When it comes to travel metrics--especially airline ones--the "easier" year-over-year comparisons to last fall's dreadful data that everyone expected are starting to roll in. First out of the gate are standard, monthly airline traffic reports for September.
The results are now flooding in. A clear picture is emerging. The traffic is off. The yield is way down. the number is best expressed by AMR's recent results. Traffic off by 8+ percent and total revenues down 20 percent. However, judging by the last few flights I have been on you wouldn't think so. This also seems to be reflected by the airports numbers. So the travel is stabilizing. But as my recent poll shows, we are not going to see the rebound until 2010 at least.
This week the U.S. domestic carriers have been in the throes of the usual first-week-of-the-month traffic and RASM reporting ritual.
And what have we found out from the various press releases full of mind-numbing numbers?
I think Gary Chase, analyst with
Barclays started the week off on the right tone as he wrote, "We think the market was largely ready for numbers as bad as
CAL posted last night, even if we had hoped for better."
Has demand for air travel become as bad as it is going to get? There has been lots of discussion on the subject and lots of data cited to both support and refute an ongoing recovery, but according to a May 18 research note from J.P. Morgan North America Equity Research analyst Jamie Baker, "April data appear to support the now widely accepted view that the pace of demand deterioration continues to slow and may in fact have stopped for some."
