United Airlines  reported a decline in customer cancellations and a rise in demand for the rest of the second quarter. The air carrier’s gross bookings fell more than -95% from a year ago in April, according to its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. While customer cancellation rates touched record highs in April, United mentioned that as of May 18, the company has seen a reduction in customer cancellation rates and a “moderate improvement” in demand for domestic and some international routes for the remainder of the second quarter. “The company plans to continue to proactively evaluate and cancel flights on a rolling 60-day basis until it sees signs of a recovery in demand,” United stated.

Southwest Airlines  reported improved demand and load factor in May - according to a regulatory filing. The airline mentioned, in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, that its operating revenue for April declined 90% to 95% and load factor was about 8% due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on air travel. However, the company said it experienced "modest improvement" in passenger demand, bookings and trip cancellations in May, leading to net positive bookings through May 18. Southwest expects May operating revenue to fall 85% to 90% and estimates load factor to be 25% to 30%, compared with previous outlook for a 90%-to-95% decline in operating revenue and load factor of 5% to 10%. Southwest continues to expect its average daily core cash spending to be in the range of $30 million to $35 million in the second quarter of 2020.For June, it projects its daily cash burn rate to be “in the low-$20 million range.”

United Airlines got a rating upgrade from an Evercore ISI analyst. Analyst Duane Pfennigwerth raised rating on the airline stock to outperform from in-line.Pfennigwerth also boosted his price target for the shares to $125, from $105. Pfennigwerth cited United shares’ "significant valuation" discount in comparison with its peers, combined with a potential  improvement in longer-term co-brand credit card economics and Evercore ISI’s outlook of improved global GDP growth in 2020.

American Airlines (NYSE: AAL) reported earnings on October 24 and the company beat on the top line, but missed on the bottom line.The stock jumped 3.96% after the report. Despite the optimistic report, the stock could face some headwinds in the coming weeks as there is potential resistance from two different sources just overhead.

Delta Airlines Inc. reported  higher-than-expected third quarter earnings, while its revenues matched expectations.  The airline’s adjusted earnings for the three months ending in September increased +29% year-over-year to $2.32 per share - 5 cents ahead of the Street consensus forecast. Net revenues rose +6.5% to $12.6 billion, largely in line with analysts' forecasts. Delta expects its current quarter earnings to range between $1.20 and $1.50 per share, and projects revenues to grow by more than +5% from the prior year quarter. Looking farther ahead, the company predicts that fiscal full-year 2019 earnings would range between $6.75 and $7.25 per share.It expects and a full-year pre-tax profit margin improvement of between 14.5% and 16.5% for the year. Separately, Delta also revealed that it is expanding its workforce this year and next by 12,000 as it seeks to expand operations.

Over the last eight months a trend channel has formed on Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL).The channel is very well defined and the lower rail connects the lows for 2019 while the parallel upper rail connects the highs from April and July.

Delta Air Lines boosted its guidance for second-quarter revenue and earnings. The airline raised its second-quarter-earnings forecast to a range of between $2.25 and $2.35 per share, up from its prior guidance of $2.05 to $2.35 a share. Delta also lifted its guidance on second-quarter revenue growth to between 8% and 8.5%, compared to its earlier guidance of between 6% and 8%. The carrier’s total load factor -  a key profitability metric for airlines - increased to 90.4% in June from 88.5%, as domestic load factor rose to 90.9% from 88%, and international load factor climbed to 89.5% from 89.4%.Total air traffic for Delta increased 6.2% to 22.77 billion revenue passenger miles, while capacity rose 4% to 25.19 billion available seat miles.

I cited a downward sloped trend line, a bearish crossover from the daily stochastic readings, and a bearish signal from the Tickeron Trend Prediction Engine as the reasons for the bearish posture. The stock was trading just under $34 at the time of that blog entry and it would eventually fall to $27.This signal calls for a decline of at least 4% over the next month. American’s fundamentals are part of the reason for the downward trend.

