Long Beach and Alaska have a long history with each other, most notably thanks to Alaska’s purchase of locally-based Jet America in the 1980s. Though Alaska abandoned most of that network, it did fly to its home in Seattle for many years on a mix of MD-80s and B737s. In early 2009, it put a B737-700 into Portland as well.

It was late-2009 when Alaska decided the right way to serve this market was instead with a CRJ-700, both to Portland and Seattle. In hindsight… no it wasn’t. I remember flying that long flight on a small, single-class airplane thinking… why wouldn’t I just fly JetBlue?

Portland made it until August 2014 before it disappeared. Then in January 2015, Alaska left Long Beach entirely by ending Seattle. Even though slots had become available at various times, Alaska never came back. That’s not a surprise since it didn’t have a good experience the first time around.

No, I’m not talking about any relationship drama or anything. It was just good ole’ terrible financial performance. Take a look at the average fares on Alaska from the five main SoCal airports to Seattle over the years…

^{DOT O&D Alaska Average Fare by Year LGB-SEA via Cirium}

Not only was Alaska high unit-cost airplanes with no premium cabin, but the fares were also very low. This is what happens when you try to compete with JetBlue in Long Beach. Fares generally aren’t good.

A lot has changed since that time. JetBlue has packed up and left LGB, and Southwest has taken over as the primary tenant with nearly all the slots to its name. So why would Alaska now be interested in going back to Long Beach? I can think of several reasons.

1) Alaska already flies there

What? I know, that sounds stupid, but Alaska bought Hawaiian, and Hawaiian has served Long Beach from both Honolulu and Kahului for years. Hawaiian opened an A321 maintenance base at LGB, so it has a key role for the airline’s Airbus fleet. Further, LGB works much better to Hawaiʻi than other destinations because you canʻt fly there from Orange County due to technical reasons. So people who would normally choose SNA flock to LGB specifically for the trip to the islands, and that has kept Hawaiian there.

With a maintenance base and existing operation, it should be a whole lot easier to justify adding a couple of flights to Seattle. It helps you get better utilization on the ground, and it probably makes it easier to shuttle intra-company cargo to the maintenance base when needed.

2) Nobody else flies to Seattle… until August

In the dying days of JetBlue’s Long Beach operation in 2020, Seattle hung in there almost until the end. But once JetBlue left, no airline came back in to serve Seattle until just recently. Southwest has never been very strong between SoCal and the Pacific Northwest, so it wasn’t even willing to give it a try from Long Beach. Only recently did it file plans to start Seattle 6x weekly starting in August. Alaska does not want to give Southwest even the smallest bit of daylight in the SoCal – Seattle market, so it is going to try and slam that door shut as quickly as possible by competing head-on.

3) Seattle is a much bigger hub

It’s hard to remember a time before Delta, but when Delta threatened Alaska’s hub dominance in Seattle, Alaska responded. July 2025 had about 50 percent more departing seats for Alaska compared to July 2014, the last summer the LGB flight operated. In other words, there will be more connecting opportunities now to help fill that airplane. Yes, most of the domestic connections don’t make sense, but there is the Pacific Northwest. And now, there’s also Asia and Europe. Plus, Alaska is a part of oneworld this time, meaning there are even more connections that are possible to other partners.

4) Alaska looks at the LA Basin differently

Alaska has long served secondary airports in the LA Basin regularly, but the strategy has changed. After buying Virgin America, LAX took on a more prominent role in the network. But Alaska has spent a lot of time refocusing on those secondary airports. In 2014, Alaska only served Burbank, Ontario, and Orange County from Portland and Seattle. Today, you’ll find at least one of those airports having service to Boise, Eugene, Honolulu, Redmond/Bend, San Francisco, Santa Rosa, Spokane, and Tucson.

Alaska has learned what Southwest learned long ago, that having service at the secondary airports can also help the overall standing in the region. That helps the airline’s LAX service, especially since its weaker position there isn’t going to otherwise win head-to-head versus the big guys. Connecting Long Beach into the hub can help gain more local loyalty that can spread to LAX when plans require heading up there.

5) Slots were available

This one seems obvious, but Long Beach has added supplementary slots over the years, and Southwest kept scooping them up. But Southwest realized it had more than it needed, so it gave back five supplementary slots. At the same time, Delta decided it needed one less slot, so it gave up a single permanent one. The result? Nobody else wanted them except for Alaska, which picked up one from each. Four remain available, which says something about demand in this market.

With all of this coming together, Alaska is back in the airport with 2x daily B737-900ERs starting on September 8. That is obviously a lot more seats than the last time Alaska was in Long Beach. Does all of this mean it’s going work this time? Absolutely not. But there are plenty of reasons for Alaska to at least take the swing and see how it plays out.

Let’s start with a look at adjusted unit revenue in Q1 2026 compared to Q2 2025. This excludes special items.

Now, we can look at this and see there are some airlines that clearly did better than others. But before we do make any judgments, we need to do some work on these numbers. First, I want to normalize for any changes in average stage length. The longer the stage length, the lower your unit revenue. Fares just don’t climb in step with the number of miles flown.

This primarily impacts the airline at the top, Frontier, which saw its average stage drop by nearly 3 points year-over-year. That’s going to artificially boost the number you see there. Allegiant also dropped by 1.7 points. At the other end of the spectrum, American saw its avearge stage climb 1.8 points, so what it looks lower than it should look in a comparison.

So, let’s normalize to a 1,000 mile average stage length to get us looking at apples to apples.

Ok, so now Frontier and Allegiant come down a little while American goes up. We now have a much more complete picture, but… there’s still one piece missing. What we don’t have here is any indication of how much capacity changed for each airline year-over-year. If capacity goes up, that should put a damper on unit revenue. If capacity goes down, that will help bolster unit revenue.

I’m not adjusting the numbers for this, but instead I’m just putting the capacity change on the chart in a separate series to help put things into perspective. Here is what the final picture looks like:

What does this tell us? The ULCCs had a very good quarter. Both Allegiant and Frontier saw massive gains in unit revenue, though it’s not quite as impressive once you see the decline in capacity. That’s especially true for Allegiant which operated nearly 6 percent less capacity year-over-year. But then again, you could adjust for that, and you’d be hard-pressed to say it wasn’t a good quarter.

Southwest, however, is a different story. It was the only airline to increase capacity and have double-digit unit revenue increases. Yes, it has changed its business model and that makes a huge difference. But these gains are very good, and Q2 is expected to see even greater growth. Of course, we don’t know if the model change will cause more problems for Southwest in the long run, but for now, the revenue news is all good news for the airline.

Below that, we have the big three. American saw the most impressive gains of that group, but the differences are relatively minimal. At the back, we have JetBlue and Alaska which definitely underperformed. Alaska is still digesting its merger with Hawaiian and making its big strategic shifts. JetBlue is just fighting in tougher markets.

Of course, revenue increases don’t translate directly into profit, so let’s go a little deeper here. Take a look at the operating margin for each of these airlines in the same order they were shown above.

Well that does change things, doesn’t it? Frontier may have had good revenue performance, but its profitability is… not good. Allegiant absolutely crushed it once again. But look at Southwest which quietly tied Delta for the best operating margin outside of Allegiant after losing money last year in the same quarter. That is a huge change.

With all that data, what do we learn? There are some smaller takeaways, but the key here is that both Allegiant and Southwest are sitting at the top of the heap.

JetBlue Grows Fort Lauderdale in Spirit’s Absence

One person’s trash is another’s, well, you know. And in that vein, JetBlue Airways, now Fort Lauderdale’s dominant carrier by a wide margin with Spirit’s demise, is already adding 11 new destinations to replace the yellow airplane-shaped hole in FLL’s departure board.

Six of the cities are new (or returning) to the JetBlue family:

• Barranquilla (1x daily begins October 1)
• Baltimore (3x daily begins July 9)
• Cali (1x daily begins October 15)
• Charlotte (3x daily begins July 9)
• Columbus (1x daily begins November 2)
• Indianapolis (1x daily begins November 2)

And five are already served from elsewhere but are now adding service to Fort Lauderdale — all of these will begin July 9:

• Chicago/ORD (2x daily)
• Detroit (2x daily)
• Houston/IAH (3x daily)
• Nashville (3x daily)
• Ponce (1x daily)

In addition to these new cities, the airline is also beefing up service from FLL to: Austin, Aguadilla, Dallas/DFW, Raleigh-Durham, Santiago de los Cabelleros (DR), and Santo Domingo.

To make Spirit customers feel at home on these flights, JetBlue will provide complimentary BuzzBallz to anyone who shows up in a tube top or ripped t-shirt and also to anyone who removes their shoes and socks during the flight.

Frontier’s Q1 is a Familiar Refrain

Record gross revenue, but a big net loss for the quarter — stop us if you’ve heard this story before. Because Frontier is joining the club of U.S. carriers setting records for Q1 revenue but still ending up with a net loss which they can conveniently blame on high fuel prices.

The carrier reported gross revenue just shy of $1 billion, but with a net loss of $272 million, which comes out to $1.18 per diluted share. Frontier operated 1% less capacity than in Q1 ’25, but it jumped revenue by 17%. Unit revenue rose from 9.17 cents to 10.8 cents, and stage-length adjusted to 1,000 miles it also jumped from 8.81 cents to 10.29 cents.

Fuel, unsurprisingly, was a problem. Fuel expenses for Frontier were $268 million, a figure that accounts for its net loss almost entirely on its own. Until Frontier figures out how to have its airplanes powered by the animals on its tails — a particularly challenging issue for Tico the Two-Toed Sloth — that will remain a problem. Looking forward, Frontier’s Q2 outlook isn’t rosy as it tries to right the ship. It expects to grow capacity 6-8% in the quarter but with another net loss. Its liquidity at the end of the quarter totaled $974 million, but it expects that to drop as low as $900 million following Q2.

Breeze Adds 11

Another place Spirit’s demise has left a gaping hole is Atlantic City where thousands of travelers desperately want to leave regularly. But fear not, Jersey boys and girls, because Breeze is planning to blow in and be the first to fill the void.

Breeze will takeover four routes vacated by Spirit from ACY to include:

• Orlando (daily, begins July 3)
• Fort Myers (3x weekly service begins October 22)
• Myrtle Beach (2x weekly begins October 22)
• West Palm Beach (3x weekly service begins December 17)

But wait, that’s not all! Breeze is adding seven more routes to sun destinations including its first service to St Thomas. New service for Breeze:

• Pittsburgh to Cancún and Punta Cana (3x weekly seasonal service begins January 7 on both)
• Columbus to Punta Cana (2x weekly seasonal service begins January 8)
• Richmond to Cancún (2x weekly seasonal service begins January 8)
• Pittsburgh to Vero Beach (3x weekly begins October 1)
• Tampa to St. Thomas (2x weekly begins December 16)
• Tampa to Cancún (2x weekly begins December 19)

Southwest is joining the backfilling game too, adding in Las Vegas and Orlando. Both cities will see new routes (26 from LAS, 23 from MCO), and four new routes from Las Vegas: Boston, Knoxville, Miami, and Philadelphia.

DOT, Mexican Government Get Closer to Ending Rift

The rift between the U.S. and México over access to Mexico City airports is moving closer towards a resolution. The two governments released statements saying that they have reached a consensus of a path forward to come into compliance with the 2015 U.S.- México Air Transport Agreement, which, no offense fellas, but this sounds more like a plan to figure out a plan.

Most notably, U.S. restrictions on Mexican carriers accessing U.S. airports will remain in place for now. The DOT says while this is a positive step forward, there’s still a ways to go. The Mexican side got what it wanted, which was acknowledgement from the U.S. that Mexico City/AIFA exists and is a part of both México and Mexico City’s airport system. According to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, the spat started when he says México “illegal cancelled and froze U.S. carrier flights for three years without consequences.”

The Mexican government says these were established to ensure equitable and transparent access to airport infrastructure, expanding operational options, and strengthening logistics connectivity.” But we think there’s only one way this ends — Duffy at AIFA in a sombrero for a ribbon cutting ceremony of some sort.

BA Doubles Down on the Worst Idea Ever

We’ve got one place left where we don’t have to listen to people yammer on their phone to their mother-in-law, to Kathy from accounting, or circling back to take it offline on a Zoom call. But that last bastion of sanity might be going away as British Airways is doubling down on its decision to allow voice calls and video calls on Starlink-equipped planes to now allow it on all planes, regardless of the internet service installed.

Perhaps the best part are BA’s guidelines, specifically for voice calls: “If you’re making a call, keep your voice low and use headphones.​” Ok…good luck with that.

In BA’s defense, part of its reasoning does make sense, in that it says it’s happening anyway and it’s creating on-board conflicts with passengers and cabin staff. The hope seems to be that if everyone can do it, people will self-police obnoxious behavior, and that’ll end well because it always does. The question now is — when do we get the Airfone back?

• Air Transat is headed to the grandest of the Canary Islands. And it’s adding a new route to Panama.
• Air Zimbabwe has some issues.
• AirAsia ordered 150 A220s.
• Alaska is adding four west coast routes including a glorious return to Long Beach after 11 years: Seattle to Long Beach and Santa Rosa to Boise, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City.
• ANA will retire its final B777-300 (the non-ER version) by March.
• Contour will begin 4x weekly service from Denver to Ruidoso, NM.
• EgyptAir received its first B737 MAX.
• Emirates reported record revenue.
• ITA will return to Tripoli late this summer.
• JAL issues bond-type shares to raise more than $1 billion.
• Jin Air is adding five A321s.
• Lufthansa Group posted a Q1 loss, so at least some things never change.
• Riyadh Air looking for approval to operate to the U.S.
• TAP is expecting a binding offer for a minority stake in the carrier from Lufthansa.
• Scoot is ordering airplanes from Airbus, but not as many as AirAsia.
• Southwest is looking into hiring some mechanics from Spirit.

My current password for my email is “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”

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One of the big benefits to the airline industry of Spirit having failed is the reduction in capacity. Sure, it’s not a huge amount — in April according to Cirium, Spirit had 3.1 percent of total domestic capacity and 2.2 percent of all capacity departing the US — but every bit helps when you are trying to raise fares in the face of the high jet fuel prices caused by the war in Iran. Still, as we discussed on Tuesday regarding Fort Lauderdale, that doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities for airlines to backfill to further their strategies. Today, I want to talk about some of those other opportunities.

Detroit

Listeners to The Air Show know that I love this market as an opportunity for Sun Country and have for a long time. The similiarities between DTW and MSP are clear. According to Cirium, in the first three months of the year, Delta had 71.4 percent of all seats departing Detroit and 72.0 percent of all seats departing Minneapolis/St Paul to the western hemisphere. Number two in Detroit was Spirit with 9.9 percent, and number two in MSP was Sun Country at 11.7 percent.

Frontier has already made some growth moves in Detroit, and it said on its earnings call this week that Detroit was one of the five markets in which it had a particular interest. But in Q1 to the western hemisphere, Frontier had only built to 3.9 percent of departing seats from there and only 1.5 percent in MSP. There is still opportunity there and Sun Country should take it.

Of course, Sun Country is now just about officially a part of Allegiant, so this requires Allegiant to decide it’s worth doing. It also has to hope that this move doesn’t anger Delta so much that it rains fire in both hubs. But Delta has to know that there will be a low-fare carrier in both markets. If it can get one that it knows the playbook versus a wildcard like Frontier, it might just feel more comfortable.

The bigger question is whether Allegiant will be willing to make this move. If it doesn’t, then Frontier is probably next in line.

New York LaGuardia

The situation in New York is more challenging mostly because it’s not entirely clear to me when the ownership of slots technically ends, when they can be reallocated, and how the process will go down. At LaGuardia in summer 2025, Spirit held 12 departure slots and 10 arrival slots per day. If you assume that the last two arrivals happen late enough to not need slots, you’re effectively looking at 12 slot pairs. Spirit was also leasing a couple other slots, I assume, since it had more flights than slots. Further, Spirit was the one airline flying out of the Marine Air Terminal (now Terminal A) at LaGuardia, so there’s a whole turnkey operation ready to go. Who might be interested?

