Cranky Weekly Review Presented by San Francisco Bay Oakland International Airport: A Breeze Blows, CrowdStrike Strikes Back

Breeze Answers Avelo’s Additions

Breeze Airways responded to Avelo’s expansion from last month with five new destinations and 18 new routes, several of which will compete directly with Avelo.

The new cities Breeze will blow into are:

• Daytona Beach
• Erie
• Newark
• South Bend
• Wilmington (NC)

New routes for the carrier include Wilmington to Hartford, Fort Myers, Orlando, and Providence, Daytona Beach to Hartford, Raleigh/Durham, Providence, and White Plains, South Bend to Orlando and Fort Myers, Newark to Charleston (WV), and Erie to Orlando.

The carrier is also adding six new routes from its existing station in Sarasota, with new flights from SRQ to Akron/Canton, New York/Islip, Portland (ME), Richmond, Raleigh/Durham, and White Plains.

CrowdStrike Responds to Delta’s Compensation Claim

Most of us know the feeling when we request compensation from an airline for a delay, cancellation, lost luggage, or other travel hiccup and aren’t happy with the response we get — well, Delta is seeing what it’s like being on the other side of that transaction, as both CrowdStrike and Microsoft’s response to Delta‘s push for compensation for its operational struggles of last month were met with the carrier being told to get bent.

CrowdStrike says Delta did not respond to an offer for assistance when the outage first occurred, and that the carrier rejected repeated offers to help get its system back online, including when Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz specifically reached out to Delta CEO Ed Bastian, only to have his overtures ignored. In Ed’s defense, he did have a trip to Paris to get ready for, and it’s possible he was on hold with Delta customer service trying to rebook his flight to arrive in-time for the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic Games and unable to answer the call for fear of losing his place in the hold queue.

CrowdStrike’s lawyers also said that its liability for the outage is contractually capped at a figure below $10 million, and that Delta’s claims that it will claw back a significant portion of the $380 million it claims it lost are a fantasy. Delta had no comment as its attempts to do so were met by a blue screen of death.

Frontier’s Second Quarter was…Mixed

Frontier’s earnings report was released Thursday and it showed a teeny-tiny increase of about 1% of total revenue, up to $973 million, while profit on that figure was $31 million, a significant drop from 2023.

The carrier crowed about its cost savings program, launched last year, which saved over $100 million in its first year. What it didn’t tell us was that in order to save the money, it has to sacrifice one animal per year, and this time it was Juan the Puerto Rican Parrot who drew the short straw.

Frontier took delivery of six new A321neos during the three month period, increasing the percentage of its fleet that’s part of the A320neo family to 80%. It ended the period with $658 million in unrestricted cash and cash equivalents, a figure that would have been higher if not for the expensive memorial service held for Juan.

Air Canada’s Positive Q2

Canada’s largest airline reported its earnings for the year’s second quarter this week and it showed an income of C$466 million on C$5.5 billion gross revenue.

It flew 11.6 million passengers for the three months, which equals about 10.4 million passengers when converted into U.S. passenger figures. It had a healthy 6.5% increase in ASM from a year ago, which it expects to continue into Q3, with as much as a 4.5% increase from ’23. For the full year 2024, Air Canada is expecting a 5.5-6.5% increase in ASM compared to last year with a 2.5-3.5% increase in CASM. In its year-end projections, the carrier says it made assumptions that the Canadian dollar will average about C$1.36 per USD and that fuel will continue to cost about C$1.03 per litre — litre, of course being the Canadian word for “almost a gallon.”

AC ended the quarter with C$451 million in free cash flow, considerably less than the C$965 million it had a year ago, with most of it having been spent on maple syrup pouches like this one.

PreCheck and Global Entry to Head Down Under

A trial between U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security, and Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs will open up both PreCheck and Global Entry to Australian citizens when traveling to and within the United States.

The program will start with a trial of 1,000 Australians next year, and if successful — which it’s supposed to be — will then be open to the majority of Australians. To sign up, Australians will be subject to a criminal history check, plus an accounting of how much Vegemite they’ve consumed in their lifetime, with those in the top 15% of Vegemite consumption expected to have their access to the program denied.

The cost will be US$100, although the first 1,000 who participate in the trial period of the program will have the fee waived. Australia will join several other countries which participate in Global Entry for its citizens, including the UK, Germany, and Singapore.

• Air Canada is suing Venezuela in a U.S. court in a story that sounds like it was an borne from an international madlib.
• Air Vanuatu is resuming schedule charters as it begins to return to the skies.
• airBaltic is adding wet-leased A320 capacity.
• Allegiant tampered down its expectation for MAX 8 deliveries again.
• Azul will leave those in Fort Lauderdale and Curaçao feeling blue 4x per week beginning December 9.
• BA is ending service to Beijing.
• Canada Jetlines is adding several warm weather destinations from Toronto including: Fort Lauderdale, St Petersburg, Miami, Tulum, Fort de France, and Puerto Plata.
• Cathay Pacific bought a lot of airplanes.
• Delta Flight 112 returned to Boston enroute to Rome earlier this week to make sure it didn’t happen twice. The airline plans to seek compensation from CrowdStrike for the incident.
• Etihad posted a strong earnings report.
• Fly Gangwon exited bankruptcy.
• Frontier will no longer take delivery of the A321XLR.
• GoFirst is being liquidated.
• IndiGo plans to add business class late this year.
• JetBlue does not like the idea of a Delta and SAS codeshare after its proposed tie-up with Air Serbia was denied.
• Korean was a loser in a Russian court which I’m sure was totally fair and reasonable.
• LATAM earned a $146 million Q2 profit.
• LOT is adding three B737 MAXs.
• Nepal Airlines suspended domestic operations.
• Norse flew the first-ever nonstop flight between Norway and Australia.
• Qantas‘ former CEO Alan Joyce took quite a pay cut.
• Ravn Alaska is suspending service to three cities in the Aleutian Islands.
• Rex is keeping is loyalty program open which feels a lot like keeping the toppings out at an ice cream shop when the freezer is broken.
• Scoot is adding two new E190-E2s.
• Singapore closed its lounge in Sydney as part of a plan to upgrade the space.
• Star Alliance CEO Theo Panagiotoulias says managing a worldwide airline alliance is a very challenging job, and that’s before taking into account that one of its main hubs as an alliance is Newark.
• Sun Country earned a profit of nearly $2 million on $254 million gross revenue.
• TAP is the next airline that is the apple of IAG’s eye.
• TransNusa, which apparently is an airline, began flying between Jakarta and Subang.
• Turkish earned a $915 million profit in Q2.
• Wizz Air now expects its A321neoXLR deliveries to begin next year.