Crikey you've got a pair I'll give you that. In terms of me backing my truck up, I haven't used my truck for quite a while but I changed the oil today and made sure the reverse gear works, (so too speak).
I take a lot of comfort from the aircraft loadings throughout FY15 staying strong at 84.1% even though for much of FY15 the economy wasn't nearly as strong as in FY14, (recall Dairy was over $8 in FY14 !). Further, demand actually grew in FY15 a materially less assistive economic environment in line with AIR putting on 6 % extra capacity ! You folks want evidence that AIR's marketing team can fill extra capacity ?, look no further than last year as a prime example.
As Christopher Luxon tried to explain to the doubting Thomas analysts during the call, inbound tourism is up 7% and tourists are staying for longer, travelling around here more and spending more while they're here. C.L. is very confident the new Houston and South America routes will be profitable from day 1. There's 30 million Americans in the southwest that gives a large catchment area and most of them think that flying here is a forty hour journey. Further, Houston is United airlines, (Star Alliance partner) equal #1 hub so hassle free connections onwards throughout southern and eastern states are easy and convenient. Five flight s a week from day 1 and good forward demand is being experienced.
I also take comfort from forward sales at balance date FY15 comfortably exceeding those at the same time last year.
I do believe that analysts are human beings, (as a professional myself I acknowledge its hard to stay truly objective in times of extreme pressure, almost duress) and they can't help but be impacted by this weeks dramatic events in the international markets. The timing of the result was most unfortunate as was the environment in which those analysts reworked their numbers. Interestingly some have quietly made significant upgrades to FY17 estimates on what were very pessimistic estimates before that. I reiterate that you can take analysts FY17 and FY18 estimates with a grain of salt...they have very little clarity on what conditions will be like in those years this far out. Just listen to what the company is telling you about FY16.