I have to think Frontier is going to raise its hand. It only holds four daily slot pairs, but it leases others and flies about twice as many. You could imagine Frontier being an easy sell to regulators since it’s a small carrier with low fares. If the goal is to improve competition at a jam-packed airport, then you can’t give it to Delta and American. Southwest will probably take a swing as well, because, why not? Sure, JetBlue is an option, but I don’t see why JetBlue would bother putting capacity there when Fort Lauderdale is the most important project by far. Breeze? Allegiant? I mean, never say never.

Newark

Across the rivers at Newark, it is a different story. Of course, that airport has runway timings, so it’s a different process than slots. But Spirit had eight percent of departing seats to the western hemisphere and was number two at the airport, so there is opportunity. Again, I would think Frontier might have the inside track, but both Allegiant+Sun Country and Breeze are in this airport already, so perhaps they would like to grow. Again, I think JetBlue is unlikely. It doesn’t have spare capacity, but also, it has its Blue Sky partnership with United which allows TrueBlue customers to earn when flying out of Newark anyway.

Orlando

I expect the Orlando market to be hotly-contested, and really, it already has been. Southwest took no time in announcing new service from Orlando in the wake of Spirit’s failure. Southwest already had nearly a quarter of all MCO departures followed by Delta at 12 percent, Frontier at 11 percent, and Spirit just over 10 percent. Southwest wants to grow its share, and it isn’t waiting around.

Who else might be interested? A lot of airlines, no doubt. Orlando is one of Frontier’s largest cities, and you have to assume that this will be a priority for the airline. Breeze is going to want to grow here as well, and don’t even count out Delta which might increase capacity as a defensive stance.

If there’s one airline I don’t expect to participate it’s JetBlue. JetBlue is a big player here at 9.2 percent, so you’d think it might care. But Orlando’s importance is nothing compared to Fort Lauderdale’s. If JetBlue has extra aircraft, I would assume they will be diverted to Fort Lauderdale and not wasted here.

Las Vegas

Vegas is a funny market. Spirit used to matter, but by the end, it barely did. In Q1, Southwest had 43 percent of departing seats with Frontier at 8.2 percent and Spirit down at 3.5 percent. Just as it did in Orlando, Southwest quickly announced it would add flights in Vegas. Frontier will probably do that as well, but it’s already the dominant ULCC there and likely doesn’t have a lot to gain. My guess is it wants to focus growth more elsewhere while Southwest continues to consolidate its power.

Atlantic City

For years, Spirit was the only airline in Atlantic City. This was one of the airline’s largest operations back in the day, and it always performed well. But as Spirit’s future became murkier, both Allegiant and Breeze moved into the market. Once Spirit failed, Breeze jumped in quickly and added Fort Myers, Myrtle Beach, Orlando, and West Palm Beach service. Now, every market Spirit served from ACY has flights from Allegiant or Breeze except for Miami, and that’s not an airport that necessarily needs backfilling.

Admittedly, Atlantic City wasn’t one of the markets even on my radar in all of this shuffling, but once I saw Breeze make its move, it instantly became one of my favorite backfill efforts. This is a perfect market for Breeze, and it should do well.

Myrtle Beach

This market is a lot like Atlantic City, a secondary leisure destination with some local demand. American is the biggest airline in this market, but Spirit had nearly 20 percent of seats so there is a big hole there. Breeze already has more than 13 percent of seats, so I imagine we will continue to see it grow even beyond the Atlantic City flight it just added. Allegiant also has about five percent of seats, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see more there as well. This one probably isn’t a Frontier market.

Dallas/Fort Worth

I don’t think I’d even bother writing up DFW if not for Frontier’s earnings call where it named DFW as one of the five airports where it was focusing its Spirit-backfill efforts. Frontier had already surpassed Spirit in the area with Q1 seeing Frontier at 4 percent of departing seats while Spirit was at 2.3 percent. But Frontier has wanted to grow there, and all of a sudden, there are gates available right next door to its own. So it’ll grow modestly there, and it will probably look to do something similar at Atlanta, Chicago/O’Hare, and Houston/IAH. I don’t expect this to be a huge focus, but if there’s an opportunity to grow a little, Frontier will probably do it.

In the end, I hope that airlines will not completely backfill Spirit’s capacity. That’s not what the industry needs right now. But there are certainly holes that can be filled, and each airline has probably set its priorities long ago. We’ll now see that strategy unfold.

Every Friday night, Cirium releases its weekly schedule update. Courtney Miller from Visual Approach and I get together virtually to talk through all those changes. Sunday afternoon, we publish the results of that discussion so that everyone can be ready Monday morning, armed with the biggest trends of the week.

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Fort Lauderdale was Spirit’s home and its largest station with May planned to have nearly 50 percent more departures than the airline’s second largest city. This was Spirit’s one true hub in that it was able to connect people through Fort Lauderdale into Latin America.

^{Spirit planned May 2026 Fort Lauderdale route map via Cirium}

Airlines had already been jockeying for position in Fort Lauderdale, as I wrote about last year when JetBlue made one of several moves to grow at the airport. For JetBlue, that had to be one of the big (only?) benefits of a Spirit merger. Yes, that was shot down by the government, but nobody in government is going to challenge JetBlue if it tries to take over the gates now.

For JetBlue this is a life or death move. It will never be the most important airline in New York, and its previous management team made the huge mistake of giving up the crown in Boston. JetBlue has rebuilt there, but it is not going to beat Delta at this point. That means Fort Lauderdale is its one true chance to have a dominant position at a valuable hub. The current management team is not going to squander this opportunity.

Since late 2024, JetBlue has been adding service like crazy, putting new dots on the map from FLL to:

• New: Dallas/Fort Worth, Guatemala City, Islip, Liberia, Manchester (NH), Norfolk, Orlando, San Pedro Sula, Tampa
• Returned: Aruba, Atlanta, Austin, Cartagena, Cleveland, Grand Cayman, Guayaquil, Jacksonville, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Santiago (DR), St Maarten, Syracuse

But now that Spirit is gone, JetBlue didn’t wait one second to put even more service into the market, announcing 22 new daily flights to new destinations:

• From Jul 9: Baltimore (3x daily), Charlotte (3x daily), Chicago/O’Hare (2x daily), Detroit (2x daily), Houston/IAH (3x daily), Nashville (3x daily), Ponce (1x daily)
• From Oct 1: Baranquilla (1x daily)
• From Oct 15: Cali (1x daily)
• From Nov 2: Columbus OH (1x daily), Indianapolis (1x daily)

As if that’s not enough, it is also adding frequencies on existing routes to Aguadilla, Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth, Raleigh/Durham, Santiago (DR), and Santo Domingo.

The goal has to be for JetBlue to take over Spirit’s entire FLL operation. Including the 5 new gates being built in a new Terminal 5 that are earmarked for JetBlue already, this would give JetBlue a dominant presence covering the southern half of the airport:

By my count last year, JetBlue had 15 gates with 5 more coming online in the new Terminal 5. And Spirit had 12 gates. Put those together and you have a powerhouse. Of course, JetBlue isn’t the only one that might want these gates, so who are the competitors?

• Allegiant has grown its Fort Lauderdale base to have more than 30 destinations in summer. The thing is… it still only has 15 daily flights using two gates regularly (a little more if you include Sun Country). It has grown and would like to grow more, but I can’t imagine it having designs on more than a gate or two. If Allegiant is smart, it’ll focus its efforts on trying to replicate the Sun Country model in Detroit now that it is the proud owner of that airline.
• Breeze didn’t even enter FLL until Nov of 2025, but it has grown there quickly, now operating to 14 destinations as of the coming summer schedule. It still only has 8 daily departures. It will grow more, but how much can it justify dedicating to this airport alone?
• Frontier has been interested in anything Spirit has done, dreaming of this day when it would be the lone big ULCC flying. But even with its growth, it only has 12 destinations from FLL and 8x daily flights. Frontier will have interest here, but if I were Frontier, I’d be looking more at taking over Spirit’s ops in Orlando as well as New York and smaller markets like DFW and Chicago. That’s the better play.
• United has long dreamed of a Latin hub in South Florida. It has no hub in the Southeast at all, having to rely on Houston as its best opportunity to connect into the region. Spirit’s 12 gates are not enough for a hub, but let’s not forget the Blue Sky partnership with JetBlue. It could be interested in acquiring more real estate in preparation for an eventual ability to take over JetBlue’s position in a merger. That’s all speculation, but it is something that has undoubtedly been pondered.

So how does this all play out? That lies at the feet of the Broward County Aviation Department which runs the airport. It has some very valuable and desirable real estate right now, and it has to figure out how to divvy it up. We can speculate about what makes the most sense, but in the end, the airport is going to certainly try to accommodate all the airlines that want to grow. JetBlue is first out of the gate, and maybe that will deter others from making a big move. After all, nobody has more to lose than JetBlue here.

Spirit’s early days were fairly unremarkable. It was originally a charter operator known as Charter One, but in 1992 that airline became Spirit and launched its first scheduled flights from Detroit to Atlantic City. This was a Detroit-based airline in a way similar to how Sun Country was a Minneapolis-based airline. But that model did not last.

This was a company flying old DC-9s and MD-80s on a broad network that focused on second-tier leisure markets. In 1998, Detroit was the airline’s largest operation followed by Atlantic City and Myrtle Beach. But soon, Fort Lauderdale started to rise in the airline’s network. Spirit moved its headquarters near FLL in 1999. By 2000, FLL would be Spirit’s second-largest market behind Detroit, finally passing it in 2004.

This, however, did not make Spirit a success. It was still an airline that was floundering. That would change in 2005 when Ben Baldanza was hired as President, fully taking the reins after Indigo Partners bought into the airline in 2006.

Until this point, you probably had never heard of Spirit unless you lived in Detroit or some random city. But Ben and the team he built launched this airline into the stratosphere. He decided to take the Ryanair-style pricing model from Europe and bring it to the US. Base fares were dirt cheap, but you had to pay for everything from carry-on bags to soda or even the privilege of buying a ticket online. The options were endless, and public reaction was sheer horror.

But while people joked about how the airline would start charging to use the lav next, Spirit quietly found out that this model resonated. People were buying tickets, paying fees, and making this airline wildly successful. In the early days, Spirit relied on all this free publicity, good or bad, to help fill those airplanes. It went with low-brow jokes like its famed MILF sale (Many Islands, Low Fares). Every time it did something shocking, it would get more and more coverage.

It’s incredible just how much free publicity this airline got. Every late-night host got into the act, calling out Spirit as the butt of any joke remotely related to the airline industry. And it was all good as far as Spirit was concerned. Ben and his airline were (almost) never apologetic.

In Ben’s 10+ years at the helm, Spirit became a wild success. But there were already flaws developing. Most notably, this was an airline that did not care one bit about getting you to your destination on time. The idea was that you cared only about the fare, so Spirit would do whatever it could to keep its fares low. That meant running its fleet hard and having poor operational recovery. This started to wear thin on customers, and in 2016, the airline moved to Bob Fornaro to take over at the helm to create a kinder, gentler Spirit.

Bob wasn’t there for long, but soon after his successor Ted Christie took over, the pandemic hit. The pandemic masked other systemic issues which would hit Spirit hard. Spirit made its living with low, unbundled fares that the legacies couldn’t easily match. Once the legacies had basic economy to create a more equivalent fare product and they upgauged to allow for more seats to be sold at those low fares, it was the beginning of the end.

Spirit had to keep its costs low. To do that, it had to grow fast since hiring so many new (read:cheap) employees kept unit costs down. With the pandemic killing demand, Spirit was of course in trouble just like everyone else, but actually it was in even worse shape perversely thanks to the Payroll Support Program as part of the CARES Act. This program divvied up money to airlines to pay employees based on their mid-2019 employment levels. Airlines like Spirit that were growing? They had tougher choices.

Coming out of the pandemic, Spirit was financially weakened and its customers ended up moving more toward the legacies. The airline was also stuck with higher labor costs and no real growth opportunity. After 2019, the airline never made a dime.

With growth gone, debt high, and few options available, the best way out was a merger. It had agreed to be taken over by Frontier… but then JetBlue showed up. JetBlue was willing to pay a lot more, and despite attempts to resist, JetBlue won out. The only problem? The government was broadly against mergers and made the stupidly-misguided mistake of challenging this one. It won in court, but this was a pyrrhic victory.

Frontier was back in the picture again, but Spirit under CEO Ted Christie had an insanely-overinflated view of the airline’s value. Frontier made proposals, but Spirit wouldn’t even come into the same ballpark. Spirit went bankrupt in the fall of 2024, but it again didn’t realize how big its problems were. Frontier made more offers, but Spirit instead stuck with a wildly-impossible standalone exit plan which somehow gained approval. The airline came out of bankruptcy in March 2025 still sick.

At this point, Spirit was still bleeding and it had no viable plan. Ted Christie was out in April, taking a massive compensation plan with him that only hamstrung the airline further. By August, Spirit was bankrupt again.

Under new CEO Dave Davis, Spirit actually tried to save itself. Dave came from Sun Country, and he had a vision for how Spirit would survive. It was a much smaller airline that focused on Detroit — just as Sun Country focused on Minneapolis/St Paul — alongside its strong Fort Lauderdale operation and the slots it had in New York. The team did great work in slashing the airline down to size in bankruptcy this time. Had something like this happened the first time around, it might have been a different story. But it really was too late.

The nail in the coffin was the start of the Iran War. Spirit’s bankruptcy exit plan was already overly optimistic, but with fuel prices doubling overnight, the airline’s survival became nearly impossible. It was burning through cash, and the creditors in bankruptcy had to weigh their options. Would it be best to shut the thing down and liquidate? At least they could recover something.

The government once again stepped in to do something stupid, but this time it was an attempt to help instead of hurt Spirit. The administration was concerned about the optics of lost jobs, something that would have happened at some point anyway. But the demise was very clearly hastened by the war in Iran and rising fuel, so a $500 million bailout was floated.

The problem is if you offer that bailout without any strings, then everyone will want one. It can’t be done. So they tried to structure this as a loan that could become equity. And that equity could then be sold to a merger partner for a profit. We’ve seen constructs like this before, but it was on a much larger scale, like when the US automakers were bailed out. But this was a different story.

Spirit was small, and what was of interest in Fort Lauderdale, Detroit, and New York would be eagerly gobbled up by other airlines. (That’s a topic of a future post.) There would be a place for many of those employees elsewhere. At a time when no airline is thinking it needs to add a ton more capacity, this would actually be good for the industry overall. That, however, didn’t seal Spirit’s fate. In the end, it was Spirit’s creditors that brought the airline to its end.

These creditors were already worried about what kind of recovery they were going to have in a failure as cash dwindled. But if the government put $500 million into Spirit, it was going to be in first position. That means if Spirit did fail, any recovery would first go to the government and then the existing creditors would pick at the scraps.

The argument can easily be made that these creditors should never have put money into Spirit after the first bankruptcy anyway — there has been a lot of good money being thrown after bad at this airline — but they finally decided enough was enough.

And so, we say so long to Spirit. This was an airline that mattered. The people who made it the first US ULCC under Ben Baldanza deserve real credit for building something new, unique, and successful. But once Ted Christie took over, there was nothing done to better this airline as management just watched it circle the drain.

As we say farewell to Spirit, how about more one sale for the road?

Oakland, San Francisco airports settle fight over East Bay hub’s name – San Jose Mercury News

The fight over Oakland airport’s name has now been settled. It can now continue to call itself Oakland San Francisco Bay International Airport. It just can’t put San Francisco before Oakland, but there are some other caveats too. Will this solve the airport’s problems? No.

Who wants to talk about the A220-500? We took a break from pure chaos this week as Jon led us through a look at the A220-500 stretch… which may or may not happen. But if it does, it’s not clear how attractive everyone will find the airplane. Listen in for more.

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As the Spirit Turns: Negotiations with Government Continue But The End May Be Near

Death Watch 2K26: Spirit Edition rolled on this week with the airline continuing to seek a federal government bailout, but this week’s plot twist involved its fellow LCCs deciding that if Spirit might have access to government cash, then all LCC’s should have the same. In the end, it sounds like nobody is going to get anything as Spirit limpsD closer to a shutdown.

