American Airlines lost $269 million in Q3 2026 and now expects a significant full-year loss, even as Delta, Southwest, and United still forecast healthy profits.
Asking for a friend, if ~$10 per share is 'bad', how's under $3? *staring at JBLU* Eh, US Airways bottomed-out at a buck-66 in 2008 before the AA-merger. Ironically, their stock ticker... LCC. (Unrelated, why does this book have 11 chapters?)
When it comes to JetBlow, the only chapter that matter is 7. This airline must die, as hideously as possible.
ORD, I really do not understand your loathing of B6 (or DL), other than maybe a 2nd-City v. NYC-rivalry. Is there a back-story here that we should know about?
No. It's Chicago versus Noo Yawk and the greater Noo Englund area, exacerbated by a comparison in the coverage of the World Series between 2004 and 2005, when the former received nauseatingly comprehensive blanket coverage from the media for a team ending an 86-year curse, but crickets for the latter, my team, ending an 88-year curse. That was the last straw. I also had to live with men from Noo Yawk during my army days, and, frankly, pigs are far more sanitary and much better mannered.
As someone who also hates the Red Sox - I find it weird that this is the comparison you are making, and avoiding the more direct comparison in your own city, which is when the Cubs got way, way more media attention for breaking their curse in 2016 (and the years leading up to it) than the White Sox did.
As far as Boston - well it probably helps that the Red Sox came way closer and had more playoff heartbreak in the intervening years than the White Sox did.
Here's the thing: Sox fans already hate Cub fans. Cub fans already hate Sox fans. This will never change. It was irrelevant to Sox fans that the Cubs won a World Series. We didn't care. I personally ignored the media coverage because I just didn't care. That was a North Side thing. I'm South Side born, bred, and educated. We wouldn't root for them. And those outside the city don't understand. I remember in 2005 I was driving through Kansas City listening to sports radio, and the afternoon host had a weekly feature called Idiot of the Week. His idiot of the week was Cub fans who wouldn't root for the Sox. I wanted to pull over and call in to the station to state that the idiot of the week was him. We didn't want Cub fans rooting for the Sox because there's nothing that we hate more than bandwagon jumpers. Rooting for the other is an act of treason to your team.
We have billboards here: Baseball divides us, Football united us. That's the way it is. That's the way it will always be. We didn't notice that the Cubs made the playoffs this year. We concentrated on the Sox making the playoffs.
And who cares about "heartbreak" for the Dead Sux? You want heartbreak? How about the fact that I turn 62 next month, and I've only seen my team in the World Series once in my life?
You can’t look at just share price and compare. That’s sort of like comparing House prices without considering the number of SF each house has.
Earnings per share is a better comparison, but even that isn’t giving you the whole picture of each company’s financial well being. It’s a very short term focused and rudimentary way to compare companies.
It’s a rough environment and expect the unexpected there’s still more than two years of this Administration to further hurt the economy. That said the AA BOD could have mitigated some of the pain by changing management quite a while ago. Will it take a BK filing for them to “wake up” and replace Isom.
Obviously it's not great, but absent geopolitical fuel costs, we'd all be singing AA's praises right now for reporting a huge amount of profit, and that's with $1B of increased payroll cost over the 9 month comparison window. They seem to be doing an OK job managing their debt - issued a bunch of new EETC debt for the new planes all while paying down other debt. They beat the street expectations for what it's worth. With a strong partnership with Citi, just a completely different boat than, say, B6 is in.
As for Isom, surely his days are numbered. Pieper seems to be mostly driving the ship while getting some extra time to learn the company. Probably good for Pieper long term to have Isom stick around for a little while longer and take the flak, actually.
And all the while they let United and Delta beat them out on price out of their Texas hub... They need to do better at that.
AA's goals under Isom: worsen the customer experience, grow the local network at the expense of global, drive premium revenue into the ground by alienating customers, and lead in loyalty loss so that I can find a seat in any of ORD's Admirals' Clubs. You have to admit he's succeeding at this.
You should eventually try that spiffy SkyClub at Terminal 5, preferably on a flight to LGA or LAX, so you can experience the board-from-the-lounge at M11 (or M14). Get a hot-dog for the ride, too.
I have my choice of five United Clubs and three Admirals' Clubs at ORD. I have a United Club and Admirals' Club at LGA and at LAX. Why should I venture into the Eighth Circle of Hell to attend an overcrowded pile of crap?
US airlines suffer from exorbitant labor costs. COVID was an opportunity for re adjustment, however the federal government had to come to the 'rescue'.
Zero accountability for results among either party in Washington. Not to mention the last couple of brain dead presidents.
This company is in dire need of an institutional investor to give them the "Southwest" treatment. The fact that the Board has allowed this clown show to continue as long as it has is a clear sign that there needs to be a major shakeup on the Board of Directors.
AA has been producing seats below their cost to produce them for years. They are making progress on getting back premium revenue but they continue to exist because they pay their bills and can do so.
Now that the big 4 plus AS have reported, the evidence is present to give a pretty good assessment of the industry and each carrier not just for the 3rd quarter and year to date but also for the 4th quarter and likely well into 2027 given that UA says they expect fuel costs to remain elevated perhaps until the end of 2027.
All airlines are touting how well they are doing w/ increasing revenue but that wouldn't be possible if fuel prices were not as high as they are - which has led to massive fare increases. Still, huge parts of the industry including AA are not profitable and likely will not be for months if not an entire another year or more.
AA continues to add capacity to its system at a faster rate than the rest of the big 4 and is pushing down their non-fuel unit costs - but they cannot fill all those seats so their revenue metrics are below DL and UA.
AS is in the absolute worst positioning trying to do a merger in the midst of the highest fuel prices of the network carriers (B6b is likely to be even higher) and intense competition as they try to roll out international. As much as some want to believe otherwise, AS will likely have to pull back dramatically in order to stay out of chapter 11 if fuel prices don't come down quickly. Their revenue performance as the weakest of the airlines that have reported.
DL clearly remains the industry financial leader and that is largely due to the jet fuel cost benefit they are getting from the refinery as well as the revenue and profits that all refinery operators are seeing. DL is investing its profits into west coast and TPAC growth and they can afford to do alot of things that other airlines cannot do. At the same time, their MRO and cargo revenue is adding hundreds of millions in profits.
UA continues to generate good revenues -but its balance sheet is being hammered by the massive deliveries it is taking and the fuel cost disadvantage it has to AA and WN and esp. DL. UA is by far a weaker carrier relative to itself a year ago and relative to every other big 4 carrier.
WN is seeing really nice revenue improvements so its transition to a legacy-like model is working but they have not been able to translate it into meaningful profits. Like UA, they are benefitting from non-operating transactions.
The Iran war is not hurting AA any worse than anyone else and there is very likely a war of attrition that will play out over the next 18 months or so with the weakest carriers including B6, F9 and perhaps even AS.
AA has reason to hold on; they continue to swim just above or below the surface and right now they are just below the surface but are managing to surface long enough for air for the next lap.