The United Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 plane lands at San Francisco International Airport on March 13, 2019 in Burlingame, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
US airlines are laying the groundwork for a return trip that looks like months, if not years.
Some carriers buy new planes, while others train pilots and even add staff. The decisions they are making now will affect how they will be positioned to capitalize on a possible recovery of air travel.
Certainly, American airlines are still struggling, losing $ 150 million a day, said Nick Calio, CEO of Airlines for America, an industry group that represents United Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and others. carriers. US airlines lost more than $ 35 billion, combined, last year, and passenger numbers fell by more than 60 percent from 2019 to about 370 million, the lowest since 1984, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
“We hope to reach a tie by the end of the year,” Calio told a House subcommittee on Tuesday at a hearing on the industry’s recovery prospects.
Capacity has dropped by half compared to last year, while passenger traffic is still less than over 60%, the industry group said.
But with the rise in vaccinations and new Covid-19 infections, which have peaked since early January, airlines are starting to see recovery sparks. The chamber approved a $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus aid package last week, which included a third round of $ 14 billion in federal wage aid for airlines that will help mitigate the blow of the first half of the year. if he passes the Senate.
Signs of thawing
Discounted carriers such as Spirit Airlines and Allegiant Travel Co. they were the most optimistic. Spirit plans to start training new pilots and flight attendants this month for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic.
Their business models have focused on price-sensitive domestic travel, even before the pandemic, which performed better than international and business travel in the past year. These two segments, sometimes overlapping, were a mainstay of the major airlines in the network before Covid-19 spread around the world, causing entry bans, quarantine orders and business travel breaks.
But even large airlines, which have been forced to reimagine their pandemic business, see some bright spots.
“Demand for the spring break has been more robust than we expected,” Ankit Gupta, United’s vice president of networking and program planning, said in an interview. “Summer booking models are looking up.”
Network planners, such as Gupta, have played an even more crucial role for airlines in the last year, as they need to balance by keeping airline costs low while stepping up services where demand pockets increase. The difficulty of the job is that travelers book closer to their travel dates due to so many uncertainties in the pandemic.
Spring training
United said on Monday it was lifting its order for Boeing 737 Max aircraft. The company did not disclose how much it paid, but the airline consulting firm Ascend by Cirium said Max 9 planes are valued at $ 45.5 million each, down about 8% from early 2019.
United’s commercial director, Andrew Nocella, told staff that the acquisition “helps us position ourselves to meet the demand we expect to see in 2022 and 2023 and puts us on the path to more opportunities for our employees in the future.” .
Delta President Glen Hauenstein echoed Gupta’s optimistic sentiment on Monday, saying at a conference in Raymond James that since two weeks ago, the airline has seen a significant increase in demand for short-term travel. this summer.
Delta said on Friday that it wants all about 1,700 pilots who did not return to work until October. In January, the Atlanta carrier targeted the return of only 400 of them.
The return will not be immediate, with travel restrictions for longer journeys expected to persist until more people are vaccinated. Airlines for America estimate that it will take until 2023 or 2024 to return to 2019 passenger volume.
John Laughter, Delta’s vice president of flight operations, told pilots on Friday in a note that the carrier was “preparing to return to 2019 flight levels by the summer of 2023.” He noted that “customers will dictate the path to our recovery.”