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Despite 'Gas Tax Cut', Airlines See Tumbling Traffic, Outsource US Jobs
This wasn't how it was supposed to be? Collapsing crude oil prices - according to the mainstream (Fed-spoonfed) narrative means lower costs for business and 'massive' tax cuts for consumers enabling disposable income to surge. But, American Airlines just announced a 3.4 percentage point plunge in its load factor (ability to fill its planes) in December and while Southwest saw traffic rise, its load factor also fell as passenger revenue per seat tumbled 4-5%. So no extra spending... and now United reports it is looking to outsource 2,000 jobs in a cost-cutting effort (which seems odd given the total collapse of the fuel cost overhead?). Oh well, just keep repeating - crashing oil prices are unambiguously good.
As IBD reports, Consumer disposable income is not being spent on flights...
American said December traffic in revenue passenger miles dipped 0.4% compared with the prior year. Available seat miles, or capacity, gained 3.7%.
Load factor, which measures an airline's ability to fill its planes, hit 80.4%, down 3.4 percentage points from December 2013.
For Q4, American expects passenger revenue per available seat mile (PRASM), a measure of unit revenue, to be flat to down 2%. That suggests weak unit revenue in December.
...
Southwest's traffic rose 2.8% in December while capacity increased 2.9%. Load factor reached 82.7%, down 0.1 percentage point from December '13.
Southwest estimates that its PRASM for December fell in the range of 4% to 5%. But for Q4, PRASM is estimated to have increased 1% to 2% compared with last year.
And then Fortune reports, it appears the utter carnage in the price of fuel is not enough to cut the costs for United...
United Airlines is assessing whether to outsource jobs at airports around the country in a cost-cutting effort that could affect some 2,000 workers.
The Chicago-based carrier, an arm of United Continental, informed employees Monday that jobs up for review included baggage handlers and gate and customer service agents at 28 airports that are not hubs, ranging from Atlanta to Anchorage. It has yet to make any decisions.
The potential outsourcing marks another step the carrier could take to help meet the goal it laid out in 2013 to cut costs by $2 billion annually. United said in an investor update Friday that it expects 2014 unit costs to increase up to 1.4% year-on-year, excluding fuel and other special charges.
The outsourcing review comes on top of plans announced in July to outsource more than 630 jobs.
“We need to ensure that our costs are competitive,” company spokesman Luke Punzenberger said.
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But apart from that, crashing oil prices are awesome... oh wait no they're not anymore...
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Surely you jest........Don't call me Shirley
Gee its almost like no one even WANTS to fly anymore. Its almost like they have made flying a miserable humiliating process where you are groped by idiot government employees for no good reason whatsoever.
Oh wait...
Instead of come fly with us it's come let the TSA grope you.
Endless garbage at the airport, irradiation, gropings, nasty attitides and paranoia.
Oh and God forbid your plane gets confused with an Air Maylasian plane or you are flying anywhere within 2,000 miles of Diego Garcia.
Betcha they were calm as Hindu cows, though:
Tyler Durden: You know why they put oxygen masks on planes?
Narrator: So you can breathe.
Tyler Durden: Oxygen gets you high. In a catastrophic emergency, you're taking giant panicked breaths. Suddenly you become euphoric, docile. You accept your fate. It's all right here. Emergency water landing - 600 miles an hour. Blank faces, calm as Hindu cows.
Airlines haven't reduced ticket prices as fuel costs have fallen.
United Airlines planning to offshore 2,000 jobs?
I thought they'd already done that: every United employee I've ever dealt with acts like they're from a 3rd world country...
I will drive 12+hrs straight before I get on an airliner. Between the TSA, $5 coffee and $4 stale bagels, and the Chinese torture device they call an airplane seat I refuse to subject myself to that much stress, much less pay someone for the pleasure.
I agree completely.
The only problem is; you can't drive to Hawaii...
buy a nice 36 foot older sailboat and take the senic route---
I just wish they'd stay on schedule.
Missing connecting flights is a HUGE pain.
AND
I prefer the "groping/radiating" to the alternative. (Hijacking)
Oh, I forgot, you all think it's just an excuse to extend the dreaded "police state", huh?
All, ALL that terrorist stuff we have seen daily for years now is fake, CIA, false flag, Zionist.........yada, yada.....
There is a small Morraccan army working at Boston Logan.
I want to vacation in Europe, but they can fuck off with current prices over $1000 from the East Coast. Even Carribean islands are wildly over priced. Lower your prices and I'll be back.
The airline industry has been subsidized since day one. Maybe, like the oil industry, their subsidies have been removed.
... and don't believe if the airline says "non-stop flight" ... you'd have to get off somewhere ...
they have agreed to making flying suck dick, i drove to florida and back loving every mile. stocked up on tax free booze in florida and rolled though beautiful smokey mountains home, didnt get gropped once.
