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 calculate that Delta’s fuel costs were sloping upward at an angle 76.5 degrees, and we were astonished then because the steepest increase for an actual plane taking off is never more than about 15 degrees. 

Now we can see that Delta’s cost increases in Q2 were the least of the whole lot. The five other airlines saw their average fuel costs accelerate even more rapidly, more akin to a rocket than an aircraft. United Airlines, for example, saw its average fuel costs go from $2.34 per gallon one year ago to $4.19 now — an increase of 79 percent. 

The story is mostly the same if we look at total fuel expense per quarter, which airlines also report. Figure 2, below, shows how that looks for the last 10 quarters. 

The upward slopes on this chart are a bit more diverse because the increase depends on total miles flown, which can vary from one airline to the next. American, Delta, and United all fly many more routes, including long-haul routes internationally; so it’s no surprise that their increases are larger. Jetblue, Southwest, and Alaska are more domestically focused, so their total costs are appreciably lower. 

As always, Calcbench subscribers can quickly obtain all these non-GAAP disclosures by downloading our airlines template from DropBox. That template tracks all the major airlines and disclosures automatically, so the information is at your fingertips within minutes of the airline filing its latest earnings report. 

(Disclosure of our own: The template won’t work automatically unless you (a) are a Calcbench premium subscriber; and (b) have our Excel Add-In already installed. If you need help with either of those things, email us at us@calcbench.com any time.)