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The Airline Industry - Big Picture Questions


innerscorecard

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First in my opinion I view almost all airlines as crap businesses.  Extremely high risk sector.  I would just avoid as too difficult.

 

The key to look at is CASM - Cost per available seat mile.  The lower the better. 

The history of the airline industry is that high CASM companies go bankrupt because lower CASM companies expand and kill them.

 

Southwest had very low CASM for a long time and destroyed a lot of players and did very well. 

LUV is higher cost now though relative to some others. 

 

The industry returns are I think in part so bad because it is a fun industry to invest in etc.

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The key to look at is CASM - Cost per available seat mile.  The lower the better.

 

Like all commodities, being the lowest cost provider is the only sustainable advantage. But beware that CASM has limitations. For example, regional versus short haul versus long haul will dramatically skew CASM. So you need to normalize "the mix" if you want to compare airlines.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-14/delta-bargain-hunt-puts-boeing-777-on-used-jet-shopping-list

 

A glut of wide-body models coming off leases is creating an “aircraft bubble,” Chief Executive Officer Richard Anderson said Wednesday. While no deal is imminent, he said Delta repeatedly gets offers to add twin-aisle jetliners such as Boeing Co.’s 777-200 and Airbus Group SE’s A330-200.

 

“The aircraft market is going to be ripe for Delta over the course of the next 12 to 36 months,” Anderson said on a conference call after the airline’s third-quarter earnings report. “Prices are going to get lower.”

 

..

 

Prices for used 777-200ERs are being damped now by models from Malaysian Airline System Bhd, Kenya Airways Ltd. and TransAero Inc. coming back onto the market. The 777 family is Boeing’s best-selling wide-body aircraft.

 

A nine- or 10-year-old 777 now sells for as little as $10 million, and Singapore Airlines Ltd. has dozens of such wide-bodies coming off lease or retiring soon, Anderson said. Companies routinely approach Delta because there are only a handful of carriers in the world capable of taking a dozen or so of the long-haul jets, he said.

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