Calcbench

Everyone probably knew well ahead of major U.S. airlines filing their Q2 earnings that fuel costs would be bad — but wow, did anyone expect it would be this bad?  All six U.S. majors have now filed their Q2 earnings reports. ( Jetblue was the last, filing earlier this week .) As we’ve noted many times before, all six disclose their total fuel costs and average price per gallon of fuel every quarter. Calcbench tracks all this, which allows us to chart the airlines’ price of fuel over time.  Figure 1, below, shows the average price per gallon for all six airlines. Brace for impact. What verb can one even use to describe the increase in costs for Q2, the first quarter that fully captures the higher costs driven by the U.S. war against Iran? Soar? Spike? Pop? Rocket?  We previously wrote about jet fuel costs in early July , when Delta Air Lines ($DAL) was the first airline to report Q2 earnings. At the time, we did some trigonometry to ca...

Fuel Cost Q2 2025 $2.21 per gal Fuel Cost Q1 2026 $2.78 per gal Fuel Cost Q2 2026 $3.66 per gal   Delta Air Lines ($DAL) filed its Q2 2026 earnings statement on Friday , and we all know what that means: an opportunity to see just how ugly airlines’ fuel expenses are these days. Prepare for a rapid ascent, readers.  All major airlines report fuel costs — both their total fuel expense for the quarter and average cost per gallon — as individual items on the earnings release. Calcbench tracks those disclosures, so with a few quick keystrokes we can see how soaring energy prices from the war in Iran this spring surged through the airlines’ financial reporting.  Figure 1, below, shows average cost per gallon for the six major U.S. airlines since the start of 2024. Right now we only have Q2 numbers from Delta — bu...

All six major U.S. airlines have now filed their first-quarter earnings releases, and to exactly zero surprise, all six reported sharply higher fuel costs that pummeled their operating costs. Casual observers of the industry might wonder, “OK, that stinks; but don’t these guys offset price spikes through hedging instruments?” Users of Calcbench, however, will already know the answer: no, they don’t , and the airlines are likely to suffer with painfully high fuel costs for quite some time. Figure 1 maps out the average cost per gallon for the six largest U.S. airlines for the last nine quarters. Figure 2 shows total fuel expense as a percentage of total operating revenue. The spikes we see for Q1 2026 in both charts are no surprise; average cost of jet fuel per gallon has more than doubled since war began. Figure 2, however, shows us that some firms are feeling that price pressure much more than others. JetBlue ($JBLU) and Alaska Air ($ALK), for exampl...

Last week the CEO of United Airlines ($UAL) warned that the war in Iran and the subsequent soaring price of oil and jet fuel will have a “meaningful” impact on the company’s financial performance this quarter.  How meaningful, exactly? That’s for financial analysts to model on their own — but Calcbench does have multiple data feeds on airline fuel costs that can help analysts build those models and evaluate what might happen next. For starters, we have an airlines industry template that tracks all the standard non-GAAP financial disclosures that airlines make. Those disclosures include fuel consumed (in gallons), average price per gallon for the period, and cost per available seat mile — all of which are heavily influenced by the cost of fuel.  You can download our airlines template from DropBox , although the template won’t work automatically unless you (a) are a Calcbench professional subscriber; and (b) have our Excel Add-In already installed. If you need help with either ...