When we left you last week, Spirit declared in Bankruptcy Court that it was in discussions with the federal government for a $500 million bailout and the president went on the record saying it was something he was considering. Well this week, the Association of Value Airlines — yep, that’s a real thing — said it was lobbying for $2.5 billion to be split between Allegiant, Avelo, Frontier, Spirit, and Sun Country. Meanwhile Breeze was seen banging on the door wondering where its $500 million check was and how it could get in on this grift.

Now Allegiant and Sun Country are merging — do they both get $500 million each? Feels like double dipping…or the opposite of the situation where a couple goes on a group trip with someone who’s single, and the couple signs up “as a unit” and get half off the entire vacation, but if it works, well, full credit to both. But all this discussion may be for naught anyway.

The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Spirit is preparing to shut down after its creditors balked at the government deal. As of publication time, Spirit still had airplanes in the air, but if you’ve got summer travel booked on those yellow birds, you might want need to find a new ride.

JetBlue Left Feeling Blue after Q1

The good news: JetBlue’s gross revenue grew almost 5% to $2.24 billion and its RASM grew 6.5% from last year. The bad news: It lost $319 million in Q1, a significant jump from the $209 million it lost in Q1 last year. The carrier also reported an adjusted loss of $0.87 per share, coming in below (or above?) analyst expectations of a $0.70 loss.

As with everyone else, fuel played a major role in JetBlue’s Q1, getting so expensive that it even tried operating select airplanes on Dunkin’ coffee instead of fuel. That proved unsuccessful.

It plans to slow hiring (we don’t know if that means hiring less staff or literally slowing down the process like making applicants apply by hand and mail their information in via the U.S. mail), cut capacity, and increase fares to fight the red ink coming its way. Capacity in Q1 dropped 1.7% YoY with greater cuts expected.

JetBlue ended Q1 with $1.86 billon in cash and cash equivalents, down from $1.95 billion it closed 2025 with.

American Raises $1.1 Billion

American managed to raise about $1.1 billion through an aircraft-backed financing deal connected to 32 airplanes in its fleet. It is American’s first transaction of this type of the year, and it will use the cash to refinance existing agreements and to upgrade the bathroom in Robert Isom’s office.

The transaction is divided into two tranches, the first of which is worth $905 million with a maturity date in 2038, and a second of just $236 million which will mature in 2035. Credit ratings agencies assigned investment-grade ratings to both, which tells us these companies do not fly American.

The 32 airplanes being used as collateral in the deal are valued at a cool $1.5 billion. It includes six new A321XLRs, 12 A321ceos, 11 B737 MAX 8s, and three B777-300ERs that are reaching middle age but still totally look young and vibrant.

Allegiant’s Strong Quarter

Out of all the U.S. airlines, it’s Allegiant that spent its earnings report crowing about its successful start to 2026. Allegiant — apologies — Allegiant Travel Company — set a company record for Q1 with $732 million in gross revenue. The 5% jump in YoY revenue resulted in a $42.5 million profit, up 32% from last year.

What did Allegiant do right? It focused on keeping what’s working and getting rid of what doesn’t, an unusual idea to some. System capacity was down 6% for Allegiant, but TRASM went up 16.4%. The average fare — which admittedly is just part of Allegiant’s revenue pie — jumped from $68 to $82 for all scheduled service.

Now that’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that Allegiant does not expect the gravy train to continue into Q2. It’s outlook expects a 7% YoY capacity drop and its asumming fuel costs at $4.35 per gallon. Its projected EPS is between negative $1 and break even. It expects its merger with Sun Country to close sometime this month, but none of its forward-looking guidance includes figures from Sun Country because a) the deal isn’t done yet and b) it hasn’t figure out exactly how Sun Country makes money.

United Adds Lyft as Mileage Plus Redemption Partner

United MileagePlus members who connect their account with Lyft will now be able to pay for rides with miles from United. The redemption rates are — as you’d expect — terrible. A $38 ride on Lyft was available for 5,945 miles which is such a bad redemption rate that even Delta SkyMiles officials were offended. But hey, if you’re cash poor but MileagePlus rich and need a ride, go for it.

Lyft officials told Cranky off the record that they originally intended to offer rates at double the current price for trips to and from Newark, but it scared off so many of their drivers they had to role the program back.

“We’re giving MileagePlus members more ways to use their miles – whether it’s booking a United flight to a dream destination or traveling across town to meet up with friends through Lyft,” said Jarad Fisher, president of United MileagePlus, which is technically true.

The two did launch the ability for United customers to earn miles on rides late last year, ranging from 1 mile per $1 spent on most rides and up to as much as 4 miles per $1 on pre-scheduled airport rides.

• Air Cambodia which maybe you knew existed or maybe you didn’t, is adding a codeshare with Etihad.
• Air India is poaching Singapore Airlines for senior-level staff.
• Alaska‘s award-nominated flight between Seattle and Rome flew for the first time.
• Ascend Airways is descending.
• Biman Bangladesh ordered 14 airplanes from Boeing.
• China Airlines is now a redemption partner for JetBlue’s TrueBlue program.
• China Eastern is flying to Vienna.
• China Southern is combining with Xiamen Airlines on an order for 137 A320neos with a street value of $21.4 billion.
• Copa placed an order for 60 B737 MAXs.
• Delta announced pay raises for its non-union workforce.
• Fiji Airways flight from Nadi to Dallas/Fort worth is no more.
• Georgian Airways is running out of money.
• Gol will score 3x weekly in New York beginning July 8.
• IndiGo will resume flying to Doha today.
• ITA had a baby born on-board. Poor kid.
• Korean is very excited about the delivery of its 5,000th sharklet.
• Philippine Airlines earned a profit in Q1.
• Porter is adding three transborder flights: Halifax to Fort Lauderdale and Edmonton to Phoenix and Las Vegas.
• Turkish is suspending 18 destinations.
• Tunisair will wet lease with Plus Ultra for its flights to Montréal and Paris, which makes one wonder what Tunisair’s problem is with French speakers.
• United is starting four new European destinations for the summer season. Unfortunately for Europe, they’re all being operated from Newark.

Why did the computer programmer use the entire bottle of shampoo for one shower each time?

Because the label says “apply, rinse, and repeat.”

All indications were that security lines weren’t too bad that morning since the president had recently decided to pay TSA workers directly, but would I trust that? I would. And I probably should have trusted it even more than I did.

After dropping off the rental car, I got to security an hour and a half before departure. That was about an hour more than I needed. There was no line. At all. Don’t believe me?

I have finally did the work to allow Touchless PreCheck on United, so I went through that line which was manned by a TSA agent. Some of the more basic ID checking was being done by a combination of TSA and ICE agents. At least, there were a lot of them milling around, so I think a couple of them may have been actually doing something productive… maybe.

I walked to the far end of the T gates where United has their nicely renovated banjo hanging off the end. I had no idea this even existed, but it is an open and airy space.

My United app kept me updated as I sat there trying to do a little work in the gate area. When it was time to board, I realized I was in group 3… and there weren’t a lot of people in any group on this flight. It was shockingly empty.

United 1012
March 31, 2026

From Atlanta
➤ Scheduled Departure: 910a
➤ Actual Departure: 911a
➤ From Gate: T17
➤ Wheels Up: 923a
➤ From Runway: 8R

To Houston/IAH
➤ Wheels Down: 1011a
➤ On Runway: 8L
➤ Scheduled Arrival: 1037a
➤ Actual Arrival: 1020a
➤ At Gate: C36

Aircraft
➤ Type: Airbus A319-132
➤ Delivered: October 18, 2005 to China Southern
➤ Registered: N884UA, msn 2579
➤ Livery: 2019 Globe

Flight
➤ Cabin: Coach in Seat 19A
➤ Load: ~35% Full
➤ Flight Time: 1h48m

This was on an A319 that United acquired during the pandemic, and it has the United Next interior onboard. You wouldn’t have been able to tell this airplane was 20+ years old, because it looked spectacular on the inside.

I was unwilling to pay for Economy Plus or Preferred Seating, so I trudged past empty row after empty row until I found my window at the back. There would be nobody else in my row on this flight. Oh, did I mention it was empty?

We pushed back just about on-time and had a short taxi to the runway for departure. We took off to the east and then circled around past downtown. Just as I was about to take a photo of the city, a thin layer of clouds got in between us. Drat.

I had started watching Roofman on the in-seat video while we were still on the ground, and my Beats headsets effortlessly connected to the bluetooth. I was, by the way, greeted by name on this flight.

Then, my row went dark. The system rebooted in my row only, and it took away precious minutes for me to try to finish this movie on the relatively short flight.

Annoyingly when it started back up again, it did not save my place in the movie. (It did, however, automatically reconnect to Bluetooth.)

The flight attendants came through with drinks and snacks as we cruised southwest toward Houston. There wasn’t much for them to do with so few people onboard.

When it was time to descend, I could see a layer of cumulus clouds down below which, thanks to the long approach from the west, we sat in for some time. Those things really have the ability to toss you around. Here was a short break with a view of… something.

The girls in the row behind me were so anxious about it that they clapped aggressively on landing. We taxied for about 7 hours to get from the northernmost runway all the way down to gate C36, but we were still at the gate 15 minutes early. I had time to kill, so once we got to the gate, I got off and went for a walk.

Oh sure, I could have just followed United’s very helpful app directions (and text message) guiding me to my connecting gate, but it’s not often I go to Houston.

So I figured I’d walk around. I went from C over to the E concourses further east, then I backtracked a bit and crossed over to D on the north side. There, I cruised by a checkpoint where ICE agents were standing around doing absolutely nothing. I really don’t understand why someone thought this was a good idea.

After cruising D, I walked further west to the other side of C and found my gate. This airport is so big, and it really does feel like they cobbled together these terminals in a random fashion. I did see the new gates being built west of the existing C though. I’m sure that’ll be nice and help bring United’s operation into a smaller footprint. (Do they leave B when that opens?) (Update: After further review, I see the new gates being built aren’t a C extension but rather a B replacement, so of course United won’t leave B.)

Once I got to my gate, I took notice of the seating areas. They had a lot of different types of seating including comfortable chairs, workspaces, and more. You could also order food and have it delivered to you. I liked it a lot, but fortunately, my walk meant I didn’t have too much time to kill anyway.

Again I was in group 3 for this flight, and when they called me, I boarded with another relatively light load — though nowhere near as light as the first flight.

United 2460
March 31, 2026

From Houston/IAH
➤ Scheduled Departure: 1225p
➤ Actual Departure: 1218p
➤ From Gate: C7
➤ Wheels Up: 1253p
➤ From Runway: 15R

To Los Angeles
➤ Wheels Down: 206p
➤ On Runway: 25L
➤ Scheduled Arrival: 208p
➤ Actual Arrival: 211p
➤ At Gate: 84

Aircraft
➤ Type: Boeing 737-9 MAX
➤ Delivered: March 8, 2025
➤ Registered: N77581, msn 43522
➤ Livery: 2019 Globe

Flight
➤ Cabin: Coach in Seat 35A
➤ Load: ~65% Full
➤ Flight Time: 3h13m

This was on a B737-9 MAX with the United Next interior. You really don’t think about it, but that airplane is so long. I was again way in the back, and it felt like I had walked back to the D concourse by the time I got there.

I took my seat, and the middle stayed open. Good, good, we were off to a good start.

The pilots came on and were absolute rock stars on the PA. First, they said thanks to Sage and someone else who were two little kids who had visited the cockpit during boarding. I’m sure those girls will remember that forever. Then, they apologized and said it was just generally a bumpy day and the flight attendants would need to stay seated for awhile. That’s no fun.

We pushed back on time and taxied to the runway, and then we sat. According to the pilots, apparently the rampers did our weight and balance work but didn’t sign off on the paperwork. It was a shift change, so they had now gone home. The ops team was desperately trying to get a hold of them, so they could sign off on the paperwork. I appreciated the transparency, but also… what the hell?!? After a 20 minute-or-so delay, it was cleared up.

We got into the air and after being lightly battered by those cumulus clouds, we climbed up to altitude and hoped for the best. The pilots said we would go to 30,000 feet and see if the ride was ok. It started that way, and the flight attendants got up. It took quite some time for their service to get to my row since they started at the front. But that’s ok, because now I was watching Marty Supreme.

And then my row rebooted itself again. Once seems like a glitch. Twice on two different flights feels like something I’m doing is breaking the system. If anyone at United needs to test my Beats, just let me know and I’ll be happy to go fly somewhere exotic and help you out.

Once we got to West Texas, the seatbelt sign came on again and the flight attendants had to sit down. We were sitting in between cloud layers almost the entire way back to LA from West Texas as I saw our ground speed tick lower and lower as winds stiffened. It did smooth out for awhile, and the flight attendants came through with water refills for those who needed it before it was time to sit down again.

Once we got to California, the weather had really started to move in. We were sitting in a high overcast and the flight attendants were told to button up early. The bumps picked up significantly, and it felt pretty sporty there in the 10,000 to 20,000 foot range on descent. Then again, it could have just been because I was in the back of an absurdly-long B737. That tail can really swing back there.

It smoothed out once we got closer to the ground. We planted on the runway and had a short taxi back to Terminal 8. Even with the delayed departure due to weight-and-balance, we blocked in only one minute late.

Other than the weirdness around weight-and-balance paperwork and randomly-rebooting screens, this was a good experience. The United app really is so good, and it does overlay the entire experience. I’m not sure why others haven’t put as much into that effort. And those big screens were certainly nice to have on both airplanes. Service was friendly, bins were big… for coach this was all I could have asked for.

I’ve detailed the run-up in capacity at O’Hare here. American has finally decided to put full effort in regrowing O’Hare after ignoring it for years post-pandemic. But United doesn’t want to give up the advantage it had built while American’s mind was elsewhere, so it started adding dozens and dozens of flights of its own. The end result was likely unsustainable even in decent weather. When storms hit? Forget it, this was going to be a nightmare.

To its credit, the FAA made a rare decision to proactively step in instead of waiting for everything to fall apart and then make a move. It convened a conference of airlines to discuss individually what they could do to help reduce capacity and make the airport function better this summer. International airlines were exempt from this, so really, it’s an American and United story.

Over the three days of the conference spread out in March, transcripts show that the FAA was ill-prepared for this discussion. Perhaps my favorite illustration of this is the moving target that is the operational cap. Though FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford had initially said the cap would need to be at about 2,500 operations per day, the FAA showed up to the talks saying the cap would be 2,400. Then in a meeting with United, LaKisha Price who is Acting Vice President of System Operations Services for Air Traffic said “So, we have some wiggle room with the 2,400. I think the Administrator put out less than 2,500.” She then followed that up saying “We want to be somewhere around 24 or 2,450.” After lunch, LaKisha came back saying that they had been “cleared” to raise that to 2,550.

By day two, the cap had changed to a very specific 2,608. Dan Edwards, Associate Administrator of Airports and Acting Assistant Secretary for Aviation and International Affairs, was very firm.

We are not flexible on the total movements. That’s — you’ve got to trust me on that. 2,608, that’s the hard line

But then when the order came out? The “hard line” was not hard at all. Everyone was surprised with an increase up to 2,708. We are just playing games here. But here is where we stand:

Chicago O’Hare Scheduled Daily Operations

^{Data via Cirium}

I pulled this last week, because it shows where the airlines made their adjustments for May to get under the 2,708 red line. But then in June, you can see it’s before cuts have been made by any airline. This, by the way, shows yet another FAA failure. The airlines raced to get their cuts in so they would be ready for the flight cap to start on May 17. But after all the cuts were made? Then the FAA pushed the start back to June 2. I would be absolutely livid if I were an airline trying to function in this mess.

To be clear, both American and United probably were livid, but in the end, American was fine with the ultimate decision to base the cap proportionally on summer 2025 schedules while United was not. That probably explains why American’s meetings were far more boring, the airline simply trying to keep a set proportion of total flights vs United, while United got outwardly angry in the most entertaining way possible. In other words, if you’re going to read the transcripts, read United’s parts first.

