sailingfun

I suspect oil is going to come down just as fast as it went up. We will see what the next 6 months bring.

flyinthrew

WTI is $110ish right now. This airline learned how to make money at that level even with Mad Dogs and CRJ-200s darkening the skies. It’ll be okay.

gloopy

Maybe but that's not a given. What are the seat costs over 50, (reduced)70 and 76ers at various fuel prices?

DL/NW did fine and merged and operated at 160ish oil for a bit, and that was in over a decade ago's dollars. Probably 200ish in today's.

If you're predicting an economy shattering depression then it won't matter much anyway. If its merely a recession with high fuel, post-consolidation-era airlines that are more fuel efficient than ever might benefit from bigger planes over RJ's which is the point for that fleet in the first place.

blue vortex

No, when Northwest and Delta merged oil was about half that —around 80 to 100. All time high was 147. And we didn’t make much money those years, far from “fine.”

Alaska just announced a 5% schedule reduction and Allegiant 10% due to high fuel prices

tennisguru

A 5-10% schedule reduction would actually bring us close to normal staffing levels…

tripled

Let’s wait and see what effect the current scary headlines have on travel demand. It might be less than one imagines.

Also, our fuel surcharge -er, aka baggage fees- will probably rise in the next few months to cover some of the increased fuel costs and that can help insulate this industry from downside financial risks.

Finally, the Ukraine fear can fall just as fast as it rose and demand to get out and about is still pretty high for most markets that our customers will wish to see (conus, Western Europe, Spain, the med, etc). So the future isn’t completely bleak.

Offering more 717 positions might look like a brilliant move in 3 months from now.

JustNarced

During those years we were profitable enough half the year to squeak out small profits. I don't remember the profit sharing in 2013 being that significant and oil prices had already come down quite a bit. 2001 to 2013 really was just a lost decade plus.

Unpredictable. Too many factors for any one person to get it right outside of a SWAG. JP Morgan says $125 this year and $150 the next. Inflation corrected, that's about half of what the peak was in 2009. The banks have basically black listed oil exploration and production under the ESG banner, pipelines are built but not flowing, oil companies are finally profitable and paying off hordes of debt from the past decade. Iran, Venezuela, Iraq and OPEC+ cartel, most of them hate us and especially us shale oil. Plug in sky high oil prices, stagflation leading to a significant reduction in demand and the prices will come right back down. Pricing stability is a delicate balance of inventory. Russia can't back off the gas pedal at this point, Putin would be up for a tribunal and the country itself is staring at a decade of sanctions. If backed into a corner with sanctions, I would guess he will do what Hitler did and (attempt) to go west. Hopefully cooler minds prevail and he "retires."

No one knows.

There is also the capacity limitation which is applicable to almost all the hubs. When a 50-seater is on approach, that is not a 321 being flown by two pilots with 200 passengers and a mail cargo contract landing in its place. I could see 100-seaters being the floor before this is over with. Smaller city folks are going to have to drive unless these ULCC can keep up the twice weekly niche point to point stuff.

Crazy times. come this summer, I just hope all 14,000 of us are here complaining about reroutes, extensions and 737s vs the alternative.

tcco94

How did we go from record breaking green slips in January, most competitive hiring days of all time where even a Delta CJO holds worse than 80% of people accepting, and regional airlines once as the most reliable to slashing growth and begging people to upgrade because they have no pilots to

The Great Depression and oil is going to shatter our industry worse than we could ever imagine

i swear the internet is truly a magical place. It really is unhealthy for some

PilotBases

I don’t buy Allegiant blaming the cuts on oil prices. Anecdotally, from friends over there staffing is very poor, lots of open flying FO side. Seems like a convenient excuse.

tcco94

Yup. This.

just like how Covid suddenly meant the airlines can’t staff for the holidays? We are talking about 5% reductions for a quarter lol