Before the bell: Futures up on oil, Verizon's possible deal, retail salesStarting with an aggregate of recent airlines news:
Continental Airlines (NYSE: CAL) said it would cut 3,000 of its 45,000 jobs, about 6.5%, and cut capacity 11% in the fourth quarter. The company will eliminate 67 planes and the company's chief executive and president say they will not take a salary for the rest of this year and will decline bonuses.
Delta Airlines (NYSE: DAL) May traffic rose 4.2% from the year-earlier month to 10.51 billion revenue passenger miles. Delta's May capacity increased 1.5% to 12.67 billion available seat miles. Load factor, or the percentage of seats filled with passengers, in May rose to 82.9% from 80.9%.
US Airways Group Inc. (NYSE: LCC) said its May mainline traffic rose 0.6% to 5.39 billion revenue passenger miles from last year. May mainline capacity was flat at about 6.54 billion available seat miles. Mainline load factor in May rose to 82.3% from 81.9% a year ago. It also said Wednesday it is cutting up to 1,100 more jobs, about 3% of its workforce.
Limited Brands Inc. (NYSE: LTD) May same-store sales fell 6%. Analysts, on average, had expected same-store sales to fall 5.5%, according to Thomson Reuters.
E*Trade Financial Corp. (NASDAQ: ETFC) is adding a mobile application -- the first of its kind -- to Research in Motion's (NASDAQ: RIMM) BlackBerry, giving its account holders the ability to see real-time stock quotes and trade on their phones. Again we see the BlackBerry being considered as a more business application, even Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL)'s iPhone tries to be considered as such as well.
Boeing (NYSE: BA) said it received an order for three 737-900ER jets from the Romanian low-cost carrier Blue Air. The order is list-priced at $238.5 million.
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