U.S. Earnings Season: Half-Time Report

Hello and welcome to the airline weekly lounge. I'm your host Gordon Smith and I'm joined

as usual by J. Shabbat. In this week's show, we're discussing the latest and greatest

earnings from major carriers, including Ryanair.

Hi J, how's it going? I'm cold, but otherwise. How cold is it there? I don't want to start

with too much weather chat. This is not a weather podcast, but it's been really, really

disruptively cold there, hasn't it? Yeah, I know. I know a little bit cliché to talk about

the weather, but believe me, it's on my mind with these very, very cold temperatures and lots,

lots of snow here in the northeast. But yeah, I can't complain. I'm inside in a warm, warm

office here running airline earnings numbers. So I can't complain. I'm happy.

Lots and lots of airline disruption as well, trying to pivot it back to what we discussed normally.

DFW, I was looking at some of the numbers from Serium, some of the numbers in the past 48-72

hours as we're recording here on the 27th of January, really, really high levels of cancellation.

I think there was one step flying around that was the single highest number of daily cancellations

since the pandemic. So not just any old winter storm. I hadn't seen that. Yeah, it doesn't

surprise me, given just how broad and severe the storm has been, but I have not heard that

stat. So that's, that's very interesting. Most cancellations since COVID, wow.

Not the only stat that we've got at our disposal today, Jay, because as we are recording here,

like I said on January 27th, it is a bit of a super Tuesday going on because we've had American

airlines, JetBlue and slightly outside the airline industry, but obviously very, very closely related,

also Boeing. We had Ryanair's numbers yesterday. We're going to touch on them a little later in the show.

But let's kick off, Jay's, because the the fresh JetBlue and American caveat being that we've

had to the American Airlines Investical. We haven't had JetBlue's yet. I know we haven't quite

had time to go through everything in detail. But just for the headline numbers, the top line

take Jay, let's kick off with with JetBlue. How did they do in Q4?

Not very good at all. And it is, yeah, just to repeat a few things that you said there just to be

perfectly good. We're talking on Tuesday morning, both American and JetBlue just as we're talking

within the past hour to reported their fourth quarter results as well as their full year 2025

results. So we have the numbers. I've got them all calculated and crunched. I do not have at this

point, Gordon, I don't have too much additional insight because the calls are going to be happening

soon. By the time you all listen to this, we'll have a lot more insight into how American and

JetBlue are doing. We'll also have on Thursday, when this podcast will be published,

we'll have the Southwest numbers as well. So we'll get an even clear picture of how things are

unfolding in the always interesting US airline industry. But to go back to your question,

you asked me how JetBlue is doing. It did numbers were bad, Gordon. They negative 4% for the fourth

quarter. So that was a 99 million dollar operating loss, X special items. And if you want the

full year results, they were also stained with red ink, $338 million operating loss and a negative

4% operating margin. So not good at the time when we know American are sorry, excuse me. At a time

when Delta and United are making very solid profits, JetBlue is losing money. We also know Alaska is

making at a decent profit, 5% operating margin last year. And 5% actually for the fourth quarter as

well for Alaska. But in that context, JetBlue's losses really screams that something is wrong here

and probably something, you know, things are going to have to change.

Well, you know, looking at some of the press release statements and the market filings,

we have seven out of the earnings call like we said, but there are some indications from JetBlue

leaders that 2025 was evidence that the Jet Forward program, a sort of transformation program,

is working. But at the fundamental level, Jay, this island is still not sustainably profitable.

At this point, how much credibility does JetBlue management really have with investors and the

broader market? How much longer have they got before someone says, hang on a minute. What's happening?