Despite the overheated approach to the situation, there is real merit in United’s discontent. The heart of United’s complaint goes back to the Chicago gate allocation process. I have written about this so, so many times. But essentially, at the beginning of the year, airlines can request gates to be reallocated — actually linear gate frontage but that’s just a proxy for gates — based on actual airport operations. The results are finalized in June, and the gates change in hands in October.

The first year this process went into effect was in 2025. In early 2025, United request a reallocation which would have been based on calendar year 2024 operations. United picked up five gates, and American lost four. (Gates can be reconfigured within the linear frontage provided, so that’s an approximate distribution.) We also know that in the months to follow, American and United would each sublease two of Spirit’s gates.

I know, I know this is all old news. But this is why it’s a problem that the FAA opted to go with summer 2025 operations as a baseline for 2026. In summer 2025, United and American were still running an operation based on the gates that they had before the first reallocation. That meant United was physically able to fly less and American was physically able to fly more than after October.

This was the result of a long play by United to gain gates and force American to reduce. American decided to focus elsewhere instead of Chicago during its pandemic rebuild, it miscalculated, and it paid the price. But now, the FAA is erasing all those hard-fought gains by United with this order.

By forcing the airlines to operate the same proportion they had in summer 2025, it takes away United’s ability to use those extra five gates it earned. So when the next reallocation comes around, United will lose more gates because it was given gates it isn’t allowed to fully utilize.

O’Hare % of Operations By Airline

^{Data via Cirium}

The FAA does not care about this. Not even one bit. In the third day of the hearing — which, by the way, you should read entirely because it is the best reading — Dan Edwards says “The gates are a function of… the use and lease agreement with Chicago Airport. I have no control over who has what gates, who operates from what gates.”

That much is true, but FAA should be taking that into account. I know that some of you will say that I sound like an apologist for United’s position, but that’s not it. United really wanted to based the proportion on summer 2026 planned operations. It points to that being precedent in several other cases from Newark to Amsterdam and Bogotá. But I think the frenetic run-up has certainly distorted the reality of the situation, making 2026 a non-starter.

What I think makes the most sense is to take the summer of 2025 and then make adjustments based on the change in gate holdings that happened after that period but will be in effect for summer 2026. But I’m just tilting at windmills here. This isn’t going to change. And undoubtedly American would say that too is cherry-picking a certain moment in time that disadvantages one airline versus another.

In the end, the FAA really created a mess of this whole thing. If I were American I wouldn’t be mad because even though it was a mess, I got what I wanted. But if I were United? Yeah, I’d be pretty mad.

To do this work, I pulled annual passenger share for United and the next largest airlines using the Department of Transportation’s Origin & Destination Survey data (DB1B/C) via Cirium. This looked only for passengers that weren’t connecting through the hub. The problem with this, however, is that the data that’s public is only domestic. So, I’ll present that here and then talk how international would likely change the results.

Again, we’ll go in alphabetical order, and that means starting with the biggest hub of ’em all, Atlanta.

Atlanta Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

I find Atlanta fascinating. It’s obviously Delta’s biggest and most important hub, but the airline has not seen any real significant shift in local share at all over the last few years. It’s really just smaller airlines shifting share between each other while Delta continues to do its thing.

Southwest has pulled down Atlanta significantly, shifting resources to Nashville. So of course, you do see that decline in the numbers. But Frontier is now on the cusp of being Atlanta’s number two airline as it has grown dramatically there. Delta is just doing Delta things.

Next up, I’m going to cheat a little. This isn’t a hub for Delta, but it’s a growing focus city, so I threw it in anyway. Hello, Austin.

Austin Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

With American having built a hub post-pandemic, it’s easy to overlook that the number one airline in Austin is and always will be Southwest. Southwest has actually strengthened its position in the market since the pandemic. But Delta has slowly and strategically built up Austin to become the number two airline. It has designs on more growth when Austin finally gets new gates in a few years, and I expect it will cement its position then. But it is highly unlikely we’ll ever see Delta become number one in this market.

That is the opposite of what has happened in Boston.

Boston Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

This was JetBlue’s one dominant market, but after years of mismanagement by the previous management team, Delta surged ahead and became the easy number one. It certainly didn’t hurt that American also failed to defend its historical position. International certainly has an impact here as well, but it’s not in the way you think. JetBlue actually has more international than Delta, so it narrows the gap again. But Delta is still number one, it’s just busy fighting a resurgent JetBlue in the market.

That couldn’t be further from what’s happening in Detroit.

Detroit Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

There is nothing to talk about in Detroit. Spirit is number two, but it’s a declining number two and Delta continues to do Delta things there. But this is Detroit, nobody else is trying to win there. That’s different than our next chart, one you’ve seen before.

Yes, that’s right, for the third time we’ll look at the LA Basin since all three big airlines hub there. There’s not much else I can say here.

Los Angeles Basin Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

At LAX, Delta has become the number one airline, but we aren’t just talking about LAX. We’re still talking about the LA Basin, and Southwest’s dominance at the other airports can’t be overcome. But when you look at LAX, it really is a three-horse race, and they are all quite similar. But Delta does come out on top for now.

Let’s flip back to the frozen tundra of the upper Midwest.

Minneapolis/St Paul Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

Does this look a lot like Detroit to you? Of course it does, because it’s the same setup. Delta is the dominant airline by far, but it allows Sun Country to survive as the leisure carrier who can soak up all the unwanted traffic. It looks almost exactly the same as Detroit, and it’s a model that works well for Delta.

That’s not the case in New York which, yes, we have to look at for the third time as well.

New York City Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

As mentioned in the United post, Delta and United are neck and neck once you include international, since United is more international-heavy. This is a fight between those two, and there won’t be a winner unless something major changes. Of course, since United has eyes on both American and JetBlue, there could in theory be a major change. But even if there was, divestment would be likely. So, just consider this a victory for both Delta and United at this point, and then… stay tuned.

Let’s head back west and look at Delta’s hub in not Denver Salt Lake City.

Salt Lake City Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

Wait, does this look a lot like Detroit and Minneapolis? Yes it does, because well, it works. This is the secret to Delta’s success. A massive dominance and coexistence with a much lesser competitor creates a base of fantastic hub dominance. Nobody else has this kind of stability.

Where isn’t Delta a stable number one? How about Seattle, our final hub.

Seattle/Tacoma Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

This is like Boston if JetBlue hadn’t completely dropped the ball. Ok, that’s not true. Seattle is its own animal where Alaska is beloved, and the airline has fought aggressively to maintain its position. Not only has it maintained, but it has grown. It’s Delta that sits way down there in second place.

You can slice this however you’d like, but Delta is nothing compared to Alaska. And with Alaska’s planned growth into long-haul now happening, the gap isn’t going to close soon. Seattle to me is the oddest of oddballs in the Delta network. Even as a Pacific hub, it gets bypassed with Delta recently adding Hong Kong from LAX instead. I don’t get why Delta continues this fight, quite honestly. But it continues.

For Delta, the secret is having these dominant hubs where it can make a killing. It then invests that into trying to win in contested hubs. It has made remarkable strides over many years in LA, New York, and most recently Boston. But Seattle continues to be a vexxing situation.

Mixed Bag for United

It was a good news/bad news thing for United as the carrier beat Wall Street expectations during Q1, but then revised its guidance downward for the rest of the year. The airline adjusted earnings down between $1 and $2 per share for Q2, and its year-end guidance to $7-$11 profit per share, down from the $12-$14 previously forecasted thanks to high fuel prices.

For Q1, United earned $14.6 billion in gross revenue, beating the expected figure of $14.4 billion. This reflected a 10% leap from ’24 when it earned $13.2 billion in Q1. But profit is where it took the biggest step forward, besting ’25 by 80%, as it finished the quarter just shy of $700 million on the upside. Domestic flights saw an 8% bump in unit revenue from last year, up to $7.9 billion.

United operated at a load factor of 81.6%, up 2.4% from 2025. It carried the most passengers it ever has in a first quarter, and some of them didn’t have to connect through Newark. It ended Q1 with $7.8 billion of cash and cash equivalents on-hand and it is reportedly looking to grow its real estate portfolio as CEO Scott Kirby was seen bookmarking several Zillow pages for new homes for his executive team in the Fort Worth area.

American’s Q1 Also Hit by the Fuel Bug

American set a company record for Q1 revenue at $13.9 billion but came up $382 million in the red as fuel-related costs and general operational struggles took hold to start the year. CEO Robert Isom said he expects another gross revenue record in Q2 as well, which makes sense as fares and fees are only headed in one direction. The $382 million loss is an improvement from Q1 last year where it lost $473 million.

AA’s stock lost $0.40, which is better than the $0.47 expected, and it did lower its total debt to $34.7 billion, the lowest it’s been in a decade. For Q2 it expects its stock to fall somewhere between up $0.20 and down $0.20 as it navigates what it projects as a $4 billion fuel bill bigger than last year. When asked to comment on its future stock price, AA officials directed all questions to United’s investor relations team. “It’ll be their problem soon enough,” one person remarked to Cranky on the condition that we not release his or her name, only that it rhymed with “Schmisom.”

The airline has just short of $11 billion in liquidity, much of which is expected to be put into 529 savings accounts in the names of the children of employees of the Chicago Department of Aviation.

Will Spirit be Saved by the Federal Government?

With Spirit staring down the barrel of bankruptcy and liquidation, it is looking into the time-honored tradition of failing businesses in this country… to seek a bailout from American taxpayers to keep the doors open. The president was non-committal on what the government would do, but in a bizarre rant worthy of your senile grandparents, he did lament the fact that President Obama prevented a merger with PEOPLExpress. (We aren’t making this up, but he certainly was.)

A $500 million bailout seems to be on the table which would help it avoid becoming the first major airline to shut down in the United States since, what, Pan Am in 1991? (This assumes you don’t count aha!) Federal government bailouts of airlines have typically been done on an industry-wide basis, with this potentially being a precedent-breaking bailout. Spirit has been mum on its future plans, saying its day-to-day operations are unaffected as this drama plays out in South Florida, Washington, D.C., and beyond.

An attorney for Spirit did confirm in bankruptcy court Thursday that a federal government lifeline is being discussed. Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick is reportedly a major advocate for the deal within the government which makes sense when looking at his personal balance sheet and seeing that he his heavily leveraged with yellow paint futures. A new court hearing is set for Thursday, April 30 to consider a potential offer.

Members of the banking industry were asked for their opinion on the bailout and had no comment.

Southwest Managed a Profitable Quarter

Despite doom and gloom for most airlines, Southwest managed to escape the barrage of red ink in Q1, which probably fuels the idea in some corners that the New Southwest is working as a concept.

The Dallas-based carrier earned a $227 million profit on record Q1 passenger revenue of US$6.6 billion. Southwest saw RASM increase 11.2% on a 1.5% jump in capacity. The airline says about 60% of customers purchased some sort of upgrade from its base product, a jump from 20% a year ago. Southwest also set record revenue in its black market sale of customer tears, as it took all the whining customers did to check-in and gate agents, bottled them up, and sold that for a tidy profit.

It paid $2.75 at the pump averaged for the quarter, higher than the $2.40 forecasted. But it believes Q2 fuel prices could be as high as $4.15 per gallon. To make up for that increase, the airline will increase the price of its new extra legroom seating options to $599 per segment.

For Q2, Southwest projects adjusted earnings per share of $0.35-$0.65, assuming fuel prices between US$4.10 and US$4.15. The airline elected not to update its full-year earnings target of $4, pointing its finger out towards the world, shrugging its shoulders and saying “who really knows what’s next?”

Alaska and Hawaiian’s Busy Week

A lot of news came out of Seattle and Honolulu this week, starting with the two airlines converging their booking systems to a shared Sabre platform. Customers can now purchase flights and manage bookings on the new combined app, while the two are bringing their check-in process together at most major mainland airports. Hawaiian’s HA code is now a thing of the past, with all flights operating under Alaska’s AS code and Hawaiian flights being denoted as Hawaiian Airlines operated by Alaska.

Hawaiian also got the codeword to enter oneworld’s clubhouse this week as the carrier was formally welcomed into the alliance, bumping Oman Air out of the “new guy” chair. Hawaiian brought ukuleles and POG juice to its first formal meeting of the alliance and promised to host next month’s meeting at the end of the Road to Hana on Maui.

Lastly, Alaska posted its Q1 earnings this week as well. The headline was that it led the industry in on-time performance, which, while an admirable goal, is never what you want headlining your earnings report. Alaska lost $193 million — or $1.69 per share — in the quarter, on $3.3 billion in gross revenue. Alaska declined to give future guidance, citing the volatility with fuel as the reason, but did say it expects capacity to be up 1% in Q2 compared to last year.

• Air Canada took delivery of its first A321XLR today.
• American is opening a new Admirals Club in Nashville.
• Contour is adding Merced, CA. to its route map making Central Valley fans very happy.
• El Al is headed to Argentina.
• Ethiopian is converting six B787 options into firm orders.
• Etihad will increase its service to Charlotte from 4x weekly to 1x daily this summer.
• Fiji Airways is capping seats.
• flydubai will begin flying to Bangkok on July 1.
• Frontier Airlines avoided a $162k fine.
• IndiGo signed an 8-year agreement with Delta TechOps to maintain 20 engines.
• ITA is flying to Santo Domingo now.
• JetBlue won’t file for bankruptcy this year, says the person whose job depends on it not filing for bankruptcy.
• Philippine Airlines is adding nine airplanes this year.
• Riyadh Air is adding Jeddah, Madrid, and Manchester.
• Ryanair is closing its Berlin base.
• Southwest is adding four for the holidays: San Francisco to Kansas City, Cleveland to Dallas, Jacksonville to Las Vegas, and San Diego to Fort Lauderdale.
• TAROM is restructuring. Maybe.
• United is sticking to its policy of charging for non-Starlink Wi-Fi.
• Volotea is ITA’s newest codeshare partner.

I have been trying to teach myself how to drive a stick shift, but I can’t find a manual anywhere.

Since I had to fly to Atlanta, the obvious thought was to look at Delta, but they wanted nearly $700 for a one way. I think it was a little better when booked as a roundtrip, but I instantly started looking to use points instead. On the way out, it was a no-brainer. American had only higher level awards in coach, but it did have a saver award seat available for First Class on the airline’s one nonstop from LAX. For 25,000 Atmos points — less than half the points Delta wanted for a coach seat — this was an easy choice.

I grabbed a room at a Hyatt I’ve stayed at before using an expiring night certificate for one night and points for the other, reserved parking at QuikPark near LAX, and then loaded the itinerary on the AA app (since I used Alaska miles, AA doesn’t see it automatically). Flight status showed me going out of Terminal 4, so I did the math in my head on timing, packed quickly, and then went to bed.

When I woke up, I had an alert saying we had been moved to the Bradley Terminal next door. I’m glad I had to app to tell me that, because it did make me want to give a little more buffer. The drive up was easy, but the terminal shuttle was excruciatingly slow, and I somehow didn’t even pull up to the Bradley Terminal curb until 45 minutes prior to departure. I was sweating this.

Every single time I walk through that terminal, I find it so strange when I’m just doing a domestic hop. This is the terminal of my youth where it meant you were going somewhere far away and exciting. But with Terminal 5 being rebuilt and Terminal 4 half being rebuilt, American is using a ton of gates in Bradley until the work is done.

There was no line at security, so I didn’t feel the need to hurry even once on the other side. I stopped by the bathroom and got to the gate when the last handful of people were boarding. For the first time I can remember in the US, I didn’t talk to a single ground employee. I just scanned my boarding pass and walked through the e-gate. Then I sat in the jet bridge while people slowly found their seats.

