Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Hunter Keay - Stifel Nicolaus & Company, Inc.
Hunter Keay - Stifel Nicolaus & Company, Inc.
A comment you made on the close end bookings that were pretty strong in the last couple weeks of March. Any reason to believe this may have been a slight incremental uptick in corporate travel or do you think this potentially just kind of a shift in leisure buying patterns, or is it kind of just tough to tell at all?
Thomas Horton
I guess I would say it this way. Our loss was lower than what we expected back in March and that was largely because revenue was a bit stronger. And as I mentioned that as a little bit better closed end traffic build at slighter higher yields than we had forecast.
But I think at this point it’s too early to tell whether that portends a positive trend. What it does do though, is it underscores how unpredictable the revenue environment is right now. I think at 30,000 feet it’s important to point out that our first quarter consolidated passenger revenue was still down 17% and second quarter both load factor is down 2 points with more sale activity putting some pressure on yield.
So I think the way I would characterize it is for the moment, we are not seeing evidence of either improvement or further deterioration in the business.
Hunter Keay - Stifel Nicolaus & Company, Inc.
On the March/April outlook as it pertained to Easter, any preliminary feedback or data that you’ve seen sort of on how Easter may have actually flowed through to April? I think we generally tend to think it’s about 1 to 2 points a RASM load. Any preliminary thoughts there that you would be willing to share with us?
Thomas Horton
I think I would confirm that’s the way we’re thinking about it. It’s about 1 to 2 load factor points for the month.
Hunter Keay - Stifel Nicolaus & Company, Inc.
And that’s loads or RASMs?
Thomas Horton
It’s load. It’s same range for load and RASM.
Operator
Your next question comes from William Greene - Morgan Stanley.
William Greene - Morgan Stanley
I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about the RASM contributions from a variety of buckets, if you will. So we’ve got macroeconomic factors, but we’ve also got FX and we’ve got fuel. Is there any way that you can break down what you think the impact from, in particular, FX and fuel would have been? Because, as you mentioned in your comments, you were chasing fuel a bit and we have the industry pushing on fares, so some of that has got to be given back, even if it’s not an explicit fuel surcharge.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »



