The Eruption Epidemic: More Ash, More Cancelled Flights
The Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland began to erupt again, grounding flights in the northern UK. And there are fears that the nearby Katla volcano may be unstable. Airports around Europe may be shuttered again. That would mean that the $2 billion…
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The Eyjafjallajokull caused carriers to look to their governments for financial supports. Airlines also accused government officials of being too cautious in restricting flights. And, it also caused a concern that ongoing volcanic activity could periodically affect air travel in Europe for long time. Eruptions from the same volcano can go on for months. The last eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in 1821 lasted for more than two years.
The problem in the skies over Europe comes at a particularly difficult time, which has driven mergers like the recently announced marriage of UAL (NYSE: UAUA) and Continental (NYSE: CAL) Rising crude prices (oil trades just shy of $87) have caused a spike in jet fuel costs that contributed to losses at major airlines in the first quarter.
Volcanoes and fuel prices= more mergers.
–Douglas McIntyre
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
