by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Flattened-out fish-hook-shaped recovery of demand?
Passenger revenues collapsed by 94% to just $681 million, United Airlines disclosed in its Q2 earnings report today. Other operating revenues plunged by 37% to $392 million, but cargo was hot, rising 36% to $402 million “by serving strategic international cargo-only missions and optimizing aircraft capacity with low passenger demand.” All combined, revenues collapsed by 87%.
This has now become the serenade by airlines to investors. United follows Delta in it: Revenues have totally collapsed, and we’re in an existential crisis, and we’re cutting costs and capacity like maniacs, and we need to shed tens of thousands of employees, to reduce our cash burn, but we’ve raised many billions of dollars from you all (thank you) and from taxpayers, and we will duly burn this cash during this crisis.