Last night as I was watching the evening news, I was frankly startled to see oil prices down in the $50 range. In fact today, it closed at $58.24 per barrel, which is the lowest we have seen since January 2007.
The stock market had a wild ride today. The Dow dropped briefly below 8,000 — falling more than 300 points — to retest lows that it hit Oct. 10 before a sharp climb into positive territory. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index dropped to 818.69 before staging its own strong rally. The Dow closed up 6.67% at 8,835 and the S&P closed up 6.92%.
Once again, we are seeing the benefits of low crude prices at the gas pump (as low as $1.50 per gallon in Houston), but so far, not seeing the benefits flowing through to our air tickets prices.
In fact, in ARC’s latest monthly sales report, domestic air ticket prices were up 10% on average to $342.61, versus $310.15 in September.
United stock closed up 17.9% today. Delta was up 10.85% and Continental was up 8.62%.
So Mr. Airline CEO, whats up?