Continental
Farting on your Jumpseat
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2007
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- 180
http://aviationblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/03/united-continentals-smisek-on.html
Elizabeth Souder, our energy reporter, is sitting in at the always interesting CERA conference in Houston this week. United Continental Holdings CEO Jeff Smisek spoke there Friday morning.
You might ask, why is an airline CEO speaking at an energy conference? But as Elizabeth reports, energy is very much on the minds of airline executives these days, with jet fuel prices zooming past $3 a gallon.
Here are some of Smisek's comments captured by Elizabeth:
• With these oil prices: "I feel a bit like a piñata at a 10-year-old's birthday party."
• United consumes one out of every 350 barrels of oil produced. A modern air traffic control system could save 10 percent of the fuel airlines burn.
• United hedges about 40 percent of its fuel, but "all you're doing there is hedging against a spike so you can survive it." He added: "Hedges burn off, and Las Vegas wasn't built on the backs of winners."
• "We're taxed more heavily than alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. We're taxed as a sin." (He was talking about taxes on passenger tickets, which amount to about 20 percent on the average domestic ticket.)
"I'm not talking about corporate taxes. The airline business hasn't made a profit so you don't have to worry about taxes. There are 16 or 17 different taxes, I think, by six different federal entities who, I believe, never talk to each other."
• He said he follows crude prices on the Bloomberg terminal outside of his office every day. Smisek joked: "I don't have to follow our stock price because it's so highly correlated to crude."
• "Nobody wants us to die because everybody makes money off of us."
• Smisek said he expects United Continental, a merger last year of United Airlines and Continental Airlines, to shrink in the U.S. "We'll have the domestic [operations] sized solely to feed the international traffic."
Smisek had been chairman and CEO of Houston-based Continental before the 2010 merger, and runs the merged company now out of Chicago.
Elizabeth Souder, our energy reporter, is sitting in at the always interesting CERA conference in Houston this week. United Continental Holdings CEO Jeff Smisek spoke there Friday morning.
You might ask, why is an airline CEO speaking at an energy conference? But as Elizabeth reports, energy is very much on the minds of airline executives these days, with jet fuel prices zooming past $3 a gallon.
Here are some of Smisek's comments captured by Elizabeth:
• With these oil prices: "I feel a bit like a piñata at a 10-year-old's birthday party."
• United consumes one out of every 350 barrels of oil produced. A modern air traffic control system could save 10 percent of the fuel airlines burn.
• United hedges about 40 percent of its fuel, but "all you're doing there is hedging against a spike so you can survive it." He added: "Hedges burn off, and Las Vegas wasn't built on the backs of winners."
• "We're taxed more heavily than alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. We're taxed as a sin." (He was talking about taxes on passenger tickets, which amount to about 20 percent on the average domestic ticket.)
"I'm not talking about corporate taxes. The airline business hasn't made a profit so you don't have to worry about taxes. There are 16 or 17 different taxes, I think, by six different federal entities who, I believe, never talk to each other."
• He said he follows crude prices on the Bloomberg terminal outside of his office every day. Smisek joked: "I don't have to follow our stock price because it's so highly correlated to crude."
• "Nobody wants us to die because everybody makes money off of us."
• Smisek said he expects United Continental, a merger last year of United Airlines and Continental Airlines, to shrink in the U.S. "We'll have the domestic [operations] sized solely to feed the international traffic."
Smisek had been chairman and CEO of Houston-based Continental before the 2010 merger, and runs the merged company now out of Chicago.
