: but the CAL marketing guy who was calling the shots when we kicked you out of IAH went over to DAL. He's good; Made the guys in Dallas look like bozos. We offered him a ton of money to stay but he wanted to move home to ATL. You'd better worry about that guy and let me worry about Greece.

 

[Andy]

Sacha, I read the WSJ quite a bit but don't have a subscription so I haven't seen today's page 1. I glanced at WSJ online and I assume you're referring to the article with the headline: Troika Says Greek Debt Not Sustainable.
That's not news. And the problem isn't isolated to Europe; we have as large or larger issues here in the US. Over the last 50 years - I use LBJ's Great Society as the start - the US and much of the rest of the world have financed prosperity by going on a debt orgy. While the can may be able to be kicked down the road a little bit further, we are reaching a point of full debt saturation at the federal, state, municipal, corporate, and personal levels. There simply will not be any entity that can 'spend us back to prosperity'.
The entire world is staring at an economic depression unmatched in magnitude since the global financial collapse of 1345 which originated in Venice. The Great Depression was mild in comparison to many economic downturns in history; there were greater economic depressions just going back to the 1800s than what was experienced in the 1930s.

But to the point of my rant - Putting a Pox on the Legacies for their international exposure is extremely naive. The economic malaise will negatively impact all airlines; Southwest will feel the pain just as much as Delta, United, American, etc. In some ways, Southwest will feel greater pain because you are trying to absorb AirTran, an airline with a much different operating structure than Southwest.

 

[87swadog]

Man, Gen Lee's comments really hit home. Guess I should have gone with one of those awesome legacy carriers. Wait a minute--just looked at my Oct 20th paycheck. Never mind! (insert evil laugh)

 

[canyonblue]

For the first time, Delta Air Lines took first place in the business travel experience survey...

Looks like Northwest buying Delta turned out to be a great idea. The Northwest flights helped a crappy Delto product get in first. Wait until next year when the total Delto experience drops them below Taca. :laugh:

 

[Sacha]

Andy,

Reread my posts please. I think you missed my main point. I am well aware of Economic History. One of my favorite books is "The Ascent of Money" by Niall Ferguson. If you haven't read it already, you might want to pick it up. You would enjoy it. My wife is an Evil Investment Banker. She has a undergrad and grad in Economics and Finance from Univ of Virginia. In terms that I could understand, she basically said 2008 was a Tropical Storm compared to the Cat V that is coming our way. Her area of expertise is Bonds. She believes that with technology and hyper media exposure, that once a tripwire is crossed the meltdown will be so lightning fast that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to contain. I'm grateful I am with Southwest and fairly senior. But as I posted earlier, EVERYONE is going to suffer. Some more than others. I don't give a damn where my all-coach, LCC ranks on some Business Travelers survey.

 

[Sacha]

Why has no one commented on Alaska's fuel hedging losses? Fairly significant if you compare it to the size of the airline....oh wait, I forgot....it is only relevant if it pertains to SWA....

 

[Andy]

Andy,

Reread my posts please. I think you missed my main point. I am well aware of Economic History. One of my favorite books is "The Ascent of Money" by Niall Ferguson. If you haven't read it already, you might want to pick it up. You would enjoy it. My wife is an Evil Investment Banker. She has a undergrad and grad in Economics and Finance from Univ of Virginia. In terms that I could understand, she basically said 2008 was a Tropical Storm compared to the Cat V that is coming our way. Her area of expertise is Bonds. She believes that with technology and hyper media exposure, that once a tripwire is crossed the meltdown will be so lightning fast that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to contain. I'm grateful I am with Southwest and fairly senior. But as I posted earlier, EVERYONE is going to suffer. Some more than others. I don't give a damn where my all-coach, LCC ranks on some Business Travelers survey.

Since I know that John Layfield (Meredith Whitney's husband) doesn't fly for Southwest, I'll rule out the possibility that you're married to my financial heroine.

I think that your wife has a front row seat to the coming train wreck. Risk is completely mispriced in the bond markets (and in all financial markets) thanks to knucklehead Bernanke and the Fed. The Federal government and most states and municipalities are so far beyond debt saturation that I don't see how this doesn't end in cascading defaults across the entirety of public sector bonds. At this point, I think that corporate bonds are safer than public sector bonds and there's no way I'd even think about touching mortgage backed securities - that's just an ongoing train wreck. It's been a while since I've looked at CMOs; I looked at some from the 2005-2007 era and it was amazing how many of the tranches were zeroed out for near total loss to the tranche holders.

Question - where's your wife recommend putting money for wealth preservation? At the moment, I'm uncomfortable putting my money anywhere and have been sitting on cash for quite a while. I don't mind losing a bit due to inflation and the volitility of the markets makes everything a crap shoot.

 

[Sacha]

Mostly cash. She just came in from a conference about an hour ago and I pointed out that the market went up again....she laughed..she said that when alls it takes for the market to go up 2 to 3% is a news story that the dysfunctional Europeans are still "talking" about how they are going to handle the impending train wreck should tell anyone that everyone is completely out of real,concrete solutions..

I dunno but she pulled us out of everything 2 months before the last meltdown so I trust her judgement.

She did tell me she was aghast at several of the featured speakers lecturing on how well the present administration was handling the economy.....she looked around the conference tables at the other bankers facial expressions and said they were priceless...jaws on the table..cocktail hour was very entertaining if it wasn't so frightning...she is not very political but can distinctly remember many of them extolling the obvious brilliance of Obama in 2008 when all evidence was to the contrary. In her opinion, Ivy Leagues don't have an exam for common sense and she went to one.

P.S. I have several friends who's parents and they themselves lived through Argentinas hyperinflation. So their lessons about being in cash only goes so far. They were successful businessmen but felt there was only one option and that was to come here.....Sounds great....but where do we go?.....