Yeah. And I said things have to change. I mean, yeah, right. Like as you pointed out,

things have been changing. The management team has been very proactively trying to write the ship,

so to speak. They've been cutting roots and cutting costs and making a whole lot of other

chains. We know they have the new partnership with United. They have also to distribution initiatives,

et cetera, et cetera. But as you also suggested, clearly the numbers are not turning in the right

direction, at least not yet. So and I hesitate to go too much further because as I mentioned, the call

hasn't, I haven't heard the call yet. I don't want to hear what they have to say. I haven't really

read in detail through their press release either. So there may be something that they've said

this morning that I'm not aware of as I'm speaking right now. The only thing I'm telling everybody

at this juncture, Tuesday morning, 11 o'clock AM Eastern time is that JetBlue just reported

numbers that aren't good, negative 4%, not promising. They probably, I mean, I think it's safe to say

even before hearing the call that this very Caribbean heavy airline had some trouble

in that particular region. We know from United's call that the Caribbean experienced some problems

or some, let's say, demand weakness right around the time of the Venezuela situation with the US

undertook a military operation in Venezuela. They saw Caribbean weakness related to that. So you

have to assume JetBlue experience that as well. And JetBlue is very Caribbean heavy. They, of course,

the fourth quarter did feature the government shutdown. And JetBlue does have some Washington

exposure as well. So that wasn't helpful. It seemed, by the way, from United and Delta, they made

it pretty clear. And even Americans number numbers this morning, but we'll talk about them in a second.

But to the extent that I was able to glance at Americans earnings press release this morning,

I think it's pretty clear that the transatlantic was really, really strong in the fourth quarter.

Now JetBlue has some of that, but it is not a huge part of their network. And it's also, yes,

they have premium seats, but it's not as, they're not as exposed to the premium transatlantic

market to the same extent that Delta and United are. So that's really about all I can say regarding

JetBlue for now. And we'll have a whole lot more to say in the published issue of airline weekly when

it comes out on Monday. Absolutely. February 2nd, not your diary, much more detail on JetBlue.

February, are you ready Gordon? We are. February is obviously a short month, so we'll be in March

before we know it. But if you want a little bit more background on what's happening at JetBlue,

we actually did have Martin George, the JetBlue president and Johnny Guarantee, the CEO of JetBlue,

both at various gift events in the tail end of 2025, the Skift Transatlantic Summit,

and the Skift Aviation Forum. So jump into the Skift archives. So if you're an airline

weekly subscriber, you get access to the airline news on Skift.com. Take a look at some of the

background reporting there. And that will set the scene for what 2026 may bring for JetBlue.

Let's pivot across as you mentioned, Jay to American Airlines had those numbers out as well.

What's the the top line headline figures there? Again, not a great story. Terrible Tuesday.

Yeah, Terrible Tuesday. We should change his podcast Wednesday or Thursday, maybe a little

bit more, a little happier, or maybe not. Well, we've got Ryan and I still to discuss. I

dare say this money. There's some money on the table still to come. Well, stay tuned. We will

be far along. We will lift the mood of this podcast. But for now, yeah, the American numbers

weren't great. Three positive, but three, only 3.5% was their operating margin. I remember that

Delta did 10%, United did 9%. These are fourth quarter numbers, by the way. So yeah, 3.5%

just to give you another sense of their underperformance relative to Delta and United.

Americans total operating profit, excluding special items, of course, 489 million. Delta was 1.47

billion. United was 1.38 billion. So really big gap. Now, American does have heavy exposure

to Washington. They do have a big operation at Reagan National Airport. So that government shutdown

did probably hurt them disproportionately. I wouldn't say that that alone excuses them from the

these lackluster results. We've kind of speaking even more broadly, American is much more of a

domestic heavy airline than Delta and United. And that's probably, or maybe let's say not the

biggest, but one of the biggest reasons for the underperformance over the past couple of years,

international has performed just so much better than domestic. So again, we'll hear what Americans

management has to say in more detail. And we'll have that covered for you, you know, more and more

detail ourselves in the upcoming issue. But for now, you know, yeah, just just that's the numbers

kind of say a lot. I mean, 3.5% operating margin for Q4 not very good. I can tell you also that

their full year operating margin was only 3%. Delta was 10. United was 8. So again, big shortfall,

even in the full year results. And if I can go back to fourth quarter for a moment, if you look

at the year for year comparisons. So, you know, how did American do this year versus zone results

a year ago? Here again, Americans deterioration was worse than what Delta and United saw. So,

they're kind of going that the gap is widening the gap between Delta and United in terms of margin.

