Tragedy struck overnight as an American Airlines (AAL) regional flight collided with a Blackhawk helicopter during a military training exercise. The CEO of American Airlines, Robert Isom, offered some remarks afterward that cast little light on the incident. Shares of American, meanwhile, dropped nearly 2% in Thursday afternoon’s trading.
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Around 9:00 p.m. Wednesday, Eastern time, American Eagle Flight 5342 and a Black Hawk military helicopter collided just outside of Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. The plane was on a standard flight path, so the Black Hawk was the last thing anyone expected. And Isom’s remarks reflected that shock, noting “…we don’t know why the military aircraft came into the path of the PSA aircraft.” Isom did note that American’s focus right now is “…doing everything we can to support all of those involved and also the PSA airlines team.”
It also proved the first test for new Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who noted “It is not standard to have aircraft collide. I’ll be clear on that. But prior to the collision, the flight paths that were being flown from the military and from American, that was not unusual for what happens in the D.C airspace.”
Trouble for Trump, Too
The accident comes at a particularly bad time for the Trump administration. Aviation safety requires keeping track of lots of moving parts, and most of the time, the process goes off without a hitch. So much so that cutting back on its funding might look like a good play. But then, something like this happens, and cutting back on air safety suddenly looks like a bad move.
Yet Trump, for his part, was ready. He offered up remarks of his own about recently-departed President Joe Biden, as well as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs following the crash. “Blame the former guy” is a well-established tradition in Washington; Biden himself had been spotted blaming Trump for years after Trump’s departure. So for Trump to do the same seems a bit like “sauce for the goose.”
Is American Airlines a Buy or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on AAL stock based on 10 Buys and seven Holds assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 19.54% loss in its share price over the past year, the average AAL price target of $21.56 per share implies 27.35% upside potential.
