Thanks to everyone for their great points of view. I'll be one of AirTran's furloughed FO's, who wanted to stay for a long term career. Therefore, I was trying to gather data about AirTran's long term prospects. Some of you have asked for the reasoning why AirTran may fail. I penned a short thesis for failure below. I would value others opinions on when AirTran may recall pilots (company says 18-24 months), or how you believe AirTran will weather this storm from a financial point of view.
Please note, this is only my opinion so be kind in your rebuttles. I know you are all busy so I'll be as breif as possible.
1. Everyone knows that the high cost of oil is the primary cause of problems. But AirTran's business model was built on low cost oil, and their bussiness environment may not allow them to transform. Yes oil has fluctuated, but given world supply and demand factors, what do you believe the long term trend of oil prices will be.
2. AirTran is a low cost carrier, therefore there is no place to cut corporate costs. We saw all the weakly capitalized companies go out of business almost immediately. In order firm up their balance sheet AirTran has had to shed aircraft, furlough pilots, and ask for wage cuts. I'm not a financial analyst, therefore your guess is as good as mine on how long they can sustain losses.
3. As many have said, they just need to raise fairs! Unfortunately, I believe they won't be able to do this because they're competing against Delta. Delta smells the blood in the water and has the capitilization to out last AirTran.
Some additional info:
-From the WSJ: "
Travelers could benefit from the ongoing face-off between Delta and AirTran over Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport.
The carriers have a longstanding rivalry over their big ATL hubs. And both also have said they need to cut capacity in order to better weather the historically high fuel prices slamming the industry. At the same time, the two airlines are loathe to cede routes to one another..." "AirTran regularly posts traffic growth rates in the teens, though it has been losing money of late. (In fact, earlier this summer, an analyst from UBS said the carrier was one of the
most likely to suffer a cash shortage. )" “We saw particular strength in Florida and on the West Coast in a lot of the leisure destinations,” said AirTran spokesman
Tad Hutcheson, who spoke with the Terminal this week...If fuel were what it was five years ago,” Hutcheson said. 'We’d be minting money.' Profitability doesn’t necessarily follow from impressive traffic growth. The company reported sizzling traffic for the first half of this year, meaning more people are flying on AirTran. But the airline still lost more than $48 million during that period. It’s usually a healthy sign when a carrier boosts traffic and demand, but if customers aren’t paying profitable ticket prices, the airline grows at a loss."
- Finally, a better poll might have been "would you buy AirTran stock at these levels?" The answer to this question may be a truer indication on how you feel AirTran will do over the long haul since you would be risking your hard earned dollars. In comparison, FedEx and UPS are probably great buys at these reduced levels.
Thanks for you inputs.
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