It's getting worse. So that's your gloomy picture. That's the gloomy outlook. Great weatherman in

Scotland, Jay. It's crazy. Another great wind cloud, whatever the Atlantic throws at us. That

did sound like a Scottish weather report. Well, let's move on. Yeah, I don't want to tempt

anyone away from Scotland. It's a great place to visit any time of the year, but particularly nice

in summer when the days are nice and long. One final broad brush question from me, Jay. If you

had to bet on one airline's margin story, actually sticking in 2026, JetBlue or American,

which one would you choose? Yeah, obviously very speculative at this point. I mean, tell me

what markets improve more and I can give you a better picture of which airlines will outperform.

But I do have hope that American because they are very exposed to premium, they do have a lot

of international. Assuming that holds up, that itself is kind of a big assumption. But assuming

they hold up, I mean, Americans should be able to hold themselves up, but they haven't so far.

I don't know. JetBlue situations a little bit, I would say more precarious because they are so

exposed to Florida, so exposed to the Caribbean, so exposed to domestic transcon. And maybe obviously

they have Boston business exposure, they have kind of sub exposures to when you're getting into

more detail. You have to look at those individually. But I don't think I'd want to be as exposed to

Florida and the Caribbean as JetBlue is right now. I think that could be a liability.

We'll see, we're going into peak season, so that's Maker Breaks period for East Florida Caribbean

markets. But beyond that, you start getting into the summer wall, and it really depends.

I think both of these carriers, JetBlue and American really desperately need a pickup

in domestic demand. Now, if you recall from United's earnings call, Scott Kirby, their CEO,

insistent that domestic situation is not a demand issue, it's a supply issue. He insists that

there's too much supply in the market. A lot of that supply will be coming out with spirit,

downsizing, et cetera, et cetera. And if he's right, then that tide should lift all remaining

boats, American JetBlue included. I'm not still convinced that it's only a supply issue. I think

there are some demand issues in markets like Florida and the Caribbean, so that big question

mark there. But as things stand out, 2026, it doesn't look like a terribly rosy outlook.

Appreciate those early insights, Jay. And as you say, lots more detail in the airline weekly issue

on February, the second Monday, February, second. We are going to go into a quick break now,

but in part two, we're going to be diving into Rhino because spoiler alert, that's going to be

the feature story in next week's airline weekly issue, short of anything, incredibly important

happening, which means we scrap everything and start again. But before that, a quick reminder

to send any questions or comments that you might have for us to podcasts at skiff.com. That's

podcasts with an S at the end. And please don't forget to follow or subscribe to the podcast,

whether you're listening or watching. And if you are enjoying the show, please read us five stars

or leave us a positive review so we can continue to spread the word about the airline weekly

lounge. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

Hello, and welcome back to the airline weekly lounge. I'm Gordon Smith, joined as usual by

cohost Jay Shevitt. Part one, we were discussing the hot off the press results from American

Airlines and Jeb Blue. Part two, we have pivoting to Rhino because we had first numbers out yesterday

and the usually half, there's so many words you could use to describe Michael Liri and not just

Michael Liri, Eddie and others on the team. They always give a good earnings call, Jay and actually

yesterday I was listening in live at rant about an hour and 20 minutes, most of which was the Q&A.

So never sure of some choice sound bites and everything else. And I think as we've

hinted before, it's not the sort of earnings call that you would happily play to to your kids.

Sometimes blue language, shall we say, but there wasn't a little bit of that yesterday.

Well, actually, it wasn't too coarse. I thought he was on his best behavior.

Plenty of it. Plenty of insults. I'll tell a bit of pieces flying around,

but they were doing one or two dropped F-barms that I heard.

But there were also sort of more humorous quips without getting into Nifty language. The

fact that alleging that Wiz Air was sort of scrambling for flying anywhere, he said,

Moldova and Afghanistan were being out up for Wiz Air and plenty of other bits, Jay.

There was one point here where I had on my notes, but it was, did you catch where he was,

he's doing the whole Elon Musk insult back and forth. And he was talking about how their

calculations on the, what would it cost to put Starlink on the aircraft? And then he says,

he sounded like, we check Elon Musk, rock AI, and they agree with us.

