A Couple of Thoughts on September Airline Results

A couple of things caught my eye as I looked at the September and year to date results rolling in from the airlines. See my results extravaganza here

Overall capacity growth looks fairly controlled, load factors looked better as did revenue generating traffic.

Delta's results smell like a carrier still struggling with recovery I'll take that back. Bankrupt Northwest and Delta have reduced capacity but revenue generating traffic has fallen to a lesser degree and load factors have improved some. I think those are steps in the right direction.

Latin America figured heavily in the improved numbers at United, a region that is a traditional American Airlines stronghold.

JetBlue's continued expansion shows in its numbers as capacity (ASM) grew faster than traffic (RPM)

Southwest's numbers continue to look healthy

Frontier's numbers for September were a little off, YTD doesn't look bad but their shares took a beating on Wall Street yesterday as they significantly reduced their 2nd quarter earnings per share forecast. They blame the foiled terrorist bombing plot. Cutting your earnings forecast from 10 cents (some analysts had it as high as 18 cents) to 1 to 5 cents makes me wonder if something more is at work here.

More later as I continue to absorb the info.