I believe a great President and responsible House and Senate can turn this around.....My wife believes the mathematics are beyond the point of no return.

 

[Andy]

Thanks for the summary on the conference.

In her opinion, Ivy Leagues don't have an exam for common sense and she went to one.

Roger that. Some of the dumbest people I've listened to are Ivy League grads. I also majored in economics - back in the '80s - and was aghast at how my Ivy League grad professors were unable to comprehend that running large annual federal deficits were going to create problems due to pulling demand forward. They were all supply side idiots who smoked way too much hopium. ... don't get me started on the faux-Keynesian Klowns running around today.
I wasn't too concerned about debt saturation until I started seeing exotic mortgages pop up in late 2000. I was surprised the end game took so long in housing.

P.S. I have several friends who's parents and they themselves lived through Argentinas hyperinflation. So their lessons about being in cash only goes so far. They were successful businessmen but felt there was only one option and that was to come here.....Sounds great....but where do we go?.....

I've been expecting a turn from deflationary pressures to hyperinflationary pressures due to Bernanke/Fed actions but even those haven't been able to fill the deflationary void caused by credit contraction. Bernanke/Fed may be able to avoid deflation but a bond collapse will take hyperinflation off of the table, at least temporarily and bring a pretty heavy dose of deflation to the economy.
Deflation kills debtors; just look at how much debt our federal/state/municipal governments have wracked up since the start of the Great Society. It's going to be coyote ugly.

My wife believes the mathematics are beyond the point of no return.

I agree with your wife. The math says that we're heading for something similar to a 1998-style Russian collapse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Russian_financial_crisis

A decade or more of painful bone crushing austerity is the medicine that we need to take. The longer we delay, the more painful the medicine.

 

[Sacha]

Agree. I'm a big fan of Thomas Sowell. I have read almost everything he has written (book wise). He was interviewed last night on TV for about a half hour and it was rather sobering.

Funny story for you about Econ. Last month I went to Charleston with the wife as her Company hosted a Bond Conference. One night the wife, the President of her company and a new gal went to dinner together and they asked me to tag along. The President is fascinated with Aviation so my wife made me go. At dinner, I asked the new gal, a recent Economics Grad from Dartmouth, if she was a fan of Hayek or Keynes in a joking manner.....she gave me a wide eyed look and said ....who? I repeated the question thinking she was pulling my leg...she wasn't. I looked at my wifes boss and he was more shocked than my wife or I...my wife quickly changed the subject to good restaurants in Chicago........This lady starts at Harvard Grad next year..

 

[Andy]

I asked the new gal, a recent Economics Grad from Dartmouth, if she was a fan of Hayek or Keynes in a joking manner.....she gave me a wide eyed look and said ....who? I repeated the question thinking she was pulling my leg...she wasn't. I looked at my wifes boss and he was more shocked than my wife or I...my wife quickly changed the subject to good restaurants in Chicago........This lady starts at Harvard Grad next year..

Ow. I take it she's HOT. She's going to be in trouble when her looks fade.

Edit: You need to send her this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk

 

[Flycatcher99]

Agree. I'm a big fan of Thomas Sowell. I have read almost everything he has written (book wise). He was interviewed last night on TV for about a half hour and it was rather sobering.

I'm a big Thomas Sowell fan too. Great mind, great writer. I love his columns. His and Krauthammers'.

 

[Sacha]

I'm a big Thomas Sowell fan too. Great mind, great writer. I love his columns. His and Krauthammers'.

About a year ago, I had Dr. Krauthammer on my flight from BWI to MSY.
We were delayed a little bit so I chatted with him for about 20 minutes. He is a very friendly, funny guy. We spent most of our time ragging on Obama....
I always respected him but thought he would not be someone you would want to approach in public....not so...

It was a bit of work to get him on and off the airplane but he was very gracious and appreciative and went out of his way to put everyone at ease...
A class act all the way.....

 

[Godfather]

General...

Can't believe I'm going to say this, but on behalf of one of DAL's many business traveler I just wanted to say THANK YOU DELTA & AA for having business class in the US domestic market. Well worth the extra $$. Of course, we live in a place where DAL rules the market. For personal travel, we (wife and I) enjoyed Air Tran with it's 1st/Biz class but now with the merger, we can kiss that goodbye. AT's Biz/1st class was a good product and sold well. Gonna miss it but DAL is now my company's and spouse's company choice for business travel and Corporate Crew Deadheading.

 

[Sacha]

Question: Why wasn't it your first choice before? I mean since they dominate the city where you live (ATL)? And they would always match Airtran on competing markets/routes and have widebodies whereas Airtran has 717/737. Plus no one can beat Delta's choice when it comes to redeeming frequent flyer miles around the globe....

Why would you fly for business on Delta, but then switch to Airtran for personal use?
Wouldn't you have lots of miles on Delta? My wife and all her family and coworkers use Delta for business and personal travel as well.

You say on one hand you didn't mind the extra dollars on Delta.....but then you say you are going to miss Airtran?

 

[General Lee]

Man, Gen Lee's comments really hit home. Guess I should have gone with one of those awesome legacy carriers. Wait a minute--just looked at my Oct 20th paycheck. Never mind! (insert evil laugh)

Yeah, and the line guy at Lubbuttocks actually heard you. Thumbs up from him. Echo, echo, echo, echo....... Good luck on the continuation of your trip today---onto ABQ, then LAS, then BOI, then SLC, and finally STL. Don't worry, there will be an airport Pizza Hut Express you can blow all your money on somewhere downline..... Go for it! (Insert hearty laugh AT YOU)


Bye Bye---General Lee