The order is likely to include conditions to protect competition and allow for government oversight of the venture. Earlier in 2016 during the Obama administration, the same application intended to cover U.S, Australia, and New Zealand was rejected over opposition from rival carriers like Hawaiian Airlines Inc and JetBlue Airways Corp (JBLU). But this time the airlines have made a compelling case that included strong arguments in favor of coordination of price and schedules and unlocking of up to $310 million annually in consumer benefits.The application even threatened to cancel services, between Sydney and Dallas for Qantas and Los Angeles, Sydney and Auckland for American Airlines, if it was rejected. The revised application also factored in the code sharing facility with other carriers, a process in which multiple publish and advertise a single flight under their own airline number.

In somewhat of paired possibility, There are bearish signs surfacing on American Airlines (Nasdaq: AAL).Sales have only grown at a rate of 4% per year over the last three years and the profit margin is a paltry 6.3%.

System-wide ticketing shutdowns hit major US airlines earlier this week, but everything appears to be back on track now. The problem arose mainly over airlines’ online system of printing tickets and making reservations. But a source close to the matter confirmed that the problem has now been addressed and online booking and printing are back to normal. Some of the airlines affected by the outage include American Airlines (AAL), Alaska Air (ALK), WestJet (WJAFF), and JetBlue (JBLU). Both American Airlines and Alaska Air expressed regret on Twitter and also confirmed that the technical issue has been solved in the fastest amount of time possible, with no major impact on flights.

But it was still higher than the prior year period’s $9.03 billion. Shaken by recent crashes of Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircrafts flown by Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines respectively, United said earlier this week that it was canceling MAX flights through early July.United has 14 737 MAX 9 jets in its fleet, not the MAX 8 variant. United reiterated its full-year earnings guidance of the range $10 to $12 per share for 2019, which is higher than current FactSet consensus estimates of $11.09 a share.

Germany’s biggest airline Lufthansa posted a loss for first three months of the year, hurt by rising fuel cost and overcapacity in Europe. Read More...

Even though many airlines have been cancelling their Boeing Max 737 orders following two fatal crashes, Alaska Air seems to be moving in the opposite direction, having doubled its orders despite the grounded situation of the aircraft. Following the merger of Alaska Airlines and Virgin America in 2016, Alaska's management contemplated whether to keep Airbus planes or replace them with Boeing 737s – with the expectation of making a final call by end of 2017.So, Alaska Air chose different fleet types - Alaska flew only Boeing 737s while Virgin America used Airbus A320-family planes. There are two main reasons why this decision is crucial.

United Airlines (Nasdaq: UAL) has been trending lower since the beginning of December and is one of the few stocks that hasn’t really gained much ground in 2019.The indicators did make a bearish crossover on April 9. The Tickeron AI Trend Prediction tool generated a bearish signal for United on April 8 with a confidence level of 67%.

Delta Air Lines' first quarter results beat analysts’ estimates. The airline raked in earnings of 96 cents a share on an adjusted basis, compared to analysts’ expectations of 90 cents (based on Refinitiv survey).Revenue for the quarter came in at $10.47 billion, surpassing estimates of $10.42 billion. President Glen Hauenstein mentioned the company’s “customer-focused commercial initiatives” as a strong reason behind customer loyalty and revenue. Delta could avoid the fallout from the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX jets, which have forced other carriers to cancel flights and switch to other types of aircrafts. Hauenstein said that the company now expects full-year revenue growth of 5% to 7%, which is an upward revision from its prior projection.

Delta reported 30% profit growth during the first quarter, with the Atlanta carrier earning $730 million, or $1.09 per share, for the quarter.A year earlier it earned $557 million, or 79 cents per share. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains, came to 96 cents per share.

However, full-service carrier Hong Kong Airlines is not part of the deal. The acquisition came after Cathay’s prolonged desire to gain foothold in the budget travel market.For this, Cathay intends to continue operating HK Express as a standalone carrier using a low-cost business model.

American Airlines is cancelling 90 flights per day through April 24 as a result of the grounding of the Boeing 737 Max aircraft. Read More...

The result was nearly 40 canceled flights. The airline recently embarked on an interior remodeling project of its Boeing 737-800 called ‘Project Oasis’ that would add more seats, more power sockets and bigger overhead bins in order to increase revenue for each flight.AAL is also one of the many airlines who had recently adopted this strategy to enhance revenue. The remodeling was done by a third party vendor called Everett, a Washington-based Aviation Technical Services licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration.