United’s Busy Day: Adds Three Routes, Releases Q1 Financials
United Airlines announced three new international routes this morning, adding flights for the summer to countries which have reopened to vaccinated travelers. Then several hours later, the airline released its Q1 financial results at the end of the trading day Monday.
Beginning this July, United will offer new service to: Dubrovnik, Croatia (DBV) from Newark 3x weekly starting July 8 along with Athens from Washington/Dulles and Reykjavik from Chicago/O’Hare daily starting July 1. Dubrovnik is a new dot on United’s map, with Athens and Reykjavik giving United customers a second U.S. gateway along with Newark.
The idea here seems to be that any country that’s opening to American travelers will get service from United. In related news, Iran said it allow Yemen to open its borders to Americans immediately, just to test United’s willingness to follow through on this strategy.
On the earnings side, the airline turned to positive cash flow in March despite posting a $1.4 billion loss for the quarter. Total operating revenue was $3.2 billion, a 66% drop from Q1 2019. Cash burn ended up at $9 million per day, an improvement of more than $10 million per day from Q4 2020.
United ended the quarter with $21 billion in liquidity, also known as “a silly amount of cash.” Besides cash, that includes $3 billion worth of Polaris pajamas and amenity kits that remain in storage and an $11 million life-sized recreation of Westeros designed by the network planning team to perform skits to convince Scott Kirby to allow the airline to begin serving Dubrovnik.
JetBlue Receives Regulatory Approval for London
JetBlue was granted regulatory approval from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority early Monday, giving the airline permission to fly transatlantic routes to London while serving Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and blue potato chips to its passengers.
The permit issued by the UK was the first from the country since Brexit. It had to dig out the old paperwork which was unfortunately soiled by a forgotten, greasy bag of chips. It promised JetBlue it will get a better copy when it has time to type up a new one on its latest version of WordPerfect.
With slots secured at Heathrow and regulatory approval received from the United Kingdom, JetBlue is expected to announce its schedule for its flight flights across the pond soon.
France Plans to Relax Border Restrictions
Wine and cheese fans can rest easy tonight with the knowledge France is undergoing discussions to open its borders to Americans as soon as next month. French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday he is hopefully going to launch enhanced travel privileges into France for citizens of non-EU countries – including the United States – provided the travelers have proof of immunization.
The French government is still working out the full details, but they are expected to surrender to the terms of the White House soon enough. Macron said the government is in the final stages of developing the digital vaccine certificate that would be the key to opening the country’s borders up to tourists this summer. Originally the country was going to allow vaccines or testing to enter, but once it realized that requiring a vaccine would bar all children under 16 from entering, it immediately opted only for that option.
France is down to approximately 344 positive cases per day per 100,000 people. The country has distributed about 17 million doses of the vaccine, which equals ~12.7% of the country’s population.
Southwest Will Gladly Give You a Burger on Tuesday if You Pay for Two Today
Southwest Airlines introduced a new scam subscription plan for Rapid Rewards points that appears to be the worst deal since the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees.
At its core, the “best offer” asks you to pay the airline $1,429.92 in cash today. In exchange, you will receive a monthly payment of Rapid Rewards points, that at the end of the year totals 80,000. Rapid Rewards is a revenue-based program, meaning we can do simple math to see exactly what value a Rapid Rewards point has. Following Southwest’s “enhancement” of the program last week, it now takes 78 points for one dollar in fare, giving each point a value of about 1.2 cents per, while this program sells them to you at about 1.79 cents per point, which is a horrendously bad deal.
The airline is so excited that people might actually buy the subscription packages, it’s launching a buy two, get one program during its on-board drink service. In the new program, passengers pay for two premium beverages but are only given one. Spirit and Ryanair are said to be studying both programs very closely.
New Airline Launches on Mars
At 6:46 a.m. EDT this morning, NASA confirmed the operation of an airline on Mars when the Ingenuity Mars helicopter became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet. A poll taken immediately after the announcement showed that 83% of the traveling public would already prefer connecting through Mars than Newark, despite the added flying time, given the opportunity.
The solar powered helicopter became airborne for the first time at 3:34 a.m. EDT, roughly 45 minutes later than planned in the most recent OAG flight schedule. With the delay, NASA offered 5,000 points to those on board the historic flight as compensation. What the points can do is not known as of press time.
The initial flight demonstration was autonomous – piloted by onboard guidance, navigation, and control systems running algorithms developed by NASA in conjunction with three regional jet captains making $18 an hour. The data from the flight was sent to NASA from Mars traveling the hundreds of millions of miles using orbiting satellites and NASA’s Deep Space Network. The satellites were used because the Ingenuity could not get Gogo to connect for anything more than sending an email, despite having the monthly subscription.
NASA named the Martian airfield where the flight took place Wright Brothers Field. Despite seemingly being alone on Mars, when the crew landed their only option for refreshments was a $12 cup of sliced melon and grapes and a $7 bottle of water from the Wright Brothers Field Hudson News location.
Airline Potpourri
- Air Inuit secured a C$28 million contract to operate and maintain the fleet of state-owned power utility company Hydro-Québec.
- Bamboo Airways is exploring opportunities to fly to the United States after reports its chief rival Vietnam Airlines is doing the same. There’s no report as to what Bamboo would do if Vietnam Airlines jumped off a bridge.
- Cebu Pacific is receiving a $250 million investment from the World Bank and equity firm Indigo Partners.
- EgyptAir signed a partnership MOU with Sudan Airways.
- flyDubai announced new seasonal summer routes, growing its network to 78 destinations in 46 countries.
- Green Airways chartered two E190s from German Airways to make its competitors green with envy.
- Gulf Air will begin flying to Tel Aviv from its Manama, Bahrain (BAH) hub on June 3 with twice-weekly flights.
- Lufthansa extended its partnership with Condor through Spring 2022.
- Poste Air Cargo operated its first international cargo flight from its Rome/FCO base to Tel Aviv last week using one of its B737-400F aircraft.
- Silver will begin twice-weekly service between New Orleans and Jacksonville on June 3.
- Singapore plans to resume first class service this June. The airline would like to clarify that you must actually purchase a first class ticket to receive first class service.
- Turkish has further scaled back its current order for the MAX from 63 to 13 firm orders with 40 still on option and ten canceled.
- United Nigeria Airlines is adding two more E175LR aircraft to expand its domestic operation.
Andrew’s Moment of Levity
I usually don’t brag when I go to expensive places, but I just got back from the gas station.