Yeah, but just think: you missed out on that wonderful airplane food...
I wonder how the charter outfits are doing....If I was going somewhere fun with a mid-large size group, charter all the way! Frack groping by the undesireables and unwashed...what a bonerkill for a fun trip.
TSA just needs to hire some smokin' ball fondlers and shaft strokers. Maybe KY will donate some lube. Everyone gets a hand job before they get seated. Power tools for the chix. I'd bet that'd stir up a little bidness.
they have made flying a miserable humiliating process where you are groped by idiot government employees for no good reason whatsoever.
that's why i quit flying...in 2009.
Just had that happen over the weekend. Emptied my pockets, took off my shoes and belt, and walked through the detector without a chirp. Three seconds later, it goes off and the TSA guy smiles and says you were just randomly selected for secondary screening. At least the groper wasn't some perverted fat bastard...
big bad bama doesn't have that problem. he plays golf everywhere on the planet. and we pay for it!!
who is the dummy?
Will they cut all the fees they've implemented in order to lure customers back? Doubt it, those fees are as addicting as crack.
How about not treating the passengers like shit? That would seem like a reasonable move.
No shit would accept to be treated like a passenger in the US.
The airlines made a huge mistake when they started charging for checked bags.
Now, to save money, everyone packs 40-pounds of crap into their 20-pound carry-on; drags it slowly down the aisle; smashes you in the knee as they rumble by; climbs all over you while trying to jamb it into the tiny overhead compartment; drops it on your head when it slips; and adds 15-minutes to both the boarding and de-planing time on every flight...
You really they give a shit about customer experience? All data indicate otherwise.
really. it's as though the people are trying to blame falling oil prices for the overall economic downturn, when in truth the downturn is probably more responsible for the falling oil prices. how could cheap oil be bad, except for a few people? and it's still way more expensive than it used to be. and all oil pricing aside, people are getting fed up with air travel through usa airports.
" how could cheap oil be bad"... you might want to google this.
problem is all fixed with forward contracts, cheap oil is not for the bulk consumers but for the banks who either win with their bets or get bailed out when they don't.
"the fuel cost overhead"
Tuesday night accountant's humor.
Ok. Crashing Oil Prices are Unambiguosly good. And I like it like that.
Customer service has become so terrible that flying with almost any American air carrier is like unto experiencing the Middle Passage.
After all of their nickel & diming of customers via xyz fees, and the torrential abuse of passengers at every opportunity, US airlines deserve to go bankrupt as quickly and as miserably as possible. I hope they all fail in epic fashion.
And I'll drink to United being the first one to go down. Figuratively, of course.
They're my first choice, as well.
A growing demographic of po folk means more po folk can only afford to ride the Greyhound.
Disband the TSA and DHS, then airline traffic will takeoff(so to speak.)
Is that a recent airplane photo? I didn't realize ValueJet was still in business.
I thought it was Ozark.
I'm going all in on Air Asia.
Be crashing them into each other for insurance $ blame it on terrorist
Larry 'pull it' Silverstein owns airlines now?
Air fliers going down? Well duhhh. They are all using their extra cash to buy BMW's and Porsche's.
"larry... isn't a stimulus tax cut a green shute " ?
this is me, not shedding a single fucking tear for the airline industry...
"Consumer disposable income is not being spent on flights..."
The Airlines signed the dirty deal with FEDGOV. FEDGOV says.......if youy want immunity from terrorist based lawsuits, let our perverted ball gropers and tit squeezers come in and conduct "security".
So this is what killed air travel. A big collective fuck you to all the airlines.
"Consumer disposable income is not being spent on flights..."
What disposable income?
the ripple effect of the oil business is wider than anyone realizes - this is the initial cut back as things were put on hold - the real game is the first quarter
this country is ready to crater
" (which seems odd given the total collapse of the fuel cost overhead?) ".....
.....I assume airlines are hedged at a large premium to whatever current fuel prices are. Maybe I'm wrong, who knows.
Have you looked at prices? They sure as hell aren't passing on fuel savings.
yes, my point exactly. they are hedged at prices from 3-6-12 months ago not the current spot.
So fewer people are flying? Gee, I wonder why. Maybe if you treat passengers like total shit, they will not wish to take future flights. I have a 90 y.o. father in law (a WW II vet) that at some point I will need to help move, and my first thought is how to keep him from being treated horribly by security the way I saw an old lady be made wretched by the TSA on my last flight last month. Ancient, demented, crippled lady made to get up out of her wheelchair; she had been in comfort; they put her in physical pain and fear (I could see it from her face), the slightly less old ladies who were transporting her could do nothing. What if my FIL needs to have Depends or something??? Are they going to strip search him? If they were so evil to that old lady they would be so evil to a WWII vet. I'm supposed to drive him across the country, WTF???
