Originally Posted by
AYLflyer
Well the economy is pretty important for a business, isn't it?
You're also missing my point. No, we haven't been making money for years, but especially this year many people are praising who is in office and that the economy is going to skyrocket and we're all gonna do great, and then within a matter of weeks the narrative became "We need a recession".
We rely on VFR travel, and when you have a worried population who doesn't want to spend money and/or travel to the US for reasons, it directly harms our business. My point is that the current economic climate is not going to help an airline that is trying to recover. JB hasn't done well during the best of times, the assumption was that the economy would grow and that an administration that is more business friendly and historically easier on regulations would make it easier for us to run an airline, instead we're now relying on "hope" to get the company turned around. We haven't had good news in years, and now that we're a year or so into JetForward, we're piling on more bad news.
A couple of points.
- The current administration isn’t doing anything they haven’t promised. Things like tariffs and immigration shift things like the markets and national identity. It’s just that no one reads beyond a headline (this is for both sides of the isle). Tariffs reshape the global economy especially when it affects other nations. I digress on this point.
- JB hasn’t made money in years. This is not a unique problem to JB though. Outside of the legacies and maybe Sunny, no one made money (regionals don’t count here). The point is that the economy affects every industry, just some harder than others, but travel demand was strong. Y’all should’ve made money, but didn’t due to things like the failed merger, engine issues, and an inefficient operation (I guess it’s fixed now?). In the current climate, the economy is still strong, but people are a bit more cautious. Meaning, the legacies are in good shape, but carriers that service hot vacation destinations are suffering.
- You mentioned Europe and Canada. Canada is down a couple of percentages, but the rest of the international markets is holding steady. This is why y’all’s Europe flights are still lucrative. Additionally, a majority of US carrier’s international revenue originate from the US to abroad. Meaning, Americans are still traveling outside of the country for one reason or another.
- Lastly, the bolded sentence above highlights an important distinction. Airlines “trying to recover” usually don’t turn a profit in any economy as it takes capital to correct what needs correcting and to survive. So it doesn’t matter what the economy does as the books were always gonna be in the red. Just a matter of how much in the red. The bigger question would is “how much capital is needed to survive a down turn and fix the company?” This is important because both need to happen so that a profit can be made when the economy comes back up. Is disingenuous to blame the current economy on the lack of profitability at JB.