In actual airline news, Continental has abandoned merger talks with United, thus turning its back on the typical airline strategy of "if we get bigger, we can lose more money faster, go into bankruptcy sooner and get bailed out, again." Now that UAL has been jilted, it can begin its desperate search for another merger partner. This should give analysts plenty of material for guessing which airline will make a bid for UAL.
Speaking of useless analyst research, some crack analyst at Soleil-Solebury, just noticed an intriguing negative correlation between the price of oil and airline earnings. Perhaps he was too busy calculating WACC and forecasting top line revenue estimates to notice that oil has been on a tear for the past, I don't know, four years. Maybe he takes public transportation and hasn't noticed that it costs him $4 to fill up his tank? Apparently today was the first day that he decided to actually do the math to calculate how many times an airplane needs to refuel its enormous gas tank before every single flight? The good news is, he has finally taken some action and lowered his lofty price targets on four airlines despite keeping "buy" ratings on three of them. The bad news is that he did it about a week after all the airlines were crushed when Delta and Northwest reported staggering losses. I guess you can't expect much more out of Soleil - Solebury, a company that sounds like a fish and steak outfit. But maybe next time he could just issue an apology instead.
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