Airlines See Uplifting Sign

[USA320Pilot]

America West executive vice president of sales and marketing Scott Kirby, a key merger architect and integration team leader, told the Arizona Republic the combined airlines' revenue so far this year is already ahead of projections and on track to stay that way, helping to offset higher-than-expected oil. "We think in the real world the combination of fuel prices and industry revenue will be at least as good as what we have in the (merger business) plan," he said.

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Regards,

USA320Pilot

 

[BoeingBoy]

Airlines are starting to announce June traffic results, and this seemed as good a place as any to comment.....

CAL estimates a 6-7% increase in RASM (both mainline & consolidated) on a very slight increase in LF (0.3%). Using the rule of thumb I mentioned earlier in this thread (change in LF + change in yield = change in RASM) we can assume that they saw about a 5.5-6.5% increase in yield.

CAL's release

AWA said "We posted significant year-over-year improvements in unit revenue during June, which were driven by our record load factor and double-digit growth in yield." They reported a 3.1% increase in LF. If their "double-digit" yield increase is accurate and assuming it means an increase of 10% or more, that means that their RASM increased 13% or more. A very nice performance.

AWA's release

Based only on these two carriers, June may be something of a repeat of May in that the network carriers average a decent RASM increase. As you may remember, May's results were largely LF driven and US underperformed the average. Maybe since June seems to be yield driven (based on two reports), US will do better this time.

Jim