October 27, 2020

Oops, Our Bad: In Monday’s Cranky Daily, we reported that Ryanair would be flying a cargo route from China to Pakistan on behalf of the Daily’s official airline — Pakistan International Airlines. The article we used as a source was wrong — but it was close. It’s not Ryanair that’s doing the flying on behalf of PIA, it’s Pakistani-based Rayyan Air, which, as far as we know, has actual pilots flying its planes.

JetBlue’s Q3 Earnings Beat Expectations

1 JetBlue released its Q3 earnings report on Tuesday morning, reporting a net loss of $393 million for the three months ending September 30. That loss comes out to a $6.1 million cash burn per day, which is better than the airline’s target of $7-9 million per day.

Revenues on the quarter were $492 million, a drop of 76% from Q3 a year ago. JetBlue was able to drop its expenses 45% from 2019 down to “just” $1 billion, but nowhere even remotely near enough to break even or turn a profit for the quarter. JetBlue expects to reduce its expenses further in Q4 and is hoping for an average daily cash burn between $4 and 6 million.

The airline also disclosed in its earnings report that it is delaying delivery of seven A321LR jets that it plans to use for service to Europe. Despite the the deferrals, JetBlue is still taking delivery of three A321LRs next year with three more coming in 2022, enough to begin service from Boston & New York to London.

During the quarter, JetBlue repaid $95 million worth of debt and lease payments on aircraft and drew $114 million from the CARES Act loan fund. The airline ends the quarter with $3.1 billion in cash reserves, along with 4.2 million gallons of Dunkin Donuts coffee and 2.1 million Terra blue chips.


ANA Plans New Airline

2 ANA, the second largest carrier in Japan, is planning to launch a new airline — its third — in 2022. The airline to be named later will be based around the airline’s Air Japan charter service and will be a hybrid model, somewhere between ANA’s full-service offerings and its LCC subsidiary, Peach. Today’s Peach was a merger between Peach and Vanilla Air, back when ANA briefly thought fewer airlines was a good idea. Now it’s gone back to normal.

The new airline will fly an all Boeing 787 fleet with two classes, economy and a premium class, but it’s yet to be determined if it will be a business class product or premium economy.

The airline will focus on “Asian growth markets” where it will fly medium-length routes from Tokyo throughout Southeast Asia and Oceania. ANA wants to differentiate the product from its current offerings as well as those at Peach. Because of this, it’s expected that it’ll pick a new name that isn’t confusing for customers. Some names it is considering for the new airline are: Nectarine, Papaya, Apricot, and Not ANA.


Hawaiian Drops $97 Million in Q3 Earnings Report

3 Hawaiian Airlines also released its Q3 earnings report on Tuesday with the airline posting a loss of $97 million on gross revenue of $76 million.

The airline reduced its workforce by 2,400 employees during Q3, nearly 2,100 of which were voluntary departures. To increase its liquidity, Hawaiian raised $114 million through the sale and leaseback of two aircraft and accepted $45 million from the CARES Act.

Hawaiian is limiting capacity on its flights to 70% through December 15. With the state of Hawai’i launching its pre-travel testing program earlier this month, Hawaiian is hopeful that some tourism will return to the islands, helping push its numbers up from the bottom. Hawaiian expects to have about 30% of the capacity it had for Q4 a year ago.

The airline also reached an agreement with Boeing to delay the delivery of 10 787-9s on order, with the first coming in 2022.

Hawaiian ends the quarter with $979 million in cash on-hand. Hawaiian is using much its cash reserves to hedge on saliva futures. It’s hoping that all the pre-flight Covid tests it’s collecting in the coming months will turn into found money by the way of used spit. The airline declined to comment directly, but through a statement told us “It’s 2020, anything can happen.”


EasyJet Earns $400 Million Through Sale & Leaseback

4 EasyJet increased its liquidity by $400 million after completing a sale & leaseback on nine of its Airbus aircraft in two separate transactions.

It first sold five Airbus A320s for $191 million and will lease them back for an average of 117 months (just shy of 10 years) at a total lease price of just above $160 million. In a second transaction, easyJet flipped another four A320’s for $207.5 million, with an average lease length of 116 months and a total bill of $141 million.

The sale of the nine aircraft leaves easyJet with 44% of its fleet — 152 total planes — owned by the airline. It will continue to explore sale & leaseback options for its 152 remaining planes while simultaneously exploring new ways to drive revenue on its aircraft, including the possible sale of advertising in the cargo hold for any stowaways that might be on board.


Delta Flight Over Atlantic Canada Forced to Divert Due to Colorado Wildfires

5 Delta Flight 30 from Atlanta to London/Heathrow on October 22 was forced to divert to St. John’s Airport (YYT) after it reported smoke from Colorado’s wildfires entered both the cockpit and the passenger cabin.

Despite the fires coming from Colorado — more than 2,000 miles away — the Delta flight was not the only aircraft in the area to report smoke in the cabin to Canadian ATC. The smoke from the fires was stuck in the jet stream, rocketing towards the East Coast where they came into contact with the eastbound transatlantic flight.

The aircraft stayed on the ground for about three hours while it was checked for fire anywhere on board and then was cleared to continue on to London. While in Canada, passengers subsisted on Biscoff cookies from the flight crew and overwhelming politeness from the Canadian authorities that met the plane. 


Airline Potpourri

  • airBaltic began its winter schedule this week, serving 40 destinations from its Riga hub.
  • Alliance Airlines first E190 aircraft has finished being painted in Costa Rica and is about to begin the multi-hop journey to its new home in Australia.
  • Emirates first A380, which entered service 12 years ago, took its final flight into retirement from Dubai to Tarbes (TDE) in France.
  • Finnair operated the world’s first ATR-72 for passenger service 31 years ago today.
  • Lufthansa has six Boeing 747-400 aircraft stuck at Twente Airport (ENS) in The Netherlands. The original plan was for the aircraft to be dismantled, but now that Lufthansa wants them back, the airport does not have the proper clearance for the heavy aircraft to depart. Airport authorities are working with the Dutch Aviation Authority to attempt to rectify the issue.
  • SkyWest COO Mike Thompson announced on Monday that he would be retiring after 20 years with the airline.
  • Vistara will begin 2x-weekly service between Delhi and Dhaka, Bangladesh (DAC) on November 5.

Andrew’s Moment of Levity

I’ve noticed that Lance is a pretty uncommon names these days. But back in medieval times, people sure were named Lance a lot.