Motorola Xoom launching February 17th at Best Buy (update: priced at $700) -- Engadget

For those of you that prefer Android to iFad

Android's good stuff, but at that price I'd rather have a EVO and a bolt on Fresnel lens. Good enough for the US Navy, good enough for me.

If you see me in the airport with this, yeah, I really am that cheap:

http://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Optix-In...f=pd_sim_hpc_1

Clouds Ahead For Delta In 2011


Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL), the first of the major airline carriers to report fourth quarter earnings, posted a profit compared to a loss in last year's quarter. Delta's earnings missed analyst estimates, and the market took shares down 6% on the miss and fuel cost concerns for 2011.

Fuel Cost Concerns
Delta's chief concern for 2011 is rising fuel costs. With oil prices at their current levels, Delta faces a $1 billion increase in costs for 2011. Delta has already seen a $350 million fuel cost increase thus far for its first quarter. Fuel hedging and more fuel efficient planes are the main strategies to try to offset fuel cost increases, though these are difficult remedies. Oil, approaching $100 a barrel, recently traded at near $98 and is expected to continue to rise.

Delta's Profitable Quarter And Year
2010 featured Delta's first profitable year since 2007, before the recession. Delta earned GAAP net income of $19 million, or 2 cents per diluted share, for the fourth quarter. Excluding charges, its Q4 income was $158 million, or 19 cents per share. Analysts had expected 24 cents. For 2010, excluding charges Delta earned $1.4 billion; with special items net income was $593 million. Last year's fourth quarter loss was $25 million, or a loss of 3 cents per share, while Delta's loss was $1.2 billion for the full year 2009. The industry traffic rebound and higher fares benefited Delta in 2010.

Cost Discipline Pays Off
Airlines, including Delta, have been cutting capacity since the recession to boost efficiency and performance. It's paid off. Overall revenue for the year-over-year quarter increased 14% to $7.79 billion. Passenger revenue increased 15% to $889 million, with 7% higher capacity. Passenger per unit revenue was up 8 percent. Cargo revenue decreased, while other ancillary revenues increased. Fuel costs increased operating costs by $644 million in the year-over-year quarter, although Delta hedged 58% of its fuel.

A Good Year for Airlines
With most of the major airlines expected to report profits for 2010, the industry is expecting 2010 to produce its most profitable year in the last decade. Even American Airlines (NYSE:AMR), which reported a loss, improved. The carriers have managed capacity better, generated higher fares and even stockpiled cash after the disastrous fuel price spike and recession of 2008.

Another major carrier, United Continental (NYSE:UAL), expected not only a revenue rise in its fourth quarter, but also to end the year with a strong cash position of $8.6 billion. Unlike other airlines, United Continental plans to cut capacity in the first quarter. US Airways (NYSE:LCC) and Southwest (NYSE:LUV) are expected to report profits on par with their peers. The industry total could reach nearly $4 billion in profits for 2010.

Expect A Bumpier Flight In 2011
While analysts expect a loss for Delta in its first quarter of 2011, that's due largely to seasonal weakness.There are real challenges for Delta and the industry beyond fuel costs. Revenue and capacity issues loom as well. Delta said it would raise its system capacity 5% to 7% compared to the first quarter last year, but industry observers are concerned about management of operating expenses if carriers try to grow business too quickly. The memory of the difficult decade for Delta and the industry is too fresh for investors to feel comfortable. (To learn more, see Is That Airline Ready For Lift-Off?)
By Greg Sushinsky

Bet the new iPad2 will dominate it, as usual. The entire "pad" industry was laughed at and predicted by almost all pundits and the entire sector to be a non starter. Everyone who ever tried failed and failed hard. That is, until the iPad. Now everyone is market dumping their version as fast as they can, just like what they did with their hillarious copy cat phones.

So raise ticket prices a buck or two, and/or increase ancellary fees and/or progressively migrate away from ever less necessary virtual travel agency clearing houses and insource the selling of more product. In addition to all that, which we appear to be doing, we will continue to see a YOY shift away from insanely high CASM RJ's as well as the agressive parking of gas wasting 9's and significantly lower debt service payments.

We may see increased debt service payments WRT newer narrowbody aircraft later (or sooner?) but in those cases the cost of the fuel savings will more than eclpise the cost of that particular line item debt as fuel continues to soar and the cost of debt continues to remain rediculously low compared to where it should be. Add in more "stimulus" scams at home and abroad as well as overt and hidden subsidies from aircraft manufacturers and it will be a good time to modernize the fleet to realize significant cost savings.

Chicken or an egg? Same Merry-go-Round huh? :rolleyes:

Ok, racked my brain trying to figure this one out (didn't take that long)

Saw a trip in open time for next month, so I tried to process a swap with pot request.
I didn't get the trip, and it went to a senior pilot.
Then the next day I see the trip back in open time with a Q next to it, guessing its an OE.
However I am also seeing the same exact trip on the pilot swap board as a P/U.

I guess it's feasible the trip got picked up then was placed on an OE, but why would a pilot try to list it as a P/U on the swap board.
I mean if he gets displaced off the trip for OE doesn't he get the entire trip credit anyway?

Haven't been a REG kinda guy for long, so I'm just trying to make heads and tails of it all.

From the Investopedia article--

"Greg Sushinsky is a passionate independent investor, who has done his own research, analysis and investing for 20 years. One of his earliest investing memories was when he first saved and bought U.S. Savings Bonds with his own money as a small child. From there, he studied investing on his own and made small stock purchases as he grew as an investor."

"Sushinsky still follows the markets, studies and reads widely in financial literature, and has written over 75 articles on investing. He is also a professional editor, whose work is published extensively in large-circulation magazines, digests and across the internet. In other pursuits, Sushinsky writes fiction and has a university degree in philosophy."

While he's made some valid points, I'm not going to take him too seriously.

Airline CFOs optimistic about profitability in 2011
January 24, 2011


Global airline chief financial officers remain cautiously optimistic about seeing profits return during the next 12 months, according to the International Air Transport Association.

In its quarterly business confidence survey of airline CFOs and heads of cargo, IATA said confidence in profitability during the next 12 months remains positive, but has declined somewhat since the October survey.

Forty-six percent of airline CFOs expect an increase in profits during the next 12 months, compared to 60% when the previous survey was conducted.

Confidence in travel and cargo demand remains strong with 77% expecting increasing passenger volumes and 60% increasing cargo volumes, the report said. However, airline CFOs now expect unit costs to increase significantly with the highest net balance expecting an increase since the July 2008 survey.

IATA said confidence in the ability to raise yields has fallen from the levels reached early last year, particularly for cargo. Only 29% of cargo chiefs now expect an increase in the freight business.

Employment intentions are rising, with 54% expecting to raise employment during the next 12 months, in response to expanding markets and capacity.

Due to higher fuel costs, IATA expects a fall in profits from $15.1 billion last year to $9.1 billion this year.

There will be between 0 and 80 hurricanes this season. And 0 to 80 will make landfall in the United States with somewhere between 0 and 100% of those being category 5.

The problem is investment folks like this use too much canned information. When is fuel not an issue and if fuel costs were decreasing what kind of world we be living in at that moment? Fall of 2008 comes to mind.

And what if we do raise prices and cargo increases and so on? RASM exceeds CASM even while CASM increases?