Yeah, he said, he said, never trust AI, but in this case, even Elon Musk's own AI, so

agrees with Rhino, which was, which was funny. Even if these things are a little, sometimes they

feel a little prepared, sometimes they are completely ad-lib. And that's part of the fun. You

just don't quite know what the PR team said going, nudge him with this. And he does it. Sometimes

I honestly just think it's him just emptying his brain onto the earnings call and the investor

call, Jay. You know, we need to do Gordon, and I'm sorry, to take his take his off topic.

I promise everyone will get to the numbers in a second. We need to have some kind of poll,

or I don't know, put it on LinkedIn or whatever. A favorite O'Leary quote of all time. We can

list a few of them. I think mine was the one. Yeah, there's so many. I think mine might be the

the one about how people will crawl naked over broken glass to get a loaf there.

Yeah. And certainly from yesterday's call, a couple of others to add to that list, Jay,

I think you probably dozens and dozens and dozens of dozens. We'd have to narrow that down.

But yeah, I think there was actually someone in the skipped archive, someone before my time in

May, before your time, Jay put together as a stood at the time of publication, the best O'Leary

quotes. And he knows, you know, the very father was speaking here about it. And he referenced as

well, I think he said 59 countries, 1500 articles or news, clippings that referenced his spat,

his feud with Elon Musk week before last. And he obviously knows. He said there was a direct link

in terms of visits to the website. And they had the seat sale, the great idiot seat sale,

and everything else. He's a smooth operator. I've interviewed him a number of times. And he is

very, very aware of the power of free publicity. But yeah, that's that's a hundred percent. I mean,

a component of their business plan. It is marketing and publicity that he that the reiner gets

from his antics. But he ultimately, when he retires, that's you can't really replace that. So

it's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. Indeed. Okay. Well, enough O'Leary isms. Let's jump into the numbers

because I'm sure there'll be some people listening to this podcast to say, I don't care what O'Leary

says. Just tell me if the numbers are good or bad or somewhere between Jay, how did Reiner do?

That was their Q3. Yeah. So that was their fiscal Q3. But I want people to just let's forget

about that. I mean, they do operate on a different fiscal quarter. Let's just so we can compare

apples and apples here. We can let's just call calendar fourth quarter. But but you are right.

They'll actually produce an annual report after the March quarter. So don't be confused by that.

But we're for airline weekly purposes. We kind of stick to the calendar quarter just to keep

everybody on the same wavelength here. So are you ready? I was born ready. You're born ready.

Okay. Here comes the what I'm going to report the weather now from Hawaii, no more Scottish weather

here. I'm going to go. Yeah. Or Spain or someplace someplace you want to be in middle winter.

Okay. So the Reiner, yeah, did have a very good quarter. But when I say the number, it's not

going to impress you. So the Reiner had a 3% operating margin during the calendar fourth quarter,

October to December, which you may say, well, wait a minute. American just did 3.5%. You said

horrible. That was wise. Ryanair is 3%. So so happy and wonderful. And the reason is is

Ryanair is just just an extremely seasonal airline that doesn't need to make money in the fourth

quarter. And I'll give you. So in most importantly, for the full calendar year, 2025, Ryanair's

operating margin was 17%. And that was up from 13% the year before. So they just had another

fantastic year. And just to give you a sense of how seasonal this airline is, let me see if I can

scoot through my Excel numbers quickly here. Okay. So first quarter, Ryanair had a negative 21%

operating margin. So the January, February, Marching of the period we're in right now is always

terrible for Ryanair. And they don't care because it's just that's a good time to do your aircraft

maintenance, good time to or you know, the kind of the just a cost of doing business really. Yeah,

yeah, just a cost of doing business. It's a good time to, yeah, train, bring on new workers,

do do some training, things that things that you do when you're not busy. Then in the second quarter,

they did a positive 21%. So they basically wiped out all the red ink from first quarter in

second quarter. Then third quarter, that's all gravy. That's your peak third that's your peak

summer quarter, 35.5%. Just off the charts, really good. I mean, it's very, very rare that you'll

find any airline in any part of the world get above 30%. So you're doing 35.5 and third quarter.

