Earnings Preview: Delta Air Lines - Yahoo! Finance

Earnings Preview: Delta Air Lines

Delta Air Lines expected to report 3Q profit and revenue growth on Wednesday

Monday October 18, 2010, 2:40 pm
ATLANTA (AP) -- Delta Air Lines Inc. reports third-quarter results before the market opens Wednesday.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR: Airlines can make money when the right ingredients are in place, and that was true during the third quarter. Fuel prices were basically flat. Airlines are running lean and disciplined operations, driven first by the oil spike of 2008, and then by the recession. Demand is recovering.
But investors will want to know what Delta's next trick is. Its two-year reign as the world's biggest airline is over. Investors will want to hear more about Delta's plans to compete with the new United Continental Holdings over the long run.
Barclays Capital analyst Gary Chase wrote that he expects the fourth quarter to be solid, too, and airlines should be able to generate cash next year. Current airline share prices don't reflect the industry's good prospects for next year, he wrote.
In the short run, investors will look for an update on whether travel demand continues to recover.
WHY IT MATTERS: Delta is still one of the world's biggest airlines, and travel demand is a good indicator of the direction of the economy. That makes it a good bellwether for air travel as well as a good indicator for the strength of the economic recovery.
WHAT'S EXPECTED: Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect Delta to report a profit of 94 cents per share on revenue of $8.82 billion.
LAST YEAR'S QUARTER: Delta lost $161 million, or 19 cents a share. Not counting certain items, it recorded an adjusted profit of $51 million, or 6 cents per share. Revenue was $7.6 billion.

 

Once again, you don't get it. If you actually read my posts, you would understand. I've never said that the simple answer is what's needed, I've said that people who come up with complex explanations as to why simple things cannot be done are the folks that you can properly label as BS'ing. See the difference ACL? Explanations...not answers.

We need professional negotiators because line pilots who attend ALPA negotiating seminars are wrong to put up against management's professional negotiators. I would think that would be self-evident even to you. With regard to your confusion about me referring to complex answers being BS, well, if you can read and remember what I just wrote above, then maybe you won't have to ask the silly question: "Which is it."

How you can conflate the issue of professional negotiators and the value of a complex answer is beyond me. Sometimes your lack of attention to detail is shocking.

Carl

 

Carl;
Many times the explanation is the "answer."

I read you words. You retort is the same to almost everyone on here.


You also make the assumption that because I use Professional Negotiators as an example I am against it.

 

What is the pay during conversion training?

I've read/heard ALV for lineholders or Reserve guarantee for Reserves, 3.15 per day, and 3.00 per day at payrate for the jet being converted into.

Which is it?

Thanks.

 

So, um, where do I go to bid for golden days? I asked yesterday but I think it got swept away with all of last night/today's activity. Apologies if someone did answer and I just missed it. Thanks.

 

Under bids, choose initial bid, then when that screen pops up, I think the last choice is Reserve Golden Days. It will pop up with a list of your X days, and off you go.


Good Luck

 

If it's a full month of training you get the ALV for your category. I'm a bottom 10% reserve guy and I was paid ALV. If it's less than a full month it gets prorated, but I'm not smart enough to explain that piece.

 

I don't know how NW did it but DALPA has always hired professional negotiators to help with all aspects of a new contract. We normally have a entire top labor law firm at our disposal. They go through with the pilot negotiators every step of the way from forming openers to all the counters. There are no actually table negotiations anymore. Its all done by document exchange. Table meetings are normally only to clarify paper concepts where there might be questions. Do you simply want to eliminate all pilot involvement? Not smart in my opinion because non pilots can't understand the value of some issues.

 

You beat me to this. If you look back to about this time last year, I was all for looking in to Professional Negotiators and then it was shown to me that, yep DALPA does that. They do not operate the way we did at my previous airline. The process was explained to me, and why there was a full time Negotiation Committee of pilots, what the benefit of pilot involvement was sans only Professional Negotiators, and why the request of Pro Negotiators had already been fully implemented here at DAL long ago. Made sense too. The talks were different. At my previous airline most contract talks were face to face.
I was able to accept the fact, that what was lacking was the explanation of how the process transpired, not what who or what was part of the process. Simply put, I asked, and was educated on the concern I had.

 

Could be. The ATL C P O publication says ATL is going to see some fleet changes that will make a "new normal." The plan keeps changing, but they promise to pass along information as it is firmed up.

If the 320 comes to Atlanta, I wonder what will become of 737 staffing. The 320 is getting a lot of the flying which used to go very senior on the 737.