Airline Weekly Lounge Episode 37: Southwest and Alaska Outperform

While Delta, American and United have all seen both revenues and costs dropping, Southwest and Alaska just experienced the opposite in the first quarter. In fact, Southwest and Alaska rode a wave of rising revenues (say that three times fast) and rising costs to fantastic profits—and they did it in the normally sluggish Q1, no less. Speaking of American, how serious is the airline’s declining revenue, which is getting dinged by Southwest in Dallas and bruised by the economy in Brazil? Meanwhile, United is getting roughed up in Asia and simply hammered in Houston. Continuing to underperform its peers, United is making a change to its board. Will it help? And we raise a mai tai to Hawaiian Airlines, which posted a breezy Q1 in its own right.