Schedule change / flights removed?

My plan in August was to jumpseat on the 1230pm DTW-LAX and buy the family tickets on the evening (around 630pm) flight. Now that evening flight seems to have been removed for August. Just 1x day at 1230om for DTW-LAX.

 

Yup, demand hasn’t come back like they hoped and in some markets has fallen off due to the new upticks in cases. I know they have been cancelling flights in July and have drawn down some of the August flying as well.

 

Hopefully boosting July only to have the demand fall back hasn’t increased our cash burn per day

 

Just did a 5 day stretch, and loads are a tad concerning. But i cant see how 4 million per day loss is accurate...Gotta be way better than that at this point. In March and April we were giving free refunds, flying mostly empty, 1 or 2 pax per flight up until the cancels. Now labor is largely paid for, and at least making some revenue, but in no way is this environment profitable.

That said, fair to assume airlines will make it look as bad as possible to bolster any chance at more government freebies.

 

Finished a 4 day yesterday. Had a low of 109 max of 175 averaged about 150

 

Well to start with we still have a lot of planes parked and it cost money to have them parked somewhere. Also depends on how much they are charging for tickets. If they are only charging $20 even if it’s full that’s not enough to cover gas. Don’t forget we don’t own most our planes so there are payments for those as well. Honestly I’m surprised we aren’t losing more money.


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$20x 150 is $3000. $27 ( half our average ancillary revenue per pax) is $4050. My less than super fuel efficient A321 burned something like 2300 gallons on a pretty average leg today. At $2/ gallon, and it isn’t anything like that, that would be $4600 against $7050. Even spotting really low ticket prices and half our average ancillary revenue we handily covered the cost of grossly exaggerated fuel costs.

But the reality is that we had closer to 180 pax onboard that leg today, and even with some reduced ancillary revenue we probably grossed $10-11000 on the flight. $12000+ if we managed average ancillary revenues.

All that to say that some basic math will put to rest some fears about us covering costs to operate many of our flights.

 

The sad part it’s that demand actually came back and way faster than anticipated. The recent spike in new cases freaked out travelers and cancellations started to mount. If you want to look at the silver lining, what we experienced in
late June/early July it’s a sign that demand can (and will) come back fast too, but unfortunately not for the next few months. That’s why I think furlough numbers will be curbed since the company probably wants to be ready to react quickly. It’s a tread off gamble, but I think in a few months people will be ready to fly again, covid or no covid. Death rate is slowing down. I believe we’re not too far out from seeing the true colors of this pandemic. In the meantime brace for turbulence ahead.

 

Good point I should have done the math so in this case for a flight like the above ($20 x150=3000) the company made $1600 dollars after paying for fuel (4600). But then you have to pay for landing fee/pilots/fa's/and whatever we pay for outsourced gate agents. So *maybe* the company would break even on that flight which is great, but then we still have planes parked that we are paying for. Compared with what a lot of airlines are losing a day 4 million isn't bad, but it's also not great.

 

Im not saying we aren’t losing money, but the $4 million I believe is DEFINITELY outdated. They can’t disclose any financial info to us until they disclose it to the investors, so until the next investor conference call (what have you) we won’t know for sure, but there is almost no way we are still losing $4 million a day.

My understanding was the $4 million a day number was back when we had our whole fleet Parked and flying 56 flts a day. Obviously things have improved drastically from those early dark days.

Last trip I was averaging 35 bags a leg. I don’t know what our checked bag fee is (maybe the price changes on those depending on when you buy them as well), but let’s assume $35. That is $1225. Maybe that is part of the $27 per pax that was factored in above scenario. Either way some flights bag money is nearly covering fuel.

I was in LAX a couple days ago. There were 5 NK birds there and one guy waiting for a gate behind us. T5 packed. Great to see.

Finally, I know there is talk of supposedly mass cancellations of bookings. Not really sure what to believe. ORD sold something like 1,000 seats 24 hours (yesterday - Saturday) for today’s flights.

I start a 3 day tomorrow. I’ll keep track of LF, bags and our fuel costs and see how we did.