American 2469
March 29, 2026

From Los Angeles
➤ Scheduled Departure: 930a
➤ Actual Departure: 921a
➤ From Gate: 155
➤ Wheels Up: 944a
➤ From Runway: 25R

To Atlanta
➤ Wheels Down: 430p
➤ On Runway: 8L
➤ Scheduled Arrival: 449p
➤ Actual Arrival: 440p
➤ At Gate: T13

Aircraft
➤ Type: Airbus A321-231
➤ Delivered: December 20, 2008 to US Airways
➤ Registered: N508AY, msn 3740
➤ Livery: Ugly Flag Tail

Flight
➤ Cabin: First in Seat 2A
➤ Load: ~75% Full
➤ Flight Time: 3h46m

Pre-departure beverages had already been delivered by the time I sat down, but there was a lot of movement. The person in front of me had just been upgraded on the airplane, and bags were being brought forward. She got offered a beverage, but the flight attendant missed me somehow.

I decided to put on my headphones and close my eyes. It was a long taxi, but once in the air and above the receding fog, we pointed east.

I don’t think I actually slept, but I wasn’t feeling great so I kept my eyes closed for the first hour. After that, I felt like a new man.

About 15 minutes later, the flight attendant came by and asked if I wanted to eat since everyone else was long done. The charcuterie board was out — not that I cared — and she brought me the omelette. I can see why the omelette was the only option left.

The fruit was surprisingly good. The cinnamon roll was rock hard. The potatoes were soggy and squishy. The omelette was just… not good. I asked a friend who regularly flies on AA in First if that was normally this bad. His response? “Yes.” I later asked the flight attendant the same question, and she deftly replied, “You don’t see us eating it, do you?” That was a great response.

At this point I logged on to free wifi and after some early buffering, I was able to watch baseball streaming in my MLB app without any issues. After a bit, the wifi popped up another ad. Oh look, they’ve found a way to make the credit card pitch digital. How delightful.

When food was done, I went for a walk. This flight was not very full for a Sunday that undoubtedly touched someone’s spring break. I suppose with one daily flight in the market vs the 300 million daily flights on Delta, it’s not exactly the option most people think about first.

I chatted a bit with the flight attendant who was junior and New York-based. She was in a surprisingly good mood having already flown a delayed DFW-LAX before our flight that morning. Then I went back to my seat and opened up my computer.

I know I always waffle on this, but here’s the thing about in-seat video. If American had it, I could watch it undisturbed. But since American doesn’t have it, I put the phone in the little claw holder on the seatback. When the person in front of me reclines, it angles down annoyingly. And then, when I started logging into things on my computer, I had to keep interrupting my video on my phone to go and pull two-factor authentication codes out. I increasingly get the beauty of in-seat video.

The rest of the flight was pretty uneventful. There was no real service beyond the initial meal, but she would sometimes check on people. After giving up on stomaching the omelette, I was still hungry. Toward the end I asked the flight attendant if she had any snacks. She did not, but she called back to the aft galley, and someone brought up 3 Biscoffs for me. Slim pickings onboard, but I at least appreciated the effort.

It was a straight-in approach in Atlanta where scattered clouds hung over the city, somewhat obscuring my view of downtown. After touchdown, it was a lengthy taxi back to the T gates. I always find it so funny that American and United get the best gates in this airport.

I was pleased to see that construction progress has been made since my last trip. There is an actual ceiling in that terminal now.

I walked 100 miles until I got to the train to the rental car center. I grabbed a minivan and then I sat in traffic.

Overall, this experience was perfectly fine. The flight was on time, and the flight attendants were pleasant. It was basic transportation done as expected.

To do this work, I pulled annual passenger share for United and the next largest airlines using the Department of Transportation’s Origin & Destination Survey data (DB1B/C) via Cirium. This looked only for passengers that weren’t connecting through the hub. The problem with this, however, is that the data that’s public is only domestic. So, I’ll present that here and then talk how international would likely change the results.

And now, back to American’s hubs. I already had this chart in the United post, but it becomes more important now that the FAA has ruled on how it will allow O’Hare to run this summer.

Chicagoland Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

Post-pandemic, United really took advantage of American’s market neglect, and it grew its share significantly. American realized this in 2024, and it started pouring capacity back in for future schedules. In 2025, you can see the change in local share which is a direct result of American just having a lot more seats in the market.

But now, O’Hare is overscheduled as American continues to try to grow more and United matches the airline. The FAA has now stepped in, set a cap, and said that this summer’s capacity will be proportional to what flew last summer (2025). Overall, airlines will have to drop 150 to 200 daily operations in total compared to what’s filed, but the real fight was over how those cuts would be divvied up.

Using 2025 is good news for American in that if 2023 or 2024 had been chosen, it would have been forced to cancel so many more flights. But it’s better for United than if 2019 had been chosen. So, expect 2025’s share in this chart to carry forward, barring a shift in local vs flow strategy.

Next up is American’s favorite, Charlotte. I say it’s American’s favorite, because there is no real competition there.

Charlotte Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

Sure enough, American did see a little erosion post-pandemic as low-cost operators tried to make a small dent, but 2025 was a bounce-back kind of year for American here as well.

Moving on to American’s biggest and most important hub, say hello to the Dallas Metroplex.

Dallas Metroplex Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

This actually looks a lot like the Charlotte one, to the point where I had to double-check the data. But sure enough, once again, after seeing the ULCCs make some inroads in post-pandemic years, American rebounded in 2025. And Southwest fell off. I imagine that will change as Southwest has finished implementing its big product changes, and that may draw people back in the fold. But nobody is ever challenging American for supremacy in this market.

Now it’s time for another familiar chart, the Los Angeles Basin. We saw this in the United post, and here it is again.

Los Angeles Basin Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

From an American perspective, LA is all about the shrinking. The Pacific hub went away (not reflected here since this is domestic) and then the rest of the network shrunk accordingly. But unlike in some of the other markets, American has not regained any ground in the LA area. It remains below Delta, and United keeps creeping ever closer. One thing of note is that American’s operation at LAX has seen much more construction than any other airline, so it could reconsider in a couple years when all its gates are open again.

And while we’re on duplication, let’s look at New York again.

New York City Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

American has seen something of a rebound, but these numbers are wonky. After all, it was in the prior few years that American entered in the Northeast Alliance with JetBlue. With that, JetBlue started operating a lot of LaGuardia flights that American had run previously. One thing to keep in mind is that in 2025, American shifted its strategy in NYC to start flying more to big markets, like Orlando, Tampa, etc. So that will also be a factor in the 2025 rebound, but … if we just compare to 2019, the airline is flat.

A little further south, we have Philadelphia.

Philadelphia Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

American has been pretty steady here in general, but it does look like some 2023 ULCC growth had a noticeable impact. That’s gone, however, and American is back to where it was in Philly as of 2025, if not a little higher.

Now let’s move on to Phoenix and the Valley of the Sun.

Phoenix Valley of the Sun Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

It’s been down for both American and Southwest, though American did pop back up in 2025 a little. There’s been growth from pretty much every airline in the area over the last few years, so it’s not a surprise to see this come back down a bit. With international flying, the gap vs Southwest is certainly smaller than it shows here. But Southwest is still the clear leader in the market.

How about South Florida? On this one I did combine Miami with Fort Lauderdale and, unimportantly, West Palm Beach. Because of course in Miami alone, it’s all American, all the time.

South Florida Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

American actually has seen its share decline in South Florida since before the pandemic as other airlines have made moves. But JetBlue interestingly hasn’t been one of those airlines. It did put a lot of growth in the market later in 2025 and into this year, so we can probably expect to see that change. Spirit has dropped, of course, but it’s really Delta that has come on pretty strong in the last couple of years.

And finally, we look at DC… again.

Washington/Baltimore Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

As we talked about in the United post, American is now behind United and Southwest (assuming we include BWI). Operational restrictions at National certainly hurt, but American could still increase gauge and focus more on local traffic than connecting if it wanted to do so.

Overall, American did turn around some of that share decline in post-pandemic years in quite a number of its hubs. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it still has several hubs where it is not the leader or likely very close to it. There’s certainly a lot for American’s new Chief Commercial Officer Nat Pieper to think through.

As we all know, Spirit has spent the last several months trying to work through a proper Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization after botching its first attempt earlier last year to get any meaningful fixes. This time, it is taking things seriously. We know it has shrunk by more than half, it has shed expensive fleet, and it is focusing on rebuilding around its core in Florida, Detroit, and New York.

We can quibble all we want about things in the plan itself. For example, I don’t understand why the airline still has so many crew bases when it can’t reliably staff the flights it has. But none of that really matters. What matters is that there is a plan on the table, and the creditors have to decide if they like it or not.

So what is this plan? Well, the financials were finally released on April 6 in an updated disclosure statement. Spirit says it will have an operating margin of -7.4 percent this year, but it will be a positive 8.6 percent next year climbing to double digits after.

Let’s start on the revenue side of the plan. Spirit says it will achieve unit revenue of 11.66 cents for 2026, and that will climb to 14.13 cents by 2030 at the end of the plan. That seems wildly optimistic.

February operating numbers were just released, and the prospects worsened compared to January. Excluding special items, I’m seeing a negative margin of about 26 percent, 10 points worse than January. Doing the math, I get a Feb unit revenue that sagged to 9.66 cents. That means Jan and Feb combined are at 9.92 cents. That is going to be a hefty climb to get to 11.66 for the full year, and one that I would say seems very unlikely considering the current state of things.

And this doesn’t even take into account the cost side of the equation. I can’t speak to any of the cost numbers except for one very big one: fuel. Spirit budgeted $2.67 a gallon for fuel in 2026, plunging to $2.14 in 2027. We are currently well over $4 a gallon, and the prospects for a meaningful decline aren’t great. (Though, admittedly, that news changed by the minute.)

I did a little math, and for Spirit to break-even in 2027, it needs to have its very optimistic revenue numbers come true, and it needs fuel to be below $3.15 a gallon. That, of course, requires Spirit getting to 2027 in the first place.

Spring break is now over, so Spirit’s peak revenue-generating capability is done. With all the war and TSA mess in March, I imagine it did not do all that well then anyway. But now for the next couple months, we’re in shoulder/off-peak times where revenues are going to be weaker. Spirit needs to get to summer before it can really start generating revenue again… though probably not profit.

So again, I ask… why are creditors continuing to let this airline keep flying? Do they like waving goodbye to their money? Can they really not think of a better place to put it? (I’ve got plenty of ideas for them.)

As part of its disclosure statement, Spirit has to put out a liquidation analysis. In other words, if it decided to just liquidate, how much money would there be to divvy up? There’s a high and a low scenario, and Spirit says that it should be worth — net of all expenses — between $1.43 and $1.71 billion if converted to a Chapter 7 and sold off. Presumably that number goes down every day the airline continues to lose money. That number doesn’t sound too bad in a world where profitability truly seems quite far off.

All of this comes together to likely explain why the stories have been coming fast and furious about the airline pondering its end. That being said, to be very clear, the management team is not going down without a fight.

One thing I heard last week was that Spirit was trying to pressure the federal government to give it a loan. (I later saw this confirmed by Jamie Baker from JP Morgan Chase in an analyst note.) You can’t blame the management team for trying every possible lever, but this would certainly show the depths of despair at the airline if it’s trying this. After, this would be a terrible idea for the government, and it would undoubtedly require spending all remaining political capital.

If the pitch is that fuel is expensive because of the government’s actions so the airline deserves a bailout, then who DOESN’T deserve a bailout? That doesn’t mean that the powerful Florida political scene couldn’t try to get this pushed through in this current administration, but it seems unlikely.

In the end, it seems like Spirit is trying absolutely everything it can, which is all you can ask from a management team dealt a losing hand. (Remember, it was the previous team under CEO Ted Christie that led the airline through the first failed bankruptcy.) But at this point, I think all we can wonder is… how is this airline still flying?

Are flights getting more expensive because of the Iran war? – USA Today

It was a twofer with USA Today this week. First, are flights getting more expensive because of the war? Well, yes, but mostly because of that pesky jet fuel price that has risen because of the war.

All major airlines raised checked bag fees again. Get used to it – USA Today

Fares can only go up so much, but airlines want more to cover costs. Bag fees? That hasn’t been touched in a couple of years, so why not take a swing at those too.

Panel Discussion on Airlines – Schwab Network

I was asked to join a short six minute panel discussion about what’s happening in the industry.

Spirit on the Brink?

Time is a flat circle. Sometimes Spirit is filing for bankruptcy. Sometimes it’s getting a plan approved to exit bankruptcy. And sometimes it’s reported by reliable sources that the airline is on the bring of liquidation. Is it true? Check back next Friday and we’ll see.

Spirit told CNBC in a statement that it doesn’t “comment on market rumors and speculation,” which, well, what fun is that? There’s a whole cottage industry built on market rumors and speculation, and they’re really missing out.

Pilots and FAs made concessions back to the carrier to help it survive. Spirit, popular amongst budget travelers and those heading to Florida (that’s a Venn Diagram that’s almost 100% overlap) is on the back end of Spring Break, and is looking down the barrel at a challenging spring and summer with gas prices costing more per gallon that Spirit charges for many of its base fares.

While it seems like it’s a matter of when — and not if — Spirit shuts down, anything is possible. Well almost anything, it’s not like American and United would ever merge, right?

Scott Kirby’s Latest Plan for World Domination

What if Coke and Pepsi merged? Or GEICO and Progressive? What about Marriott and Hilton? Seems unlikely, no? Not in the mind of United CEO Scott Kirby who floated the idea this week that his carrier could absorb its peskiest rivAAl, to create a super airline that combines the unreliability of American and the proud Newark base of United to spawn the most unmanageable blob of an airline since…well, since Texas Air acquired Continental in the ’80s.

Is Kirby serious? Maybe. Probably not. But maybe. What’s he really at here? Is it that he really wants JetBlue and is laying the ground for that by pushing this so a JetBlue acquisition doesn’t seem so crazy? Brett and friends said on The Air Show that is one active theory. Another is that Scott Kirby truly, down to his core, actually believes that there’s only room for two dominant U.S. carriers, and this is the quickest way to settle that.

DOT Makes Decision on Chicago/ORD Deescalation

The battle between American and United at Chicago/ORD finally had some sense knocked into it by — gasp — the federal government. The DOT ruled that about 300 flights per day needed to be cut from the airport’s peak summer schedule to give it even a prayer of maintaining any operational reliability.

“What’s operational reliability?” asked American upon hearing the ruling from the government, while United smugly accepted the ruling while secretly wishing the government would force it to reduce flying to Newark again too.

Nearly 3,100 flights were planned on peak days this summer, a 15% jump from a year ago. The maximum the government will permit this summer is 2,708, which is still more than last year’s 2,680.

When hearing that 300 flights needed to be reduced, AA and UA network planning teams got together and emerged early this morning with a new plan. They say that if Delta and Frontier cut about 25 flights per day, Aeromexico, Air Canada, Porter, WestJet, Viva, and Volaris go down to one flight a day, all other international carriers just pull out of the airport, and then assuming Spirit goes under, that should get them to the 300 flights cut without either AA or UA having to eliminate anything.

Lufthansa Looks for Savings, Shuts Down CityLine

Lufthansa will be adjusting its operation in reaction to rising oil prices and their mess of a labor situation as summer approaches. It’s a bold strategy, because everyone knows you can’t cancel flights if they’ve already been taken off the schedule. It’s calling it “capacity discipline,” which is corporate for “we checked the math and yikes.”

It also will reduce capacity in a very efficient and very German three-step plan:

• Removal of Lufthansa CityLine forever
• Retirement of its last four A340-600s and the grounding of two B747-400s by the end of summer
• Additional capacity reduction for the 26/27 winter

CityLine is, er, was a regional subsidiary of Lufthansa and it was already set to be wound down next year and replaced by the wildly differently named Lufthansa City. But this abrupt change will end all CityLine service as of tomorrow, April 18. All CityLine employees will be laid off and are expected to be offered jobs at other LH subsidiaries, at a dramatically reduced salary, we’re sure.

But wait, there’s more! LH also will move up the transfer of nine A350-900s to low-cost operator Discover, while also vowing to find other savings through the reduction of admin costs and increasing revenue streams, including charging a €3 fare to board a bus when arriving at a remote stand in Frankfurt. Passengers electing not to pay the fee will have to find their own way to the terminal from the remote stand.