Yeah, I'm really eager to fly, this makes me so eager to fly anywhere.
CEO BONUS TIME!!
About a month or so ago, I saw that Singapore Aiines had a rather large drop in plane loads, leading them to have some pretty significant fare promotion s from the U.S. to Asia. So it doesn't appear the slowdown in passenger loads is strictly a U.S. carrier issue. the dollar has increased pretty well versus the Sing dollar, so it's not too strange that Sing folks might not want to come to the U.S. and has been pointed out, US pockets for the middle class are tapped out, so that's going to cut into traffic as well. All in all, maybe not a perfect storm, for the airlines, but certainly a storm with strong headwinds.
Now, I understand that one doesn't have much choice nowadays when it comes to consuming most goods and services but one of my top considerations when deciding to contract for said goods and services is whether or not the company I'm transacting with have or is actively outsourcing American jobs; if they are then I will consider other options and if then I find I have no choice, but can live without said good or service, I decline to purchase it, just sayin'.
JUST FIRE EVERYBODY AND GIVE YOURSELF A HUGE BONUS!
We agree on that much! To maintain bonuses at upper management level, simply fire everybody and pay it to yourself in a bonus!
Low load factors indicate mass immigration/one way flights
Perhaps americans fares are too high? I just looked last night and could not believe the fares.
So we booked swa for less than half.
My load factor: Shooting Ropes!
Fuck flying. I have cut my flying on purpose only to what is absolutely necessary (which isn't much).
Why would I want to be irradiated, treated like shit, cavity searched, and pay more than $500 for a sardine-sized seat?
Airlines continue to rape customers on price, and TSA continues to rape customers (literally) - what do you expect?
Go online buy ticket to Europe. For example JFK-VIE = Vienna, Austria. Then switch departing airport, instead of JFK yo start trip in VIE. and see price. If you start trip in US price is almost doubble compare to start trip in Europe. ???
As far as I know, UPS still charges fuel surcharges.
Jobs outsourced to the newly amnestied Illegal Aliens.
FORWARD!!
Not sure what an 'American' airline can off shore, except maybe their customer service/complaint department.
Phillipino air mechanics fixing planes?
Since most reservations are done on-line, Chinese IT people?
Food prep from India?
Lost baggage checkers in South Africa?
North West Airlines, back in the 1990's negotiated a huge deal with teh state of Minnesota. An Airbus maintenance facility would be built up north at the Duluth International Airport, a town suffering heavy industrial jobs losses. In return for hundreds of millions in free money from the state, and city hand over of free property and existing buildings at the airport, NW agreed to take all this money, plus extended tax cuts, and open a large Airbus maintenance facility. Actually it was money spent to move jobs, not create them. Nearly all jobs would be filled by NW mechanics in Minneapolis, they simply moced north to Duluth. The state went ahead due to political pressure from northern legislators. Wanting to bring jobs to Duluth. Under the hundreds of millions in free money act, the NW agreed to employ a certain number of mechanics, maybe 500 or so. But outsourcing was gaining momentum, and no more than 250 ever worked therem and that fell to 150, then sank further. The legislators just ignored the law that demanded 500 jobs in return for millions.
I guess in the end, we paid, as Minnesota tax payers, almost a million dollars a job! Hows that for crony capitalism!
Mechanics now earn under 12 dollars an hour overseas for supervisors, the actual hands on folks are around 10 dollars, which is good money in Turkey. I believe NW signed a big contract with a Turkish firm to service Airbus, and the big facility in Duluth never was anything other than a tax break and free money hand out for NW! End of story!
"I guess in the end, we paid, as Minnesota tax payers, almost a million dollars a job! Hows that for crony capitalism!"
You, and the rest in Minnesota, did not "pay," they, those involved, robbed.
My dad said they did this in the 30/40K Oklahoma town he lives in, but on a smaller scale. Somekind of airport, plane manufacturing thing.
It came out later that nearly the whole upper echelon of the town's pols, crats, and even funcs, were in on the scam with some state, and country pols, and crats. The joke is that the banksters they had at the nexus of things absconded with most of the loot, and no one can say anything because they are all dirty in that corrupt business, and many more, we are sure. LOL
The banksters need to repay us.
That photo... Anyone remember the PSA flight back in '78 that had a run in with the Cessna above a San Diego neighborhood...? Someone snapped a now infamous photo seconds after the collision. Yikes...
A friend of mine flew for the first time in several years in 2014. He came back shaking his head in wonderment. We spent an hour or so over lunch discussing his travel experience, the actual traveling part, not about his destination. It was enthralling, as he is somewhat a sheeple, and therefore had no idea how things have changed.
