Yahoo Finance Airline Stock Roundup: ALK's Boeing 737 Max 9 Mid-Air Scare, GOL's Traffic Report
In the past week, Alaska Airlines’ Ontario, CA-bound flight (1282) saw a panel and window being blown out of the Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet shortly after takeoff from Portland, OR. The fiasco prompted the flight to turn back immediately and make an unscheduled emergency landing. Thankfully, none of the 171 passengers or six crew members were seriously injured. Alaska Airlines is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alaska Air Group ALK.
JetBlue Airways JBLU will have a new chief executive officer or CEO following incumbent Robin Hayes’ decision to step down next month. Gol Linhas’ GOL consolidated traffic declined in December on a year-over-year basis due to weakness on the domestic front. Air Canada ACDVF grabbed headlines by virtue of its strong operational performance for the 2023-end holiday travel period.
Recap of the Recent Most Important Stories
1 The alarming incident, which happened on Jan 5, 2024, on the Alaska Airlines flight prompted an investigation by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. The Federal Aviation Administration ordered the temporary grounding of 171 Boeing 737 MAX 9 jets for safety-related inspection. Alaska Air has grounded its entire fleet of Boeing Max 9 for inspections and maintenance. ALK’s fleet includes 65 such planes. The grounding of these planes led to 170 flight cancellations on Jan 7 by the Seattle, WA-based carrier. The flight cancellations caused unwanted harassment to passengers.
2. JetBlue’s board of directors chose Joanna Geraghty as the new CEO of the company, effective Feb 12, 2024. Geraghty, currently serving as JBLU’s president and chief operating officer, will succeed Robin Hayes, who has been leading the company for almost nine years. Geraghty has been working at JetBlue in various capacities for almost 20 years.
JBLU was also in the news recently when it launched daily flights between Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and Tallahassee International Airport. The story was covered in detail in the previous week’s write-up.
JetBlue currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
3. At Gol Linhas, consolidated revenue passenger kilometers (a measure of air traffic) inched down 2.5% on a year-over-year basis in December 2023. Available seat kilometers (a measure of capacity) fell 8.1%. The number of flight departures at GOL in December registered a 10% year-over-year decrease. Consolidated passengers on board declined 4.5% year over year. On the domestic front, the decline in revenue passenger kilometers (4.6%) was less than the fall in available seat kilometers (8.6%). Internationally, the load factor (% of seats filled by passengers) rose to 86.8% from 71.4% in December 2022.
4. During the year-end holiday travel period, 2.6 million customers were transported safely on Air Canada flights. This reflected a 10% year-over-year increase. During the period, ACDVF achieved some of its best operational results in a decade. The highly impressive performance saw the airline completing 98% of scheduled flights, with an on-time performance of 70%. The average delay was only 37 minutes, reflecting a 43% year-over-year reduction. The delay was 10% better than the 2019 pre-pandemic holiday period in 2019. Notably, the peak travel period for Air Canada was between Dec 18, 2023 and Jan 6, 2024.
Performance
The following table shows the price movement of the major airline players over the past week and during the last six months.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The table above shows that most airline stocks traded in the green over the past week, resulting in the NYSE ARCA Airline Index gaining 3.1% to $65.29. Over the course of the past six months, the NYSE ARCA Airline Index depreciated 16.5%.
What’s Next in the Airline Space?
Investors await the fourth-quarter 2023 earnings report of Delta Air Lines DAL, scheduled to be announced on Jan 12.
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Delta Air Lines, Inc. (DAL) : Free Stock Analysis Report
JetBlue Airways Corporation (JBLU) : Free Stock Analysis Report
Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes S.A. (GOL) : Free Stock Analysis Report
Alaska Air Group, Inc. (ALK) : Free Stock Analysis Report
Air Canada (ACDVF) : Free Stock Analysis Report
