Cranky Weekly Review Presented by San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport: The Crowd Strikes Back, A Pair of Good Earnings Reports

CrowdStrike Brings Airlines to Their Knees

You may not have heard of CrowdStrike previously, but today it becomes a househould name as the company pushed faulty Microsoft updates that derailed IT systems around the globe, including several airlines.

As of 8am PT this morning, Delta had been hit hardest, canceling more than 700 mainline and regional flights according to FlightAware. American had canceled more than 350 while United was just over 300. Spirit had canceled around 100 with Frontier at 50, but both airlines were quoted as saying “Meh, we were probably gonna cancel those anyway.”

Noticeably absent from the list of heavily-impacted airlines was Southwest which at last count had 4 flights canceled on the day. When asked how that happened, a spokesperson said with a grin, “See, old IT isn’t bad. That Commodore 64 we use to run the operation was not impacted.”

The problem appears to be fixed and airlines are slowly getting back online, but heavy delays can be expected.

United’s Q2 Continues Upward Trajectory

United Airlines earned a cool $15 billion in gross revenue during Q2, a 5.7% jump from last year, leading it to a profit of $1.3 billion, a full 23% better than Q2 a year ago. The numbers are eerily similar to what Delta reported last week as that airline showed $1.31 billion in profit on $15.3 billion in revenue, but the main difference being that Delta trended down en route to those figures while United is on an upwing.

It wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns for United as its TRASM was down 2.4% to 18.8 cents, but that outpaced its CASM which dropped 5% from Q2 2023. United’s capacity increased by 8.3% from last year despite expectations of the entire industry needing to reduce capacity as a whole. The airline paid $2.76 per gallon of fuel, up slightly from last year, but its price paid for the half-year since January was down more than 5% from ’23.

United operated with a load factor of 84% during the quarter while flying roughly 44 million passengers — some of which managed to avoid changing planes in Newark. The carrier ended the quarter with $18.2 billion in liquidity, not including the stock it owns in Microsoft and CrowdStrike, which might be worth a little less today than it did yesterday.

Alaska’s Premium Q2 Earnings and New Premium Seating Options

Alaska Airlines earned a $220 million profit on almost $3 billion worth of gross revenue during the second quarter of the year, with a third of the revenue coming from the fancy seats in the front of the airplane. Costs dropped 2% for Alaska during the quarter, helping its bottom line, but a 32% increase in pay for its flight attendants will chomp away at that figure moving forward.

The airline also announced a major expansion of its premium seating options, with more First Class and Premium Class seats across its mainline fleet beginning this fall. The expansion will result in about 1.3 million more high-falutin seats across the carrier annually, while it strives to maintain the same number of doors on all its aircraft at the end of each flight compared to how many were there at the beginning.

Alaska’s B737-800 fleet will see First Class increase from 12 seats to 16, with Premium Class remaining the same. Its B737-900ER and B737 MAX 9 fleets will both stay at 16 up front, but increase from 24 to 30 in Premium. First Class on the 738s will include a calf rest — who amongst us hasn’t been clamoring for a calf rest on that Seattle to Tucson flight — and USB-C charging ports throughout the aircraft.

Alaska finished the quarter with $2.5 billion in cash, and apparently a lot of calf rests.

Allegiant Adds Eight Plus One

Allegiant Air announced the addition of eight new routes to 13 cities, and that it selected a new CEO. Greg Anderson was named the CEO and President of the carrier, effective September 1.

When he starts work this fall, he’ll have several new options to fly on his own airline based on where the darts landed, including:

• Destin/Fort Walton Beach: Flint
• Fort Lauderdale: New York/Stewart
• Melbourne (FL): Cincinnati
• Sarasota: Portsmouth
• Savannah: Punta Gorda, Fort Lauderdale, St. Petersburg
• West Palm Beach: Grand Rapids

Anderson joined Allegiant in 2010, and served in several roles at the carrier, including CFO and towel attendant at the Sunseeker Resort.

When taking over this fall, he’s expected to be in the office 2x weekly most of the time, but spiking to as much as 5x weekly during busy travel periods, with his time in the office suspended for weeks at a time during the low season.

JetBlue Wants United Out of DCA on a Technicality

There’s little we like more at Cranky Weekly Review than when airlines get petty with each other, and JetBlue absolutely is getting petty with United this week. We are here for it.

JetBlue wants United’s application for one of the beyond-perimeter slots at Washington/National to be denied because it proposed to operate a second-daily flight to SFO departing DCA at 6:30 a.m. — when the rules call for a prohibition on beyond-perimeter flights leaving before 7 a.m. Now technically, JetBlue is correct, and United is to blame for submitting its application out of bounds from the rules.

In response, United said that the DOT has never disqualified a proposal for such a mistake, going as far as to volley back at JetBlue that its stance shows its own “insecurities about the strength of its own application, (…), as if JetBlue believes that the best way to win a race is to trip the other runners,” which is just so, so good.

• Air Canada lost in court. Again.
• Air India had ten times more applicants than jobs for a recent maintenance hiring event. It also offered some passengers a free, unexpected stopover in Russia.
• Air Madagascar, an airline that doesn’t exist anymore, still owes about $100 million.
• Breeze might blow into Hawai’i at some point. Also it might not.
• British Airways is increasing its frequencies to Rio de Janeiro/GIG, Buenos Aires/EZE, and São Paulo from Heathrow.
• Condor took delivery of the first of 19 new Airbus on their way to the carrier after the aircraft earned its stripes in Toulouse.
• Delta‘s credit rating is out of the crapper. The carrier also held a send-off for Team USA in Atlanta this week, showcasing its status as the official airline of Team USA. Athletes were invited to participate in the event and following flight to Paris provided they had the required 1.3 million SkyMiles.
• easyJet is adding service to Luxor. No word if it also wants to fly to Mandalay Bay or Treasure Island.
• Etihad finally confirmed its codeshare agreement with Batik Air Malaysia. As you were.
• Hawaiian is requesting to transfer its international route authority to Alaska ahead of the potential merger between the two.
• IAG has an eye on South America. Don’t we all.
• Icelandair squeaked out a small Q2 profit.
• JetBlue is going to offer six months of unpaid leave to flight attendants.
• KLM was a winner in court over a battle with the Dutch government to restrict aircraft movements in Amsterdam.
• LATAM looks to list itself on the NYSE with a valuation of about $8.5 billion.
• Maldivian owes about $23 million.
• Qantas is dreaming of operating the B787 on its Brisbane – Los Angeles route.
• Ryanair was a winner this week in court.
• Saudia is getting into the eVTOL game.
• Singapore flew nearly 10 million customers during its Q1.
• South African unveiled a new mobile app, ensuring we’ll all sleep better tonight.
• SpiceJet lost less than it usually does. Good thymes.
• Spirit is going to have a worse 2nd quarter than the already bad one it expected.
• Thai AirAsia is having a rough go of it.
• Virgin Atlantic is ending its London/LHR – Shanghai route, pulling out of China entirely.
• Yemen Airways is adding eight Airbus aircraft, good news for Chandler Bing.