American Finds New Friend in South AAmerica
American Airlines signed a letter of intent to acquire a minority stake in South American ULCC JetSMART in order to codeshare and offer loyalty program benefits for AAdvantage fliers on the South American carrier.
American is looking for a rebound relationship after its breakup with LATAM in South America late in 2019 and found a potential partner in JetSMART. The ULCC is owned by Indigo Partners, the private equity firm that owns several ULCCs including Frontier, Wizz Air, and Volaris.
AA operates to 17 cities in South America, while JetSMART would provide connectivity to the 33 cities it serves with connecting options through six shared airports: Cali, Medellin, and Bogota in Colombia, Lima, Buenos Aires, and Santiago. American’s loyalty program will also now be useful for those in South American who are looking to travel locally.
For more AA’s new pAArtnership with JetSMART, please visit today’s post at CrankyFlier.com.
Avelo Adds Four from Burbank
Avelo Airlines announced the launch of four new routes from its home in Burbank beginning this fall.
The airline will launch twice-weekly service to two destinations in Utah: Provo (PVU) and St. George (SGU) beginning September 17. On September 30, twice-weekly flights to Monterey, CA (MRY) will begin, and lastly, twice-weekly service to Fort Collins, CO (FNL) will launch September 6.
Fort Collins has not had scheduled passenger service since Elite Airways left the airport in October 2016. Elite operated CRJ service between FNL and Chicago/Rockford (RFD) for about a year. Prior to that, Allegiant flew sub-weekly service from FNL to both Las Vegas and Phoenix/Mesa from 2003-2012.
Avelo will join JSX on the Burbank-Monterey route, while Allegiant is the only airline flying to Provo right now. American, Delta, and United serve St. George through their regional operations, but Avelo’s flight will be the only ones to operate from the Los Angeles area.
Spirit Drops $288 Million in Q2
Spirit’s second quarter earnings report was released today and the airline lost $288 million on revenue of $859 million. The revenue figure is a drop of just 15% compared to Q2 2019, and a huge improvement on the $138 million in revenue it earned last year.
Load factor for the second quarter was 84.4%, just a 0.6% drop from 2019 on 5.1% less capacity. Spirit operated 78.3% of its flights on-time, which means on nearly 22% of its flights, a majority of passengers declined to pay an additional $12.99 to operate the flight on-time.
The airline ended the quarter with $2.2 billion in unrestricted cash and cash equivalents. As is standard from Spirit, of its $859 million of revenue in the quarter, $858,600,240 was from fees while the airline hauled in just $399,760 in airfare.
Allegiant, Sun Country Also Release Earnings
It’s ULCC earnings day, with Allegiant announcing a $95 million profit* and Sun Country showing a profit* of $52 million. With both airlines, the profit comes with an asterisk because 1.) never trust accountants 2.) a profit only appears when adding in federal government PSP funds.
Allegiant reeled in $472 million in revenue for the quarter, just a 4% drop from 2019 and a 254% increase from a year ago. Allegiant operated with a load factor of 70.8% for Q2, a 16% increase from the year’s first three months.
Sun Country earned $149 million in operating revenue for Q2, a 321% increase from a year ago. During the quarter the airline grew its ASMs by 5% from Q1, but it was still down 17% compared to Q2 2019. Allegiant earned $29 million from its charter service — a 12% increase from last quarter — but still down from 2019 due casino flying still not having recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
Allegiant ended the quarter with $1.2 billion cash and cash equivalents on-hand, a step-up from the $728 million it had on March 31, with most of the new revenue coming from the airline cashing a huge futures bet from January for the Milwaukee Bucks to win the NBA Championship. Sun Country closed Q2 with just $311 million cash on-hand, forcing it to ask employees to donate any loose change to the company at the end of each workday.
Air Canada Adds from Quebec City
Air Canada announced two new destinations from Quebec City (YQB) along with increased frequencies from YQB to Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
Orlando and Fort Lauderdale will be added to Air Canada’s schedule from YQB beginning November 19 for FLL and December 17 for MCO. The flights to Fort Lauderdale will operate 4x-weekly while Orlando will be just once per week. Both flights will come with complimentary sunscreen distributed on-board to protect the traditionally pasty residents of Quebec from the harsh Florida sun. The airline will also resume its service from Quebec City to Cancun and Punta Cana. Both destinations will see twice-weekly flights, with Cancun resuming December 4 and Punta Cana on December 5. These routes, and all Air Canada flights to and from YQB, are operated by Air Canada Rouge on the airline’s A319 aircraft.
At the end of the release, the airline says its new refund policy will apply to all tickets purchased. The new refund policy does differ from the old refund policy in that it claims to be an actual refund policy and not a ruse designed to keep your money from you. We’ll see.
- Allegiant will receive ten A320 aircraft through a lease agreement with Air Lease Corporation with delivery scheduled to take place this fall through next summer.
- American is finally, mercifully returning mediocre, overcooked, bland hot meals to its first class cabin on domestic flights. We did it, America.
- Condor announced an order for 16 A330-900 aircraft with delivery expected to begin next fall. There’s no sign that the order is tied to the fact that the EU re-approved €525 million in state aid to the airline.
- Norwegian issued 233,550,000 new shares to creditors that are likely very valuable considering the airline files for bankruptcy roughly once every six weeks.
- Qantas will introduce a vaccination passport for international flights via a digital health app. It expects to launch the app when the airline returns to international flying sometime in the next decade.
- Singapore posted a $320 million loss for the financial quarter ending June 30.
- Spirit is the first U.S. airline to announce it will fly to the new Palmerola International Airport. The airport, located approximately 50 miles from the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa is scheduled to open later this year. Spirit will fly daily from Fort Lauderdale and Houston/Bush with 4x-weekly flights from Miami. Passengers will be responsible for a mandatory $11.99 new airport fee to be paid at booking.
- United will launch pre-order meals, snacks, and beverages up to five days before travel via its app today. The pre-order will apply to select flights and likely won’t be the one you’re on.
What’s the best way to watch a fly-fishing tournament?
A live stream.