Monday, United Airlines (UAUA) announced that its December traffic matched last year's traffic, but that planes were more crowded. Confused? UAUA had fewer flights this year compared to a year ago, so matching traffic from last year meant that the planes had more passengers.

The air carrier announced that paying passengers flew 9.21 billion miles last month and capacity shrank to 11.24 billion available seat miles from 11.60 billion in December 2008. All this totaled up to average occupancy of 81.9%, up from 79.4% a year earlier. Average occupancy for the year increased to 81.2% from 80.4%. Taking regional operations out of the equation, average occupancy on UAUA flights came in at 83%, up from 79.9% in the prior year.

Continue reading United Airlines Sees Flat Traffic in December

United Airlines Sees Flat Traffic in December originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Middle-class air travel: What happened to it?

Middle-class air travel: What happened to it? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 28 Jun 2007 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

JetBlue Airways Corp. (Nasdaq:JBLU) is getting beaten up in the press because passengers were left stranded for hours on planes that never took off from their runways because of the snow storm that's pounded the Mid-Atlantic region.

About 10 flights were "significantly delayed" with passengers aboard them at the airline's home base at John F. Kennedy International Airport, the company said. More than 250 out of 505 flights were canceled. The media is reporting horror stories of honeymoons delayed, sweltering cabins and unpleasant bathrooms.

Responding to the outrage, JetBlue called the delays "unacceptable" and offered a full refund and a free roundtrip ticket to customers delayed onboard any aircraft for more than three hours. That seems to be more than fair compensation to passengers who shouldn't have expected that flying would be that fun during bad weather.

I'm sure JetBlue, a Wall Street darling, is sincerely sorry for upsetting people and should find ways to prevent this from happening.Today's bad publicity would have been much worse if the company hadn't acted quickly and decisively to respond to the criticism. Other companies should take note.

Lucky for JetBlue shareholders, there was some good news today as well. Goldman Sachs upgraded the stock from neutral to buy. The shares rose almost 4 percent., indicating that Wall Street is expecting the storm of bad publicity to blow over fast.

JetBlue's critics should take a chill pill originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 15 Feb 2007 11:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.