Airlines struggling to balance fares, capacity
Recent attempts to raise seat prices have not gone well.
U.S. airlines are asking shareholders to believe they can raise ticket prices while ramping up the supply of seats. To Wall Street, that sounds like a fairy tale.
Six attempts at broadbased fare increases have failed in the last two months, most recently a bid last week by Delta Air Lines. The last successful widespread price hike was Oct. 10, JPMorgan Chase analyst Jamie Baker said, even as oil prices rebounded from a threeyear slump.
That’s creating a confidence crisis for investors, who last week sent airlines to the biggest drop since 2015 when United Continental announced an aggressive expansion plan. The No. 3 U.S. carrier is hardly alone. Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways and Alaska Air are also planning to grow faster than the economy.
The worry is that the only way to generate enough demand to fill the new seats is by cutting prices. And that risks triggering fresh fare wars just as profits are under pressure from rising fuel costs.
“Capacity is starting to increase faster than demand,” said Samuel Engel, senior vice president at consultant ICF. “At that point, any one carrier starts to say, ‘I’d rather add capacity and try to steal share than support a fare increase across the industry.’”
It’s a competitive business, and one carrier’s attempt to raise fares can be another’s opportunity to win new customers with bargain prices. But one reason investors including Warren Buffett have bought airline shares is the expectation that after years of industry consolidation, carriers will be able to maintain steady profits, thanks in part to stronger pricing power.
Delta and American Airlines, the two biggest carriers, have slowed their expansion in recent years to let demand catch up with supply — and make it easier to charge more for tickets. They’re boosting capacity only 2.5 percent this year, roughly in line with growth expectations for gross domestic product, a barometer of travel demand.
A slower seat expansion helped defuse fare wars that began in 2015 and flared up again last summer before subsiding later in the year. And with the improving economy, it’s possible airlines will still be able to boost passenger revenue for each seat flown a mile, a proxy for pricing power, despite all the capacity growth.
“We think the fare environment will be strong enough to offset higher-than-expected capacity growth out of United,” David Vernon, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, said in a note Wednesday. “The fare environment will surprise to the upside against now lower expectations through the first three quarters of 2018.”
But a fast-growing supply of seats will be a headwind for efforts to raise fares. United reignited concern last week with its plan to expand as much as 6 percent each year through 2020. JetBlue said it would boost 2018 capacity as much as 8.5 percent, Alaska Air has targeted 7.5 percent and Southwest will grow about 5 percent.
Total industry capacity will increase about 5.5 percent, said George Ferguson, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst.
For now, “airlines don’t have pricing power,” he said. It will be difficult for carriers to raise fares this year enough to offset the higher cost of fuel.