First thing he mentioned was how the TSA has everyone all bunched up in easy to bomb queues at the airports. He remembers, what we now know to be false-flag ops. (Gladio), the bombings in airports in the 70s and 80s. He said that he figured that someone could kill people just by throwing a couple of small smoke-bomb fireworks and/or M-80 into the middle of the queue and then yelling "bomb." The panic would do about as much damage as a real bomb.
He said that an airline stewardess (Yeah, I said it.) on one of his flights lied to one customer about not having any orange soda, and then made a point of asking the next row if they wanted any orange soda. He said that it was as if she was almost goading the first customer to make a scene so, maybe, she could use some power trip against him. He said that he is still most troubled by that incident.
While returning home, he got by the TSA quicker than expected, and so hung around the "security" area leaning against a pillar watching, and more importantly, listening. He said the "mostly inner-city" TSA thugs spent an "inordinate amount of time" on what he heard one call a "hottie line." Seems when one thug spotted a "hottie" in the main line, and enough of the others concurred about her "hottieness," they would all converge on whatever actual screening line she ended up in. He said that you could actually observe the shift in personnel to the screening line they were targeting at that very moment--It was very noticeable.
He said that he couldn't help but think that if he wanted to get something through "security," he would make sure he had a few hotties with him to act as "Bandits." LOL
He also said that like the local gun and badge thugs, most of any available TSA thugs would go over to a screening line that had a recalcitrant passenger so as to make themselves conspicuous to that passenger. He guesses that it was about some kind of show of force or something. But of course, while they were doing this, all of the other screening lines were then undermanned, at least from what seemed normal. More LOL, and another "Bandit" technique.
Above all, he was most in bewilderment by the sheer pettiness and nickel and dimming of their customers by the airlines. He said that he thinks that the stewardesses must be "bonused" in some way because of how they enforced the most petty of rules so as to make people pay. "Like cops in the sky, except it is a carry-on trap, and not a speed-trap."
He said that coupled with the surliness of the airline employees, the airlines' nickel and diming of their customers, and the nonsense of the TSA, that the when the next downturn came, the airlines would see the bottom drop out very quickly--"Quicker than most, and quicker than in the past."
The banksters need to repay us.
Good, I hope they all go bankrupt and close
Maybe Americans are getting tired of having their privates sexually assaulted under the false pretense of safety and security. Especially, when the clowns doing the screening are filled with criminals, perverts and deviants hand picked for the job by their overseers
If this were your daughter emotionally traumatized after being sexually assaulted to fly I hope you'd stop being a bunch of cowardly f8cks and stand up against your future globalist slave masters. No matter what the consequences. But maybe we can all only expect so much heroism through all the chewing and bleating
Is it time to lower the bar set for expectations of the defenders of Liberty and Freedom? Or drop the bar on our foot?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY3Pt0H4-98
With Gas prices so low better to just drive especially if there are 2 or more. My daughter drove with a friend from ATL to Chicago over the holidays (stops in Indy) and back to ATL for around $110 total. She has a 40 mile to a gallon car and now gets a fill up for appx. $23.00 and with that 450-480 miles. So $55 a person and NO airport hassle, Drive dont Fly.
Reduced load because no more Oil Barons flying across the country to check their rigs.
There must have been millions of seats related to oil and shale.
Bet Big Oil or shale was paying for 30% of those airline seats...and support, staff, travelling poker games, hookers and blow.
Circus off !
Fewer people can afford to fly, and that will be an expanding factor facing the airlines. There are also too many seats in the air, so just like oil, overcapacity will kill profitability for all of them. The Fake Recovery does not lie, and niether do the ever shrinking wages of the formerly called midle class. Serfs don't fly.
we should "out source" obamacare. why stop there. let's out source obama. period. why stop there. let's out source the whole tyrannical u.s govt.
STOP U.S GOVERNMENT RESTRAINT OF TRADE!!! OUT SOURCE OBAMACARE TO IRAN !!!
Outsource the whole stinking government and the Fed. Hire Putin and Ji Jinping, fire Congress, give it a try, they couldn't do any worse.
You couldn't pay me to get on a plane.
Dear multinationals
I have a quick question for you masters of the fucking universe. Who is going to fly on your planes, or buy your cars, eat in your restaurants, buy your books, rent your hotel rooms, if you outsource, computerize, robotize, and drone every fucking job that has the potential to support a middle class income? Oh and I an looking forward to the day when some asswipe programmer comes up with the CEO drone app.
But hey how intelligent does that fucking robot need to be? Not very I would say to replace the world class thinking (sarc) that goes on in corporate and go leadership today.