And then as I said, in this just completed calendar fourth quarter, 3%. So you're making money,

you're happy bottom line. You had a really good full year calendar year result for Ryanair.

And they go into 2026, very positive about the year ahead. I'll say just a couple of things about

demand and and their costs. Demand looks really, really good. They said they're, you know,

demand during the holiday season, Christmas, New Year's, very strong, a lot of good close-in

demand, which tends to be higher yielding. There was the, I asked you this morning, Gordon,

about the, what did they call it? The midterms, you can, you can maybe explain what that is,

just being, not being a European. I wasn't aware of that. So you clarified that for me,

maybe you could either see for our listeners who are not in Europe. Yeah. So obviously, these

two holidays are very important to some holidays as well, vacations, confirm what you will.

But we also in the UK, and I'm sure Ireland and some other parts of Europe have a half-term holiday,

which is for schools usually in October. And that is a very important time because you don't really

have any other bank holidays around that time. And it's the last opportunity for a lot of families

to travel somewhere within Europe, in particular. And it's almost, it's not guaranteed, but it's

almost guaranteed to be warm. So you can go with some confidence, booking events, and say, I'm

going to have a week in the South of Spain or the South of France and South of Italy. I'm going

to be in my shortened t-shirt and have a good family vacation. So that October period is this

sort of half-term. If you call it the midterm, that's sort of more political terminology from

the U.S. in my mind. But yeah, half-term holidays.

Half-term holidays. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. I know. Thanks for that. And yeah, the other thing,

I have a couple of other things I want to say about the man. So remember, it's important. This is

kind of an important concept to remember. In Europe, for Europe's short-haul leisure demand,

it's very fungible. And what I mean by that is Ryanair, if fairs go up to Spain, people will

just go to Italy. If fairs go up to Italy, people just go to Portugal. You know, not everyone.

I mean, some people, yes, I want to go to Greece this year. But there is a lot of fungibility.

And that works into, that just plays into Ryanair's hands so well because they can, you know,

how they negotiate, airport discounts and, you know, they say, okay, fine. You know, you don't want

to give me a good, a good fee structure in Greece. Then I'll send all my planes to Spain and people

go there instead. So people are willing, a lot of people anyway, are willing to just go where the

price is right, as long as they're sunshine. Is that, do you think that's a fair assessment

Gordon? Because you're, you know, you're on the ground, you're in Europe. Do you think that's fair?

With us looking back into whether podcast boat Jay, we've had terrible weather here in Portugal

and Spain. My dad is on a Mediterranean cruise right now. And he couldn't get into Valencia

because the winds and rains were so strong. So do not come to Europe in January if you're looking

for guaranteed sun. But yeah, no, that's a great point. And in terms of your, you brought a

reference to people will go where the fairs are reasonable and they can fly from the local airport

and it's going to be sunny. Absolutely right. When I was a student living in Edinburgh,

there was a reasonable Rhino network and we would literally just sort, if we were going to a price

comparison website and sort by, these are our dates. And I would say from Edinburgh to anywhere,

and obviously Rhino would be one of the first results to come up usually with a super, super

stripped down product. And we literally had no idea going into that search. Are we going to Spain?

Are we going to Italy? Are we going to Morocco? Are we going to Greece? We would let the pricing

decide. And we're in great trips. I went to cities. I didn't even know existed quite frankly.

But you're absolutely right. Rhino knows that a certain degree of their total passengers

have a bit of flexibility. Not necessarily in terms of overall format of the trip, but destination

something more open-minded than you might think. Yeah, and that's less true in the United States

on Canada. I mean, to a degree, it's true. I mean, some a family might not go to

Aruba because it's expensive. Instead, they might go to Grand Cayman Islands. But even,

but it's less true. I think there's people who specifically want to go to Florida. I mean,

some of it is geography, right? I mean, it's not that different time-wise if you're going,

if you live in London and you're going to either Italy or Spain,

whereas it's a big difference, if you're going to should I go to Florida or should I go to

California or Phoenix, you know, those are two very, very different trips because of the length.

Yeah. A lot of the, yeah, the tourist destinations kind of compete with each other in the US.

