Revenue
Earnings
United Airlines reported an adjusted loss of $3.91 per share while Southwest Airlines delivered an adjusted loss of $0.35 per share. American Airlines reported an adjusted loss of $1.69 per share and Alaska Air posted an adjusted loss of $0.30 per share. All these airliners, barring Southwest, beat earnings expectations.
Demand trends
On its quarterly conference call, United said the delta variant had not put a dent in its bookings and the company anticipates the recovery in demand to continue unabated for the most part. Demand is picking up faster than expected for leisure and business travel domestically. Although international borders are yet to open up completely, the company anticipates similar patterns when they do at some point.
Business travel picked up in June for United going from being down over 90% versus pre-pandemic levels for the most part of the second quarter to down about 60% at present. The company expects business travel to be down about 40-45% versus 2019 by the end of the third quarter. A survey by United indicates that over 90% business customers plan to resume traveling in the second half of this year.
Southwest also saw a surge in demand for leisure travel. Leisure passenger traffic in June rebounded above 2019 levels and based on current bookings, leisure passenger traffic for July is expected to trend higher than the levels seen in the same month in 2019. Although business revenue continues to lag leisure revenue, the improvement seen in business revenue during Q2 is encouraging and business bookings are improving at a steady pace.
Outlook
For the third quarter of 2021, United expects growth in total revenue per available seat mile to be positive compared to the same period in 2019. Southwest expects operating revenue to be down 10-15% in July and 12-17% in August compared to the same periods in 2019. American expects its total revenue for Q3 2021 to be down approx. 20% versus Q3 2019.