Spirit Told to Pay Up to TSA

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled that Spirit could no longer get away with being a cheapskate and holding on to passenger security fees that were owed to the TSA.

Talk about kicking a guy when he’s down, Spirit is doing everything it can to stay afloat, looking for every penny it can find and the government sniffed out this scheme and put an end to it. Spirit was taking flights that customers booked, canceled for a credit, and then let the credit expire without using it and keeping the TSA fee on those bookings.

The government ruled that the airline can do one of two things with passenger security fees — pay it to the TSA or refund it to the customer. Baking the fee into a credit that doesn’t get redeemed doesn’t fall within those two options, and Spirit is being required to send $2.84 million in fees to the TSA.

Spirit would not make anyone available for comment, but an off-the-record source told us at the TSA is “gonna love being a creditor when we go under…good luck collecting.”

• Air Canada unveiled its fancy new cabins. But you won’t be flying them to New York/JFK this summer.
• American will test electronic boarding gates at DFW this summer.
• Condor is going to need some ownership help.
• Delta is suspending five routes this summer.
• Edelweiss won’t be flying to either Denver or Seattle this summer as the carrier is a known hater of Super Bowl XLVIII.
• JetBlue could be in trouble if you ask its founder and current boss at Breeze David Neeleman.
• Jet2 wants you to know that nothing beats a trip on its new all-business class B737-800.
• Korean unveiled its fancy new lounge product at Seoul/ICN.
• LEVEL will fly a lesser level of nonstops this summer from Barcelona.
• Magnicharters shut down its entire operation for at least two weeks. Because these moves usually only last a short period and everything is fine after. Don’t worry that its website now appears offline completely.
• Norse Atlantic is pulling out of Los Angeles. It says its because of high oil prices, but we suspect its because no one in Hollywood would take them up on their movie script “The Many Bjørns.”
• Oman Air will return service to Dubai tomorrow.
• Qantas is reducing its flying both to the U.S. and domestically to combat spiking oil prices.
• SAS will begin 5x weekly Mumbai service in June.
• SCAT Airlines, in addition to its unfortunate name, is now the sole shareholder of Southern Sky Airlines.
• SkyTeam named Cate Leigh as VP for Corporate Affairs. She will spin the wheel on her first day with each SkyTeam carrier and will move to whatever country’s airline it stops on.
• Spirit is looking to reject seven more airplanes.

Spent nearly an hour trying to figure out how to fasten my seatbelt.

Then it finally clicked.

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At United’s media day last month, the airline proudly put forth a slide noting that back in the day, it only had the largest local passenger share in one of its hubs: Houston. Today, it says it is number one in all of them except for Los Angeles. That is a big shift, but is it true? I pulled the numbers to find out, and regardless of the answer, it is clear that United is significantly growing its share in every one of its hubs with one notable exception.

To do this work, I pulled annual passenger share for United and the next largest airlines using the Department of Transportation’s Origin & Destination Survey data (DB1B/C) via Cirium. This looked only for passengers that weren’t connecting through the hub. The problem with this, however, is that the data that’s public is only domestic. So, I’ll present that here and then talk how international would likely change the results.

Let’s just do this in alphabetical order, shall we? That means we start in Chicago. The airline’s growth there will be no surprise to anyone since United has been crowing loudly to everyone who will listen about just how much local share the airline has gained. And the numbers certainly show that.

Chicagoland Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

It wasn’t that long before the pandemic that American was number one in Chicago, but now it’s no contest. American in fact had slipped below Southwest and its Midway operation. Of course, 2025 was the year American realized it was going to lose a lot of gates if it didn’t snap to it, so it started pouring capacity into the market. That raised its local share but it looks like it largely took it at the expense of Southwest. United just keeps growing.

If we were to include international, United’s lead would only grow. In full year 2025, United more than doubles the number of international seats that American has in the market. If we include joint venture partners, it’s only slightly less than double. So if anything, this is understating United’s gains.

Now let’s move on to Denver where international flying is more of a rounding error.

Denver Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

This has been a fight between United and Southwest, but United has certainly taken a much greater share of the pie in the last few years. It is now the clear number one in the market. This was such a hot topic in previous years, but now it’s not even worth discussing further.

What if we head down to Houston? Remember, this is the one market where United was in first place before already.

Houston Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

And it’s still in first place. What’s interesting here is that United hasn’t changed all that much since 2019, but Southwest has fallen off more there. We are talking different airports here, of course, but Southwest has been losing share to ULCCs Spirit and Frontier and also Delta while United keeps growing. Oh, and once you consider United’s robust Latin flying from here, there isn’t a contest.

But if you want a contest, we can look at my homebase, the Los Angeles Basin. This is by design a market that can’t be dominated by any one airline, and that shows itself in the data.

Los Angeles Basin Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

You might be surprised to see that Southwest is so much bigger than the rest, but remember, we are talking about the metro area. Southwest may not be as important at LAX but it dominates all the other local airports. Number two was American before the pandemic, but once it shut off its Pacific hub, that changed quickly. Delta is number one now. If you were to add in international, I’d assume it might help Delta pad its lead on second place a little. But to win the metro area, you still have to beat Southwest and that won’t be easy to do for United.

And then there’s New York. New York’s results may look somewhat shocking at first glance.

New York City Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

Look at Delta pulling away from United to dominate New York over the last couple of years. This fits with what we saw at LaGuardia where Delta really boosted local traffic, enough to win it a Cranky Network Award this year. But do keep in mind that capacity was reduced significantly in Newark thanks to ATC issues leading to gridlock. So that had to hurt United.

But again, this is missing international. Yes, both airlines have huge international operations in New York, but United actually skews more toward international than Delta. Delta and joint venture partners have a total of 27 percent of their seats going outside the US while United and partners are north of 35 percent. When we adjust for that, it ends up being neck and neck even after Newark reductions.

I’m sure there’s some way for United to cherry-pick the numbers that help the claim it is number one, but unlike in other markets, this is no runaway. Delta and United are still both locked in a dead heat.

What about San Francisco? Oh that one is like watching a hockey stick.

San Francisco Bay Area Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

Alaska has turned away from more traditional markets from San Francisco since the Virgin America merger. It’s no surprise it keeps losing share, but what about Southwest? Southwest has its massive Oakland hub along with a substantial San Jose operation, but it has been pulling down Oakland in favor of Sacramento as of late. That may very well change, but in 2025 United and Southwest were neck-and-neck domestically. That means with international baked in, it’s no contest.

And finally, we look at DC. Was United including Baltimore or not? It’s hard to say for sure, but it’s certainly much easier without it.

Washington/Baltimore Local Passenger Share by Year

^{Data via Cirium}

I think the key finding here for United is that its Dulles operation has now surpassed American’s National operation in terms of local passengers carried. That is quite the milestone. Southwest is still far ahead, but again, remember, we are talking domestic market only. A quarter of United’s seats in DC fly internationally whereas for Southwest it’s less than three percent.

The reality here is similar to New York where overall it’s going to be very close between the two airlines. That’s a substantial change from pre-pandemic when it wasn’t even a contest, but whether United is truly the king… that’s debatable. Then again, if United isn’t counting Baltimore, well, then that’s an easy victory to claim.

I think it’s important to note that just because you have higher local share doesn’t mean that you can declare sunshine-and-rainbows. After all, what if connecting traffic were to carry a much greater premium? Is it worth buying local share by becoming more competitive? I’m not saying that’s what is happening here, because I’m not going down the revenue road today. But United’s financial results do speak for themselves.

One thing that has changed is the importance of the credit card. And to get more credit card sign-ups, you want to be as useful as possible to the local market in the hub. United certainly gets that and has made strides in improving relevance in every part of its network.

You probably think of Medjet as a great way to get medical evacuation assistance when traveling far from home, but there is more to it than that.  And considering how things are going around the world, it’s the company’s MedjetHorizon security services that are now really worth having when you travel.

Medjet’s standard medical transport memberships get you from a hospital far away to a hospital of your choosing back home when something goes wrong, among other benefits.  That’s a lot different than traditional insurance, and it provides good peace of mind, but that’s probably not what you’re thinking about right now, is it?

Right now, you’re thinking about war in Iran, the invasion of Venezuela, the ongoing war in Ukraine, the brief cartel violence in Mexico, long TSA lines, the end of the world, you name it. So your biggest concern is probably… what happens if I’m abroad and something bad happens? 

It’s not just about human-caused problems either. Just think about the recent flooding in Hawaiʻi after relentless rains.  Or consider earthquakes, hurricanes, or anything else your overstimulated brain can dream up.  There are studies from the past saying that three-fourths of travelers worry about their safety while on the road, and I’m going to bet it’s a lot higher right now.

This probably explains why MedjetHorizon has been Medjet’s fastest growing membership for the last 4 years.  It does include the medical repatriation benefits, of course, but it also gives 24/7 access to a global Crisis Response Center to not only provide advice but also provide assistance when things get bad. 

Iʻm guessing you probably wondered what exactly that means.  I know that was my first question.  What can they actually do?  Here are some general examples:

• People who have been violently assaulted can received assistance in dealing with the police and consulate — that can be very difficult to navigate alone if you don’t understand the language, you don’t know the legal processes, and you’ve been traumatized.

• People have been guided out of demonstrations that have turned violent at multiple locations, like a couple who got stuck between the police and the yellow vest demonstrators that when that demonstration turned into a riot on the Champs Elysees. 

• Medjet had members in Puerto Vallarta who were being monitored for safe sheltering in place. Had that escalated, and had it been safe, removal by land or air would have been an option.

• A family was assisted out of Cancún ahead of a hurricane in Mexico. They were flown to San Diego, where they were able to safely connect to a commercial flight home.

• Businessmen escorted from a convention center to their hotel, packed up, and taken securely to the airport because they were being stalked and threatened/harassed at a trade show in China

• A production crew was tracked from location to location during a commercial shoot in South Korea…while North Korea was threatening to send missiles into Seoul. They checked in with the security teams any time they moved locations.  “It felt good to have someone monitoring us, and knowing that if things escalated we’d have help in getting to someplace safe.” 

MedjetHorizon also provides response for disappearance (I mean who would your parents or spouse call if you did just disappear?), terrorism, wrongful detention, pandemic and more.

Nashville’s original terminal was on the west side of the field. This was a tiny terminal that was built in 1961. It was quickly overwhelmed, and so plans were created about a decade later or so to build a new terminal further to the east on the other side of the runways.

This terminal was under development for years, but it didn’t actually break ground until 1984. The need became obvious one year later when American announced it would open up a hub in Nashville as part of its plan to better blanket the country.

Once the new terminal opened in 1987, American’s nascent hub grew fast. The airline took over all of the C gates, the end of B, and it used D as its regional concourse.

The hub peaked in the early 1990s, and then American shifted course. It abandoned the Nashville hub in 1995 and, as is almost always the case, Southwest moved in to backfill.

As I mentioned earlier, other hubs have often had to downsize, but this wasn’t that big of a hub in the first place — about half the size of Delta’s Cincinnati hub — and the growth from Southwest came fast and furious. Instead of trying to figure out how to shrink, Nashville had to figure out how to grow even further.

The airport made a few early changes, creating a bigger headhouse and a single security checkpoint to better accommodate local traffic needs (versus a conneting hub). That got Nashville into the mid-2010s, but then it was time to make more significant investments as demand continued upwards.

First up was the BNA Vision plan which rebuilt and lengthened the D concourse and added a satellite concourse parallel to the C gates. That was followed by the New Horizon plan which further extended the D gates (in red below) which opened last July and then prepared to rebuild the A gates entirely (also in red).

That new A concourse will open in 2028, but until then it’s a bit of a jumble. Here’s the lay of the land today:

Delta and United use the B gates and all the cats and dogs use the C satellite. American uses part of its old hub concourse on C, though it’s down to only seven gates. Southwest has all of D alongside the rest of C. Remember, Southwest shifted its mains Southeast hub from Atlanta to Nashville in the last couple of years, so the airline is clearly hungry for more space.

How this all shifts when a new concourse opens remains to be seen, but I’d imagine it would make a lot of sense to push American to the new A gates and give Southwest control of C.

You might think this growth would be enough to keep Nashville in good shape for awhile, but the airport has grand plans. It already has designed a new Terminal 2 further to the south, across runway 13/31 which would be an enormous change when built out.

This isn’t expected to be ready until the late 2030s, if then, but there’s a whole lot of time for plans to change between now and then anyway. With Southwest seemingly quite pleased with the shift of focus from Atlanta to Nashville, that airline’s growth may very well determine when (or if) that new Terminal 2 is needed. But the chances of Nashville needing to shrink back down like other former hubs? That’s just about zero.

First, it’s important to note that these airplanes are going away quickly. In 2025, 48 of the -700s were retired. This year there are 60 airplanes leaving the fleet and I’ll assume the vast majority of those are -700s as well. So the numbers are quickly shrinking. This mesmerizing chart tells the story of fleet renewal at Southwest.

Southwest Departures by Fleet Type by Month

^{110-seaters in yellow, 140-seaters in blue, 175-seaters in red… Data via Cirium}

The original B737-200s were gone in early 2005, and it wasn’t long before the -700 NGs took over as the most important aircraft for the airline from the -300 Classics. The larger -800 NGs showed up in 2012, but they remained small as the -700s continued to grow, including with second-hand purchases that went on for years.

It was July 2018 when Southwest’s -700 fleet hit its peak, scheduling 95,076 flights for the month, or more than 3,000 daily departures. This was clearly the backbone of the fleet, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

The MAX was supposed to begin the phase-out of the NG fleet, but it ran into, shall we say, a couple of problems. First, Boeing programmed the airplane to try to crash itself in certain circumstances, so it was grounded and wouldn’t come back into service until 2021. And second, the -7 variant which was meant to replace the -700 kept failing to be certified in the aftermath of that mess. It still hasn’t been certified to this day, so Southwest has taken delivery exclusively of -8s.

As the industry came out of the pandemic in 2021, Southwest’s -800/-8 flying looked like a hockey stick. It grew remarkably fast while the -700s were retired. Southwest had entered a phase of limited-to-no fleet growth, and so it just kept replacing -700s with newer, larger airplanes.

June 2023 was the first month that Southwest scheduled more departures on the -800/-8 than on the -700, but it was by a hair. And then the -700 took the top spot again, briefly. The last time the -700 had more departures scheduled was May 2024 when there were 62,710 departures on the -700 and 62,678 on the -800/-8. Fast forward to this upcoming May and the -700 has only 47,645 departures scheduled compared to 75,737 on the -800/-8. It is shifting quickly.

Of course, the problem here is that the -700s are still a bad experience compared to the -800s/-8s which will all have the new general standard interior installed. And though the number of -700 flights continues to decline, it’s still a significant number of passengers impacted by that bad experience.

What can Southwest do? It can start to put the -700s on shorter and shorter flights. That’s exactly what it has done, though I have no idea if that was the reasoning. This chart, I found fascinating.

Southwest Average Stage Length by Fleet Type Over Time

^{Data via Cirium}

If we go back 20 years, Southwest’s -700s were the long-haul airplanes by necessity — the -200s/300s/500s couldn’t go all that far. But about 10 years ago, the -700s began to fly less than the average stage length for the airline as its newer -800s came into the fleet and did the longer-hauls.

You can see that stage length on the -800s has come down over time, and that’s because the -700s keep being replaced. But look at what has happened in the last six months, there has been a marked shift.

It was really starting around October that the -700s were deliberately put on shorter flights. Let’s take a look at the this coming May vs last May. The difference is striking.

Southwest Departures by Stage Length – May 2026 vs May 2025

^{Data via Cirium}

So, yes, Southwest has a product problem. But also yes, it is doing what it can to fix it, short of spending millions to update a fleet that isn’t going to last more than a few years more.

That doesn’t solve the problem in the short term, but I imagine we’re going to keep seeing those airplanes retire at a rapid clip. We’re apparently just going to have to grin-and-bear it until the work is done. In the meantime, if you have multiple flight options, you might want to pick the one that isn’t on a -700 if you want the better experience.

