Topic of the Week: Which Airline Had the Best Q4 Results? Worst?

February 1, 2013 CF 6 comments

The big US airlines have reported fourth quarter earnings, so now it’s your turn to play financial analyst. Which one had the best results? Which one had the worst? And while we’re at it, what are you predictions for financial performance in 2013?

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Written by Bill Hough on February 1, 2013. Reply

It would be helpful if you provided a summary table of the 4th Quarter earnings results. It seems to be too much work to search all of them out in order to respond to your question.
Written by MeanMeosh on February 1, 2013. Reply

For you and anyone else who’s interested, courtesy of Terry Maxon at Airline Biz Blog.

http://aviationblog.dallasnews.com/2013/01/heres-a-q4-and-full-year-earnings-report-card-for-the-biggest-airlines.html/
Written by Southeasterner on February 1, 2013. Reply

I’m going with non GAAP, excluding special items, in which case looking at y-o-y increases (and excluding AMR who is still in the red) I’ll pick the following:

winner US Airways: 383.78% increase
loser United/Continental: 55.48% decrease

bigger [potential] loser – U.S. tax payers

While I applaud US Airways, Delta/NWA, and United/Continental on recovering from bankruptcy it looks increasingly likely that tax payers will have to bail out at least part of their pension funds which were turned over to the PBGC:

http://freebeacon.com/un-risky-business/

AMR on the other hand filed after changes to the bankruptcy laws leaving them responsible for their own pension mismanagement.

http://www.pbgc.gov/wr/other/pg/american-airlines-amr-pensions.html

What would be interesting is to compare earnings after taking into account PBGC bailouts and see if that has a material impact.
Written by Mike on February 1, 2013. Reply

They are all pathetic…..I used to work for a couple of them and now they are gone….They were major carriers to
Written by Mike on February 1, 2013. Reply

Dont they want to make you vomit Flying aint what it used to be
Written by Carolanny on February 4, 2013. Reply

I would be interested to hear from the handicapped. You might want to see if you can get any input. My husband was handicapped for years. The only airline who treated us with courtesy and respect was SW. Had horrid experiences on other airlines, absolutely rude. So maybe this is not the topic you were interested in but though you might want to get a survey of others in similar conditions. Needless to say, SW got all our money and we simply did not fly other airlines. Also some of the terminal employees need better training. We were grossly inconvenienced by some of those who handle wheelchairs and the riding carts.