Bts Releases 4q04 Airline Financials

[BoeingBoy]

Fourth Quarter 2003 Airline Financial Data; Regional Passenger Airlines Report Highest Rate of Domestic Profit

Monday, May 17, 2004 - The seven largest regional airlines had the highest domestic operating margins ― an industry measure of profitability ― of any carrier groups during the fourth quarter of 2003, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) of the U.S. Department of Transportation reported today in a release of preliminary data.

Report

Jim

ps - Thread title should say 4Q03, not 4Q04....

 

[BoeingBoy]

Cliff notes version for US Airways...

2nd best domestic operating margin (-4.8%) of network carriers.

Highest RASM (15.2 cents) of network carriers.

Highest domestic CASM (15.9 cents) of network carriers.

Highest domestic yield (14.8 cents) of network carriers.

Jim

ps - just noticed that I put 4Q04 in thread title - should be 4Q03. Sorry.

 

[funguy2]

BoeingBoy:

The numbers reported by BTS appear to be US Airways Group numbers, and not US Airways mainline numbers, as we know CASM tends to be around 12-13cents for mainline. I am looking for some data to support that, but I haven't found it yet.

Any comments on that?

 

[ringmaruf]

I believe that they're US Airways mainline numbers, and not group numbers. The thing to note is that they're *domestic* numbers. The international flights with the much longer stage lengths obviously have a significantly lower CASM.

 

[funguy2]

Excellent point ringmaruf... I did not consider that...

 

[BoeingBoy]

funguy2,

I haven't dug into the raw data to see if the W/O'ed are included or are separate (like Comair or Eagle, just not big enough to make the listing). The raw data is available for download here. The data is listed as Schedule P-12 and includes info for all carriers with annual operating revenues of $20 million or more.

My guess is that it's including the W/O'ed since the CASM seems high for just mainline and I'm not sure if international ops are a big enough chunk of ASM's to bring the CASM down to what was reported in the companies 4Q results (about 11.7 cents IIRC).

Jim

 

[Bear96]

The international flights with the much longer stage lengths obviously have a significantly lower CASM.

... along with a correspondingly lower RASM.

 

[BoeingBoy]

funguy2,

Just checked the raw data and none of the W/O'ed report separately, so this must be Groups numbers - domestic, that is.

Jim

 

[funguy2]

Thanks Boeing Boy! Those numbers seemed a little bit higher than reported, so that makes sense.

That seems to make comparisons to other airlines tough, since AMR, CAL, DAL, all have their "Express" separated out while US Airways Group would seem to be mixed (WO's incl, non-WO are a question mark?)

But I guess its interesting to note that from 4Q02 to 4Q03, domestic CASM increased, according to this. That doesn't jive with other reports of a slight decrease (about 1.5cents as I have noted before), but certainly does support the theory that employee concessions are not gaining the company much ground in the quest to reduce CASM...

 

[BoeingBoy]

funguy2,

It does raise an interesting point....

I read somewhere that in 2003 1 out of 4 of our passengers rode express for part of their journey and 1 of 8 rode express for their entire journey. As express grows, those numbers will only grow too. When competing with WN, B6, and AirTran (who have no express), what does our "real" domestic CASM say about our competitiveness?

Jim

 

[funguy2]

Good point...

(I think I edited my post while you were posting!)