In SEA.

Aug 20, 2002
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www.usaviation.com
Delta seems to be relentless, as AS is reallocating a/c to bolster Sea, while deferring A/C orders to later dates. While this is a prudent move by AS, it shows that DL is really having a More negative effect on AS, than most people might have initially imagined !
 
NHBB. Im not sure its DL negative affects. Remember AS is in process of wrapping up their merger w VA and reallocating aircraft to routes where demand matches w aircraft etc
 
And, the stock markets seem to like what AS is doing. Alaska stock closed Friday at $61/share. Among the majors, only United closed higher.

UAL $71/shr
DAL 55.87/shr
LUV 52.86/shr
AAL 44.91

Not judgin'. Just sayin'.
 
And, the stock markets seem to like what AS is doing. Alaska stock closed Friday at $61/share. Among the majors, only United closed higher.

UAL $71/shr
DAL 55.87/shr
LUV 52.86/shr
AAL 44.91

Not judgin'. Just sayin'.

Jim, nominal share prices don't mean much of anything. Any company's board can elect to do a share split (or reverse) as an administrative action which would just multiple (or divide) the outstanding share county by the requisite factor.

UAL: PE 9.0; MKT CAP $20 billion
DAL: PE 8.9; MKT CAP $39.2 billion
LUV: PE 11.5; MKT CAP $30.6 billion
AAL: PE 11.7; MKT CAP $21 billion
ALK: PE 11.4; MKT CAP $7.6 billion

*PE is forward consensus earnings per share/share-price.

Marketcap is closing share price * number of shares outstanding. Although UA's share price is higher than DL, UA doesn't have nearly as many shares outstanding.

Josh
 
Analyze it all you want with your finance department statistics and comparisons, but the great majority of people in this country who hold stock in corporations at the end of the day look at the closing price on the stock market. If it went up, they are happy. If it went down, not so much. And, they really don't care about Market Cap and Price/earnings ratio. (I suspect most of them don't really know what those numbers represent. And, they like to take the D. Trump analysis approach: "Since I don't know what that means, it must be unimportant. No, I do not want you to explain it to me. PE ratios make my head hurt." :eek::D) To them that's a lot of "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" manipulation of data to make the company management look like geniuses. Especially when AAL has the highest PE ratio, but also has just about the highest debt load of any of the majors. I've heard quite a bit of grumbling about AA and its debt load lately.

PE ratios and market caps may be a better indicator of corporate financial health, but the stock market price tells me how much cash I can get for an emergency if I have to sell the stock to pay for Mother's operation. Most middle-class families in the U.S. are living on the financial edge because there hasn't been a real increase in wages (compared to increases in cost of living) for some time now. There are a lot of hard-working people who would be in bankruptcy with just one major operation in the family. I had surgery for a ruptured disc in my neck 2.5 years ago. The street price for 4 days in the hospital was over $48,000. That would be the financial straw that broke the camel's back for a lot of people Fortunately I had good insurance (BCBS from American Airlines). I'm proud to say that if I hadn't had the insurance I would still have the savings to pay for the operation, but I would have had to postpone retirement indefinitely..
 
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No disagreement Jim.

Healthcare costs are a real issue for the shrinking working class but then again we are increasingly living in a Medicaid nation where nearly a quarter of the population skates by paying zero, zip, zilch nada. In the ~30 expansion states this can even include people like HBS MBA candidates who decline paying for the school coverage (yet have no problem spending six figures to get their degree) and shoulder tax payers with their health care expenses. This is bankrupting our states and Fed but anyone who suggests reforms to Medicaid is neeed is painted as a cruel scoundrel tossing out pregnant women, “vulnerable and underserved” populations.

Companies like Uber, Amazon, bikeshare companies, Broadband provides are responding to this reality by coddling Medicaid recipients with significantly discounted service and Amazon prime subscriptions.

Wealth management firms advise people to transfer assets consistent with state guidelines so elders can qualify for Medicaid and shoulder the rest of us with the costs of their long term care.

I realize this is off topic but you brought up healthcare and that’s a big part of the reason those of us who play by the spirit (not letter) of the rules and pay for ourselves get squeezed and it’s most unfortunate for the working class who are stuck with payment plans after a devastating medical condition.

Josh
 
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And, the stock markets seem to like what AS is doing. Alaska stock closed Friday at $61/share. Among the majors, only United closed higher.

UAL $71/shr
DAL 55.87/shr
LUV 52.86/shr
AAL 44.91

Not judgin'. Just sayin'.

i can tell you that right now, alaska air is finding out the hard way, but expected way, about low quality (are there any other kind??) of generic, cyclical ground-handling companies.

in ord, alaska is now handled by 'menzies', a ground-handling company. menzies works alaska's bagroom and was/is delivering bags to the h concourse, where aa employees load the bags and work the outbound.

with this change, aa does not handle alaska air bags in terminal 3 or terminal 5. this is alaska's problem, especially out of t5, the international terminal.

every day for the past month or so, i see at least 14-16 bags, sometimes more, sometimes less, alaska interline bags off a qatar, a british, an aer lingus, a lufthansa, an etihad, an emirates..etc...sit and miss their flight and sit until the next day, only for more bags to come down to repeat the process.

the fault here isn't on menzies, it's the fault of the generic ground-handlers that handle the above intl. carriers and aren't interested in ramping interline bags that i believe those airlines pay them for. i can also point the finger at united airlines...who know enough to ramp lufthansa interline bags, but not alaska off of lufthansa.

result..if it costs $45 a burned bag, we're talking $600-$1k a day in burned bags, along with the bad PR along with alaska being charged with the burned bags to it's MBR, because they are the last handler.

if a passenger if flying alaska after flying any aa intl. into ord, those interline bags are being ramped to the alaska bagroom. aa is not neglecting it's interline responsibilities. i know, because i am responsible for them.
 
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