They're not quite as fungible as they are in the UK. I've said this before, Jay, and it's not

accurate. I don't want anyone to get in saying it's not the case. But it does seem to me like

absolutely everywhere in Europe that's sort of sunny is 2 hours and 10 minutes. I've never left

London going to anywhere in Spain, Italy or anywhere sort of on holiday. And it doesn't matter

whether it's Barcelona or Valencia or Maliga or Palmo or anywhere else. I don't know. Obviously,

these are different geographies and different stage links. But it just feels like,

like time today will be 2 hours and 10 minutes. I've never had a flight. It seems like it has not been

2 hours, 10 minutes. So yeah, you jump on board at Stanstead, Luton, Gatwick or wherever else.

And jump, stay on board for 2 hours, 10 minutes. You're there. It's sunny. The beach is there.

The hotel is nice. And yeah, the rest is pretty much colored by numbers.

Yeah, just looking looking for sunshine at the end of the day. So yeah, that's important to remember

about that European sure how market all the fungibility there. The other thing I always like to say,

I don't mean to take this off on a tangent here. But I always call Ryanair has like the opposite

business model or the inverse business model as a Legion. Whereas a Legion takes people from all

these little small cities to big leisure destinations. Ryanair takes people from giant cities to small

leisure destinations. You know, I think that Carcassone France or, you know, places that a lot of people

outside Europe never heard of. People just going for the, you know, whatever. There's so much

history in some of these places. And of course, some of these markets are sunshine markets.

So yeah, I saw was it, what was there was one market in Italy? We're Ryanair mentioned that they

were growing. And I'm looking for it now. But I can't find it off top of my head. But my point being

that it's a, there it is, Trapani. I had never heard of that before. Sorry to reveal my ignorance

in front of, in front of this massive audience here. But I've never heard of Trapani Italy. But

I'm sure they can fly it and they'll probably make a lot of money on it. They'll be burning

effigies in the streets of Trapani tonight, Jay. Yeah, I apologize to the, it's a, it's a

interesting question. Westen Sicily. Well, okay. Okay. Well, at least we have one person on

this podcast with a, with a brain or with someone with someone. Or with the ability to press me

and quickly Google it. Yeah. Yeah, we won't nobody can see that. But anyway, all right. We,

I made my point, right? Apologies to the Trapani user, whatever they call themselves. But my,

again, my point being is that there are a lot of tiny places in Europe, many, many tiny places in

Europe that people in giant cities like London and Milan and Paris are very, well, very eagerly

visit where there's less of that in the US. There's not that many people from New York City that

are interested in going to which city should I insult? I don't know. Should we say Dubuque, Iowa?

I don't know. Oh, that just came into my hand. But I'll stop there so I don't get anyone else

angry. What else was I going to say about demand for Ryanair? Oh, yeah, a couple more things if I

can. And then we can end this podcast. But the other thing that's very important as far as

Ryanair's unit revenues is that there is constrained supply within Europe, constrained capacity.

We know about the aircraft delivery situation, the GTF engines, all that, all that, all that stuff.

So that is putting continues to put upward pressure on short haul European unit revenues.

That's kind of working in Ryanair's favor. Of course, now Ryanair is actually getting the last

few of its max 8200s. That was from a big order. It placed back, back few years ago. Those orders

are finally now kind of all in. So there's going to be a gap now until 20, about mid 2027. Maybe

let's call it spring 2027 where they're not going to be receiving new max jets. They're waiting

now for certification for the max tens, which, you know, Boeing says Boeing is actually reporting

and doing their call today as well Tuesday as well. So maybe they'll have something more to say

about this. But the max 10 they expect max 10 certification now to be think they said was later

this year, maybe the fall of this year. Can't remember exactly. But in a case, Ryanair does expect

them to finally come early 2027, but there's that gap there. So despite having many, many

opportunities to grow, the Ryanair is not really growing that fast. I think their seat counts are

up maybe four or five percent this year. So that constraints supply for both Ryanair and for

the industry as a whole is definitely supporting their unit revenues. And I do have some other

things to say about unit revenues. I'll you can read read about those in the the feature story

in the upcoming issue. But just the bottom line here is that the Ryanair's revenue situation

is is pretty rock solid. And then I won't talk too much about cost, but there's a lot of interesting

things happening that you can read about on that site as well within within the Ryanair sphere.

