Airlines around the world posted a miserable set of financial results this week, and most inserted carefully-worded, creative language to explain to their shareholders why they are spending so much on jet fuel, and to prepare them for more fuel misery to come.
In their sober filings to stock exchanges, most airlines have found socially acceptable euphemisms for sky high fuel prices. "The price of international crude oil and aviation fuel has experienced extended high-level fluctuations," China Eastern grumbled Wednesday, explaining away a painful $160 million operating loss.
No airline chief was as florid, but all were screaming the same message as one of America's most famous airplane owners, rapper P Diddy. "Prices are too ****** ******* high," P Diddy fumes in a YouTube video, according to a Telegraph story.
P Diddy, aka Sean Combs, complained that two round trips between Los Angeles and New York were setting him back $200,000, so he's leaving his jet in the hangar.
American Airlines, running the flight that disgruntled rapper was joining, probably wishes it could do the same. In the second quarter of the year it spent a whopping $2.4 billion on jet fuel, 47% more than the year before.
It racked up a $1.4 billion net loss in the same quarter. While American Airlines said it still has $5.5 billion in the bank, a few more quarters like that and P Diddy might have to dust off the jet again -- or get ready to put a few thousand miles on the Maybach limo.
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