Major stocks including United Airlines (UAL), Delta Airlines (DAL), JetBlue (JBLU), and Southwest Airlines (LUV) were trending lower in pre-market trading on Friday as bad weather has hampered their operations.
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As millions of people get ready for New Year’s revelry and get ready to travel for the holiday weekend, unfortunately, the weather is playing spoilsport.
According to Barron’s, flight cancellations picked up on Thursday and early Friday morning with more than 2,600 cancellations on Thursday and 2,800 on Friday. In Midwest U.S., temperatures have dropped into the low single digits and wind chills have hit below 50.
According to data from flight tracker FlightAware.com airlines canceled more than 150 flights within, into, or out of the U.S. on Saturday.
As of Friday, 7:32AM EST, Southwest had canceled 723 flights while United had canceled 153 flights. Delta had canceled 153, and American had canceled 232 flights.
This is bad news for major airlines in the seasonally strong fourth quarter as traveling picks up during this holiday season.
Major airline stocks have been a beleaguered lot this year with rising inflation and higher interest rates leading to concerns about travel demand.
Other factors have been capacity constraints, volatility in the prices of jet fuel, and overall high inflation.
These factors have also impacted transportation ETFs with the U.S. Global Jets ETF (JETS) sliding 21% this year.
