United Continental Holdings Inc. is likely to take at least a $265 million financial hit from Hurricane Harvey because of the carrier’s reliance on Houston as one of its biggest hubs, an airline analyst said.
Flights at the third-largest U.S. carrier will decline an estimated 1.5 percent in the current quarter because of the storm, with little opportunity to recoup lost sales, Helane Becker of Cowen & Co. said in a report Tuesday.
The projected losses would more than double the $125 million blow Delta Air Lines Inc. suffered when it canceled about 4,000 flights after April storms in Atlanta.
Harvey probably also will prove more troubling than Hurricane Ike in 2008, which cost Continental Airlines $50 million two years before it merged with United, Becker said.
The shares tumbled 13 percent this year through Monday, more than twice the decline of Delta and three times the slide of American Airlines Group Inc.
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