So yeah, all in all, good quarter. Good quarter, good year. Good quarter, good year. Did you mention

Dubucaiwa? Dubucaiwa, yeah. You know who's from Dubucaiwa? I don't. Kelly Orpug.

The prisoners are going. No, I've got Boeing mad at me.

Well, she, wait, all right, where's where the editors? Monica, help.

My segue being that. I'm sure it's a fine, fine place. Let's let's let's go. I was just

using it as a metaphor for a small city that doesn't have a very large tourist sector.

Well, Dubucaiwa, hometown of Kelly Orpug, at least according to his biography online.

And that's fine. Yeah, just everybody knows. Yes, the presence here of Boeing. And

O'Leary had some complimentary words for Kelly Orpug and Stephanie Pope, who heads up the

commercial division on the call yesterday. And he has previously not been afraid of

saying what he thinks around Boeing, certainly in terms of the day of Calhoun and the

stand deal era, but very, very complimentary. And also some mood music around the max 10, as well,

Jay, the indications being from O'Leary's sources. And as you expect, he says that he can pick up

the phone to Stephanie Pope and she will answer and everything else. The mood music around

certification there looks positive. O'Leary, I think he himself told my head. He was going to be

customer number three after WestJet and United. And he was pretty optimistic. He was certainly

sounding the most positive about Boeing that I had heard him, certainly since the pandemic. Was

that your steer as well? That would definitely might take away from that as well. I had the same

feel. And it does kind of make sense that Boeing does seem to have its act together now.

Delivery, stream is much more steady than it has been over the past couple of years.

He also said he received some of the 8200 aircraft early. I think he said about 10 days early or

something. A couple of deliveries. I'm sorry Gordon. No, I was going to say it's rather

context as key. Obviously a lot of these aircraft are badly delayed. And I don't know if that was

the rescheduled date, this is case of it being delayed and then it being slightly less delayed.

But nonetheless, the picture out of Boeing certainly seems to be possible at least in the view of

O'Leary and Co. Yeah, good point. And I was just going to say that obviously with the max 10

certification and then also the max seven certification, which is a big deal for Southwest,

that is in the hands more of the FAA. So I mean, Boeing has to do what's necessary to ensure

that the FAA signs off on all that. But to a certain degree, Boeing is not their decision to make.

So I just wanted to make that point. One more, I guess, since we're on the topic of aircraft

deliveries, Ryanair, it's unique in so many ways, kind of unique in aircraft delivery,

with the aircraft delivery situation too, and that it really needs to take a big kind of lump

of aircraft deliveries in time for the summer peak. I told everyone how seasonal this airline is.

So it doesn't want to get a whole bunch of planes just before January. So it's very careful to

coordinate with Boeing, the delivery schedule, so that it's getting a lot of capacity growth

just comes in right before the summer peak. You can picture if the max 10 doesn't get certified

by a certain date and Boeing can't get the first couple of units or a significant number of units

to Ryanair before that summer 27 season, that'll kind of mess up their whole summer schedule

that year. They'd kind of have to wait till 2028 to get the benefits from those planes.

Oh, if that makes sense. So another thing to keep in mind with our friends over in Ireland.

Absolutely, a really, really strong point to finish that on Jay. Much more we could go into,

but we'll save that for the airline weekly issue. If you're not already a subscriber,

go to airlineweekly.com. There you can get a free trial issue, and you can subscribe if you

enjoy what you what you read. Thanks to Jay for running us through those numbers. And let

me start the show much more detail on American and Jeb Blue, and also by the time we get that next

issue out Southwest as well, really looking forward to those numbers. In the meantime, podcasts

at skiff.com. That all important email address. If you have any questions or comments for us,

and please don't forget to follow us. Subscribe to the podcast, whether you're listening or watching,

ooh, a little bit of a tongue twister. Thanks to Jay for joining, and thanks as always to our producers,

Sean, Monica, and Will, and wherever you are in the world. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you

next time. Bye for now.

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