Future of air travel: Routes, Rewards and Renovations – American City Business Journals

This is a bit different than a normal Cranky on the Web, because it hasn’t happened yet. But this Monday at 11am PT/2pm ET I’ll be joining a panel with the Business Journals to talk about the industry. And YOU are welcome to come and listen without charge. Just register at this link. (Update: I thought it was without charge, but it has been reported back to me that they are charging people. I’m really sorry about that. Definitely not what I had expected.)

It was spring break over here, so Brian ended up doing the pod all by himself this week. Ok, that’s not entirely true since he had a guest… Breeze Chief Commercial Officer Lukas Johnson. Brian went pretty hard at Lukas, so you’re going to want to listen in. You can tell Brian what you thought at theairshowpod@gmail.com. To me, the biggest takeaway is that Breeze continues to improve its finances, posting a Q1 operating profit. Good for them, it’s starting to click over there.

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Delta Leads off Q1 Earnings

Delta led off Q1 earnings season this week, posting operating revenue just shy of $16 billion, with an operating profit of $501 million, giving it an operating margin of 3.2%. The overall numbers came in line with its initial guidance for the quarter, with outlook for Q2 to end up with a profit around $1 billion. It expects Q2 revenue to increase between 10 and 15% leading to an operating margin of 6-8% and approximately $1-$1.50 earnings per share. Upon hearing this, American CEO Robert Isom commented, “that’s for, like, the whole year, right?”

The adjusted revenue figure of $14.2 billion was a Q1 record for Delta and a 10% jump from 2025. Premium revenue — the only revenue Delta cares about — jumped 14% over Q1 in ’25, while its ransom renumeration from American Express was in excess of $2 billion. Domestic unit revenue grew 6%, with international growing 5% — led by Transatlantic.

As expected, fuel was a major factor on the expense side of the ledger, though high prices didn’t kick in until the back half of the quarter. Non-fuel CASM was up $0.15, about 6%, while fuel was up 8% YoY. Delta paid an average price of $2.62 per gallon at the pump, a price that goes up when counting how much Ed and Tom spent on scratch-off tickets every time they fueled up an aircraft.

Delta finished the quarter with $8.1 billion in liquidity, a figure that includes cash, cash equivalents, short-term investments, Tom Brady’s Super Bowl rings, and the casita Ed built on Tom’s property in Las Vegas so he’s “available to hang when Tom is free.”

Cape Air‘s Window to the World

Cape Air Flight 5001 from Nantucket to Boston on Monday morning was forced to return to Nantucket shortly after departure when an “upper portion of the main cabin door opened while in flight.” Cranky was able to confirm with Cape Air representatives that its normal course of action is to only open the doors to the cabin while on the ground, so this situation presented a change from regular operations.

The aircraft was able to return to ACK without incident and is now out of service while it undergoes inspection. We at Cranky suggested to the same Cape Air representative that instead of taking the aircraft out of service, it just shut the door while in the air. Apparently that was considered, but passed on.

The aircraft was a 9-passenger Cessna 402C, one of 64 in Cape Air’s fleet.

American Shores Up Venezuela Plans

American announced several weeks ago it intended to resume service to Venezuela after the regime change which took place several months ago, but its original announcement was light on details.

We know more now, as the carrier shared it intends to begin flying to Caracas (CCS) as soon as this month, with service slated to resume on April 30. Envoy will operate 1x daily flights for American Eagle on an E-175 and mark the first service to the country for AA since 2019. AA is the first US airline to announce its intention to fly to Venezuela, going with the logic that Venezuelans have been busy with domestic affairs and might not realize just how bad AA is operationally, giving it a leg up on other airlines.

This comes following a March 19 announcement in which the State Department lowered Venezuela’s travel advisory to Level 3, “Reconsider Travel,” which for Venezuela is a major upgrade. It joins Colombia, Egypt, Guatelmala, Jordan, Kuwait, Mauritania, Papua New Guinea, and Qatar — amongst a few others — in the Level 3 club.

Spirit Sells 20

Spirit announced CSDS Asset Management as the sucker winner for 20 A320 aircraft drenched in yellow paint.

The sale includes 13 A320ceo and seven A321ceo airplanes with a street value of about $533 million. For the transaction to go through, it will have to be approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court on April 23. Spirit used the time-honored tradition of showing added value in the purchase for bidders, reminding them, “Buy a used Spirit jet, get a free collection of half-charged vape pens and mystery crumbs.”

Spirit said in a statement: “The sale of these aircraft will improve its financial situation by reducing related labor, maintenance, storage, flying, and other associated costs.” It left out the fact that the 20 planes it chose to sell off all have a similar BO stink that it’s been unable to get rid of, no matter what it tried. One source said the upon the sale, the planes also contained dozens of boarding passes buried deep in seat pockets from passengers who are still arguing about the bag fee they were charged at the gate.

When asked to comment to Cranky, a Spirit spokesperson told us “These planes aren’t used — they’re seasoned. Years of embedded pretzels and BuzzBallz give the cabin our signature Spirit musk.”

American Increases Basic Bag Fees

Much of the industry has raised checked bag fees in the last week due to the escalating price of fuel (which they’ll surely roll back any day now if the ceasefire in Iran holds and the price returns to the mid-$60s per barrel, RIGHT?!?), but American is tAAking it a step further, making its checked bag fees more punitive for its most price sensitive customers — those on Basic Economy tickets. AA increased its fee by $10 on most tickets, meaning $50 for the first bag and $60 for the second (there’s a $5 “discount” for paying online before travel).

But Basic Economy customers will be hit with a $55 charge for their first bag, and a $65 fee for the second for tickets purchasd on or after May 18. The $5 “discount” also applies here, bringing the price down slightly. This comes alongside a required payment to pick a seat on all Basic tickets also beginning May 18 — even for customers gullible enough to have with status on AA.

• Aeroflot‘s 2025 earnings, reported by the Russian government were exceptional. They really were. Seriously.
• Air Canada is adding new destinations for pale Canadians to work on their winter tan.
• Air China is back in the North Korea business. Sorta.
• Air India CEO Campbell “Soup” Wilson stepped down.
• Air Sénégal made a winner out of everyone that had April 9 as the day it would return its last A330-900neo.
• airBaltic is looking for investors.
• Allegiant will close its base in Savannah late this year.
• Avianca will add more than 3,000 flights to carry fans to and from matches at this summer’s World Cup.
• Jetstar‘s first refurbished Dreamliner took off for the first time.
• Marathon Airways began the long journey of serving Libya.
• Oman Air carried 1.45 million passengers in Q1.
• Saudia will return to Abu Dhabi, Amman, and Dubai on Saturday.
• Spring Airlines is considering a $72 million buyback.
• SUM Air added everything up and realized it needed to order up to eight new ATR 72-600s.
• Turkish named Ahmet Olmuştur its new CEO.
• WestJet added Copa as an interline partner.
• Wizz Air is opening a new base in Turin.

What rock group has four men who don’t sing?

Mount Rushmore.

Sure, United did show off some big, new, shiny toys like its Elevated interior on the B787-9. But on the surface, anyone can outfit an airplane with flat beds. It’s the little things that make a big difference, and I found employee after employee very eager to show off those little things everywhere I turned.

An airline’s layout of passenger accommodations — LOPA for short — is like the blueprint for each aircraft. It’s the LOPA that shows where seats are as well as all the monuments that lie inside — galleys, lavs, etc. When it comes to a LOPA, there is only so much you can do. There is a finite amount of space on any given tube, but that doesn’t mean there is no wiggle room at all. And some airlines are better at maximizing their use of space than others.

Perhaps nothing has shown this off more in recent times than the United A321neo LOPA. On this airplane, United fit 20 First Class seats plus 57 Economy Plus and 123 regular Economy seats for a total of 200. Delta has 194 seats while American is at 196, so you would imagine that United’s configuration would be knee-crunching and disliked.

It’s not.

Filled with big screens full of content, wifi (faster Starlink wifi coming soon), and even a snack bar in the back, United says the A321neo has the airline’s highest customer satisfaction scores in the entire fleet. Perhaps this proves the point that while legroom matters, it’s the cumulative impact of every little thing that can make or break someone’s experience. And expertise with a LOPA can help enable those little things.

This LOPA-ninjaing was on full display at United’s media day on nearly all of its announcements.

For example, take the Relax Row which is a repurposed Air New Zealand Skycouch that will turn a set of three coach seats into a larger bed area on five rows of the airlines widebodies. This product does require adding an extra inch of legroom in those rows. That might be an issue except that in that back cabin where the seats will be, there is extra room available. I imagine the idea of wasted space gnawed at United, so it found something to do with it. This means United can take those five inches to put them to work generating revenue.

Or take the new Polaris flat beds on the transcon A321 Coastliner as well as the A321XLR. The 1-1 herringbone configuration seems to be the default way of fitting in beds on the narrowbody, but United knew that there had been concern about the claustrophobic coffin feeling onboard. It’s no wonder why:

The geometry of the airplane requires using a seat like this or forfeiting too much space, and it does look narrow here, doesn’t it?

But what did United do? It realized that if it lowered the walls a little, carved out more shoulder room, and then installed a translucent wall behind the traveler, it would create a much greater feeling of space and comfort with more light. No, it doesn’t make it so you face the window, which explains this look on my face, but it does still feel different than what others have done.

Then there’s the fancy Polaris Studio suite at the front of each cabin on the new B787-9 with the Elevated interior.

As I understand it, there is an issue with access to the crew rest area that makes it more challenging to put a big screen in those seats. But United figured it out. That new screen is a giant at 27 inches.

Contrast this with American which went with a smaller screen, because it was having trouble with certification. It just feels a whole lot different.

It’s not just up front either. When I walked to the back of the B787, one of the original project managers wanted to show off the 13 inch screens back there. This put United at the top of the class with airlines like Emirates and Japan Airlines. In the US, I don’t think anyone is above 12 inches. Is that a dealbreaker? No. But that extra inch is just part of the overall effort by United to keep improving the product throughout the airplane.

We can talk about the introduction of a closet and the elimination of overhead bins on the new CRJ450, or we can go back in time to the CRJ550 which did something similar. It’s not easy to be creative on a small, regional fleet. This is definitely creative.

To me, these small things were what United really had on display at media day. You can put the headlines in a press release, but when you step onboard and feel the difference, that’s where it will really shine. United seems to get that better than anyone these days.

[Dislosure: Embraer paid for my flights and hotel for the event]

It was a strange sensation not having to check in 24 hours in advance. But sure enough, I didn’t bother until later on when getting my boarding pass was a non-event. I had already reserved seat 18A (a freebie when you’re on a standard Choice fare), so I threw it into my Google Wallet and forgot about it.

At the airport, I realized I hadn’t flown from Long Beach in awhile. The rental car counters have now fully moved into the historic terminal, so that’s a big upgrade.

But I just sailed through security, thanking the TSA workers for coming to work as I went. (You know, not a lot of people want to work when they aren’t actually getting paid.)

I was at gate 1 on this flight, so I walked down to the south end of the terminal to wait to board. Southwest has set this up with a sign for pre-boarding right in front of the counter. Then to the side, there are two lines, one for odd-numbered boarding groups and another for even.

They announced that group 1 should line up on the odd side with group 2 on the even side. I didn’t hear another announcement about later groups, but people all figured it out. Once the line emptied, the next group filled in.

There was some confusion from people who showed up too late for their boarding group, however. They got into the pre-board line and then just cut in front of whatever group was boarding. It was somewhat awkward.

Somehow I was in group 3. I don’t know why, because I have no status or credit card, but honestly I didn’t even care. I could squeeze my bag under my seat for the short flight if no bins were available, but it’s not like I was going to wait around.

While the line at the ramp at the front of the aircraft got full, I walked to the back where I walked up the empty stairs and swam forward to get to my seat.

Southwest 4039
March 18, 2026

From Long Beach
➤ Scheduled Departure: 240p
➤ Actual Departure: 235p
➤ From Gate: 1
➤ Wheels Up: 247p
➤ From Runway: 30

To Las Vegas
➤ Wheels Down: 331p
➤ On Runway: 1L
➤ Scheduled Arrival: 350p
➤ Actual Arrival: 337p
➤ At Gate: B19

Aircraft
➤ Type: Boeing 737-8 MAX
➤ Delivered: June 24, 2025
➤ Registered: N8962L, msn 68925
➤ Livery: Hot Dog on a Stick

Flight
➤ Cabin: Coach in Seat 18A
➤ Load: ~95% Full
➤ Flight Time: 44m

I stepped onboard the nearly-new B737-8 MAX and marveled at those big ole’ bins.

There would be no problem of bin space on this flight, even though it was nearly full. This was also my first flight on the airplane with the seats that have USB power built in. I found them comfortable.

Once boarded up, the flight attendants put the airplane into Christmas mode as we pushed back a few minutes early.

We got down to the runway, and then we took off into the sweltering summer-like day. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky as we soared over the port before circling back toward Las Vegas.

Once in the air, mood-lighting switched again to a cool blue, clearly reflecting the fact that the air conditioning was finally catching up and cooling us down.

I didn’t need to charge my phone, but I mean, why not? So I plugged it in, and I ended up with more charge than I had before I started despite constant usage.

I also logged into wifi which was humming along quite nicely. This is not the Southwest I know, but I think I can get used to it. It’ll be even better with Starlink onboard.

The flight attendants ran through with a quick water service, but they didn’t have time for anything else. Las Vegas was landing on the 1s which means we had a straight shot in. That’s always good for shaving a few minutes off the already-short flight, but it’s also a very pretty (and usually bumpy) approach.

After landing, our gate was ready, so we parked nice and early. Every time I fly Southwest out of a B gate, my mind immediately races back to the old America West hub. It is a wonderful and nostalgic feeling.

The flight on Southwest, however? It was anything but nostalgic. It was pretty damn good. Was there anything bad? Well, I mentioned some of the boarding kinks that could be worked out, but other than that, I just wish I had a different seatmate who wasn’t stinking up the entire cabin constantly. Not cool, bro. But hey, Southwest can’t control everything.

Now, on the return, things were different. Instead of a flashy new MAX, we had an ancient B737-700 as our chariot. And that has a much worse feel.

Again I had checked in on my phone, but I decided to go a little early to the airport. With all the noise about TSA wait times being a problem and no way that I could find to get real-time details at LAS, I decided to get to the airport about 1h30m before departure.

That was completely unnecessary. There were no lines at all. I thanked the ID checker for coming to work and said something like “I don’t know how you do it.” His response? “I’m also a male stripper.” Well done, sir.

On the other side, I slowly ambled along the C concourse. It really is amazing what you see in Vegas. You wouldn’t see anything like this in any other airport:

I made it over to C7 and had time to kill despite the long walk. I sat down and worked. After a lengthy deboarding process, the gate agents were ready to board us quickly. Unlike in Long Beach, Vegas has screens that flash your boarding group so it was much more intuitive. Again I had group 3, and after a clearing a long line in a hot jet bridge, I trudged back to my seat in row 19.

Southwest 1211
March 20, 2026

From Las Vegas
➤ Scheduled Departure: 1015a
➤ Actual Departure: 1017a
➤ From Gate: C7
➤ Wheels Up: 1032a
➤ From Runway: 1R

To Long Beach
➤ Wheels Down: 1115a
➤ On Runway: 30
➤ Scheduled Arrival: 1130a
➤ Actual Arrival: 1119a
➤ At Gate: 1

Aircraft
➤ Type: Boeing 737-7H4
➤ Delivered: April 13, 2005
➤ Registered: N210WN, msn 34162
➤ Livery: Hot Dog on a Stick

Flight
➤ Cabin: Coach in Seat 19F
➤ Load: ~85% Full
➤ Flight Time: 43m

This airplane looked like… well, it looked more like what you’d expect from the old Southwest. There were extra legroom seats, but they were all the same color. They didn’t stand out the way they do on the new aircraft.

I sat down in my window, and waited as the airplane filled up. We pushed back only a couple minutes late, but after a short taxi we were airborne quickly. Like the MAX, this airplane also had mood lighting.

