Southwest Airlines Co. LUV shares fell 3% in premarket trades on Tuesday on the impact of the winter storms over the past holiday weekend. The air carrier is expected to show the greatest drop in available seat miles (ASMs) among the major airlines because of thousands of flight cancellations, Cowen said in a research note on Tuesday. Cowen analyst Helane Becker estimated Southwest would book a fourth-quarter drop of 1.5% in available seat miles. That compares to a drop of only 0.2% by American Airlines Group Inc. AAL, a 0.4% drop from United Airlines Holdings Inc. UAL and a 0.6% impact at Delta Air Lines Inc. DAL, according to Cowen. “We are aware that Southwest’s Denver operation performed poorly as the airline had an extraordinary number of employees calling in sick,” Becker said. “We expect Southwest to call out the impact as it was worse than the industry and likely hurt earnings more than a ‘normal’ storm.”
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