Or not. But hey, this lighting did scream a yellowed “meh,” which absolutely matched my mood after two days in Vegas. That fast internet I had on the way out was non-functioning on this aircraft. (Thanks, Anuvu.) Technically I could connect, and I did have one text come in. I also was able to load a speed test page on Google, but then it errored. I gave up after a few tries to get anything useful.

Instead, I pulled up live TV to try to watch some March Madness basketball, but even that was buffering. They can’t get rid of this crap legacy system soon enough.

We cruised at a lofty 30,000 feet for our short trip. The flight attendants came through with water and coffee, but that was it. It wasn’t long before we were descending into a warm/smoggy/hazy LA Basin.

After an early landing, I got off into the blazing sun and quickly headed inside. This was certainly a real contrast to the new Southwest. Those -700s need to go before the airline can truly feel like something modern, but when you get a new ride, it is a very nice way to fly.

Let’s start with the bigger news, Basic fares are coming to premium economy (Premium Plus) and business class (Polaris) for long-haul travel. Strangely, they aren’t happening in domestic First Class yet, and I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s because long-haul coordinates with joint venture partners, and that’s where the focus has been to this point. Or maybe domestic First just isn’t a big enough pot of money to move the needle.

The implementation is almost entirely what you’d expect. Here’s the Polaris chart:

The only surprise here is that lounge acces is still included for Basic fares, it’s just United Club access instead of the Polaris lounge. That’s the only thing here more generous than I would have expected. Everything else is pretty much what I expected we’d see.

Premium Plus is exactly the same except, obviously, there is no lounge access for any Premium Plus fares. And the ability to upgrade from Premium Plus is far more important than than it is from Polaris.

The Basic, er, Base product is not rolling out until “later this year.” I do have to assume this wasn’t going to be announced this early until plans changed. After all, just a couple weeks ago, Lufthansa Group rolled out its Basic fares (called “Light”) for premium long-haul but it was excluding North America. If United was really only announcing a couple weeks later, I can’t imagine that would have been held back by Lufthansa.

Instead, what I must assume happened here is United had planned to do it at some point, but with oil remaining high, it continues to work hard to try to offset the impact with higher fares. And one way to do that is to create a Basic structure which pushes people up to higher fares.

As is always the case, Basic isn’t created for people to buy. It exists because there are some people who won’t buy up to a higher fare, but most people will. And that’s United’s goal here… it wants people to pay more for the same thing they get today.

This announcement feels a little rushed in that the rollout date hasn’t even been stated, but it will sure make it easier for United to face Wall St analysts on the upcoming earnings call. “Look at all the things we’re doing!”

That’s also where the bag fee increase comes into play. The bag fee is the new change fee. It continues to spiral higher and higher with seemingly no end. (Remember when change fees hit $200 for a domestic ticket?)

JetBlue kicked off this party with an increase of $4 on its base level bag fees, with the lowest rate rising from $35 to $39, though it varies by market and timing and some rose by $9.

United saw that and laughed. It took it much further, now raising the lowest pre-paid bag fee from $35 to $45. That’s a $10 increase, but it’s also a $5 discount off what you’d pay if you did it within 24 hours of travel. So in some cases, the first bag on a domestic trip is now a whopping $50. The second is $10 more. Third checked bags and beyond are going up even higher. Instead of $150, it’s now a $200 fee.

Of course, you can offset this by getting an airline credit card or having elite status, both of which give you at least one free checked bag. But this puts us into that hamster wheel. Now that the benefit of having no first bag fee is more valuable, shouldn’t the annual fee on that credit card go up too? Just wait, it’ll happen eventually.

To its credit, United did not try to say it was doing any of this because of higher fuel prices. It just said on bag fees that it hadn’t touched them in two years. But we all know why this is happening now, and it is most certainly tied to fuel. And no, once fuel prices go back down, these fare structures and fees will not.

This week on The Air Show, we zoom out. What is oil doing to airlines in other parts of the world? It’s not good, but Brian Sumers spoke with a couple of carriers as he reports back.

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United Adds New Premium Fares, Basically

United Airlines announced on Friday it will begin adding tiered fares across all cabins, bringing basic premium tickets including basic Polaris to market this month.

The carrier will offer three fare options — basic, standard, and flexible — across its many offerings including long-haul international, transcon, and Hawai’i flights that currently feature its Polaris product. What will Basic Polaris fares look like? Well besides the shame of booking a basic fare, and a forced connection in Newark for basic customers as a means of punishment, they’ll also:

• receive only one checked bag for free (down from two)
• pay to select seats
• not receive United Polaris Lounge Access (but access to regular United Clubs still remains…for now)
• not be able to change or refund
• not be able to upgrade to the Polaris Studio

Of course United is selling this as offering customers more options when the reality is that the current price for a standard ticket will become the basic price, and a purchase with the traditional bundle will cost more because that’s how these things work.

Delta Looks to Amazon for Wi-Fi Upgrade

We’ve come a long way as passengers when it comes to in-flight internet access. Gone are the days of paying $19.99 for 30 minutes of slow email downloads from Gogo using air-to-ground technology. As the expectation bar continues to be raised, domestic U.S. passengers now expect free, fast Wi-Fi from gate-to-gate and anything else is unacceptable.

Delta Air Lines announced its plans to introduce Amazon Leo on a significant portion of its fleet beginning in 2028. We initially thought this was just CEO Ed Bastian paying another famous person to be his friend, but Leo is “low earth orbit” and not Leonardo diCaprio. The two companies will start with 500 aircraft, and the integration will include expanding seatback entertainment as well. The on-board experience comes five years after Delta debuted free connectivity for SkyMiles members in 2023.

Delta will begin with its narrowbody fleet that does the bulk of its domestic flying. Delta Chief Marketing and Product Officer Ranjan Goswami said there will be “commerce opportunities” as well. If we aren’t able to order something on Amazon Prime in the air and have it delivered to the arrival gate, then we riot. Maybe we’ll see a world where Prime Members receive expedited Biscoff delivery in-flight or receive first pick of meals.

This tie-up comes as United and Alaska/Hawaiian have recently began offering SpaceX’s Starlink on-board with Southwest joining the party soon. As American considers bringing back seatback entertainment to some of its aircraft, it is looking into also installing GTE Airfones to provide instant voice connectivity.

Air Canada CEO Bids Adios

Air Canada President and CEO Michael Rousseau will retire by the end of September following two decades at the airline after he committed the sin of addressing the public following a deadly incident last month in English only and not both English and French.

Following the fatal collision at New York/LGA involving an Air Canada plane and an emergency vehicle on the ground that left two pilots dead and dozens of passengers injured, Rousseau and the airline released a four minute video in which he acknowleged what a somber day it was for both Air Canada and all Canadians. He also offered condolences to airline staff and families of the victims. The video was in English, with subtitles in both English and French. Canadian prime minster Mark Carney said the video showed a “lack of compassion,” while Québec-based politicians demanded Rousseau’s resignation.

The French-lovers went as far as accusing Rousseau of showing a “gross lack of respect” to the Quebecois family of one of the deceased pilots, Antoine Forest. While it’s not the place of non-Canadians to comment on or judge the countries bilingual policies, this does feel like a step too far for a seemingly competent CEO who’s biggest flaw is his lack of French language skills. Regardless, the position is open, and while it may not say it directly, you might want to have something beyond 8th grade French proficiency if interested.

Summer in the Citi…AAdmirals Clubs Add BrAAnding

Later this month, American will add Citi branding at the entrance of Admirals Clubs because it’s a “testament to the depth of our partnership as both American and Citi look for ways to enhance every aspect of the travel journey for our customers,” which is Scott Long, American’s SVP of AAdvantage using coded language to say “Citi has paid, is paying, and will pay us a buttload of money whether we operate flights on-time or not; they say jump, we say how high.”

What this really does is open up the possibility to expand corporate sponsorships across the travel journey much like libraries, hospitals, and other public venue offer naming rights in exchange for donations. “This tower of Salty Death Mix was provided by Proctor & Gamble.” “Pratt Whitney is proud to bring AA customers these cookies which were set out before opening this morning and are yet to be touched.”

Keep in mind that AA recently dropped Barclays and entered into an exclusive credit card agreement with Citi, giving each of the big four airlines in the U.S. a credit card overlord (Delta: Amex, Southwest and United: Chase).

The branding will debut at Chicago/ORD, Dallas/DFW, Los Angeles, and Miami with it expanding to other Admirals Clubs in the system throughout the year.

Willie Walsh is Back, Goes to IndiGo

Can you be back if you never really left? Longtime British Airways CEO and current Director General of IATA is returning to run an airline, as he will become the CEO of Indian LCC IndiGo beginning on August 3. Walsh’s first crack at running an airline came at Aer Lingus in 2001, before moving on to BA in ’05. During his time at British Airways, Walsh oversaw the carrier’s merger with Iberia in 2011 to create IAG, and brought in a new era where premium class passengers would pay for their seat assignments and like it.

After retiring from BA in the midst of the pandemic in 2020, Walsh took office as the IATA Director General in April 2021. He’s been in the role for five years now. No one has quite yet figured out what the Director General of the IATA does, and Walsh won’t be the one to solve the mystery as he moves on from the role this summer.

IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers resigned last month amidst intense scrutiny after significant disruptions and cancellations due to new pilot roster rules left passengers stranded across India late last year. IndiGo controls about two-thirds of the domestic market in India and Walsh will be stepping into a job on day one where he will need to regain confidence of domestic customers. He was hired in-part because he said he could do just that, though when asked about his plan for domestic travelers, he responded “what’s domestic?”

• Abra Group finally released its 2025 earnings.
• Air France-KLM made a non-binding offer for a minority stake in TAP.
• Alaska unveiled its international business class suites.
• American‘s coordination with Qantas on fares, schedules, and inventory will continue on an interim basis.
• Asiana is expected to see its remaining 36% acquired by Korean this summer.
• Delta‘s A330-300 N813NW, which was operating as DL104 on Sunday is under investigation after fire and flames came from its left-side PW4000 turbofan just after takeoff.
• Finnair continues to lease E190s and ATRs for Norra.
• Fiji Airways cut its state-backed debt to $162 million.
• IAG is reducing its share capital by about $13 million.
• Icelandair entered into an LOI to purchase a 49% share of Fly Play Europe.
• ITA officially joined Star Alliance. When asked to comment Star Alliance officials were seen holding their noses and had no comment.
• JetBlue is raising baggage fees, and everyone else will follow if they haven’t already.
• Korean is retiring the KAL brand.
• Magnifica Air is seeking three magnificent A321neos for a dry lease.
• t’way Air rebranded as Trinity Airways, marking the end of an e’ra around these parts.
• Vietnam Airlines is cutting some domestic service.

Why did the ram go off the cliff?

He didn’t see the ewe turn.

Let us start with a satellite look at the mighty SFO to understand the original problem:

The airport has two pairs of parallel runways. In the ideal operational situation, all arrivals are on the 28s, meaning airplanes fly from the right of this photo and approach over the bay before landing to the west/northwest. Nearly all departures go off the 1s, meaning they start at the bottom and head north/northeast. Some heavier departures will use the longer 28s as well, when needed.

It’s those arrivals on the 28s that have long been the source of pain at this airport. As you can see, those runways are not far apart — a mere 750 feet. Since the separation is less than 2,500 feet, it has required implementation of special FAA procedures to increase capacity. At SFO, where capacity is at a premium, they have run slightly offset, side-by-side approaches where airplanes get much closer than would normally be allowed. It is a spectacular sight to see, but more importantly, this has kept capacity at the airport up at 54 arrivals per hour.

The problem is that this is only allowed when the weather is clear. And very often, it is not. See, Karl the Fog loves the area, and he spends a lot of time blanketing the airport, especially in the mornings. That means arrival rates get slowed dramatically, and operations are disrupted.

They’ve tried all different things to increase capacity at the airport, but now, the FAA has decided to go in an alternate direction. It is banning the simultaneous approaches outright.

In the near term, this will have an even more dramatic effect, because they are closing two runways — both of the 1/19s — for six months for rehabilitation. That means all operations will have to use the 10/28s and that forces the arrival rate down to 36 per hour.

Even when that construction is done, the expectation is that the arrival rate will only return to 45 per hour, not 54, because of this new policy. What does that mean in reality?

I pulled up Cirium schedule data to see the real impact. Here are all scheduled arrivals at the airport on a random Monday in June:

SFO Scheduled Arrivals by Hour – June 15, 2026

^{Data via Cirium}

That lower line shows the arrival rate while construction is happening. Temporary reductions are nothing new. They’re annoying, but they aren’t a huge concern on their own. Airlines can and always will change schedules to adjust when construction is being done.

But if it does only get back to 45 per hour after the construction, well, it’s still going to be a problem for the regular schedule. In particular, arrivals between 7 and 10pm are going to be awful. They are stacked pretty tight, and remember, this is only scheduled traffic. General aviation will make this worse.

What’s most remarkable about all this to me is that it has happened so quickly and seemingly so arbitrarily. People at more than one airline have told me that this was a complete surprise that was sprung on the airlines. That makes no sense at all since the airlines, especially United, will have to make schedule alterations.

I can’t help but wonder if after the Air Canada accident at LaGuardia where the airplane ran into a fire truck, they scared themselves into sacrificing airport capacity very quickly to help protect against the potential for another screw up. I’m sure they’ll deny it, but even if that is the case, there’s no real excuse for this taking the airlines by surprise.

Now, in the title of this post, I talked about upside. So… what is that upside? Well, the airport is likely now going to be much better operationally. If capacity is the same in good or bad weather, the airlines will create a schedule that works no matter what. Fog rolls in? Beautiful sunny day? It’s all the same. Delays should drop.

To be clear, this upside is in no way worth it. I just wanted to point out that an upside does exist. Airlines are going to have to cut back schedules. Options for customers will be worse. Fares will be higher. And all this to alter a system that has worked just fine for many years.

I’ve only talked about SFO here, but I imagine there is also an impact in Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Memphis, Newark, Philadelphia, St Louis, and Seattle. By that, I mean those are airports that have parallel runways with less than 2,500 feet in between them. I don’t expect there to be big impacts there just because of how those airports operate normally, but I can’t say I know for sure.

Bigger picture, this is just another example of a government trying to make the system run well by reducing capacity. It is completely silent on long-term growth needs. The FAA should be building a system to accommodate traffic demand well into the future, but right now they are just trying to cap everything and make operations run more smoothly. We need a whole lot more than that.

Early feedback was positive on Southwest’s move to assigned seating as part of a much broader shift in the airline’s business model. But then, people got quiet after the initial fanfare subsided. Southwest had become just like every other airline, so travelers just stopped talking about it. This was a problem for an airline that had become addicted to free media coverage. This reliance amplified in recent years with cost pressures rising. After the relentless, regular news releases filled with changes in the last year dried up, it needed to do something new to regain that benefit.

That parade of changes last year was thanks to Elliott Investment Management, which took an activist position in the airline. It had laid out what it wanted to see in order to improve financial performance, and CEO Bob Jordan dutifully ensured all of those were implemented. Once that was finished, Bob went back to Elliott to float some other ideas that his team had pitched. They said no to all of them. So, he went and sulked while trying to figure out a plan to appease his overlords.

Bob thought about raising the checked bag fee, but every airline does that, so would anyone even talk about it? He then considered painting the fleet in a new livery, but he was heard mumbling something about not wanting to make Papa Gary mad. So instead, he turned to the idea of returning to open seating.

In the release announcing the switch back, CEO Bob Jordan laid out the rationale by saying:

The media coverage we received after making the change was such a thrill, and it really energized our People. Now that it has died down, everyone seems kind of sad, so I wanted to do something to cheer them up. And you know, advertising is pretty expensive, so I came up with this idea to help ease the cost burden while also rallying our People to win.”

COO Andrew Watterson seemed somewhat less enthusiastic about the change since his team will have to reverse all the work that has been done recently to enable assigned seating. He noted, “Well, at least we didn’t throw away the old boarding poles yet. So we’ve got that going for us… which is nice.”

The hardest part was working to figure out how to deal with the assignment of extra legroom seating on the aircraft. CFO Tom Doxey reportedly put his foot down on spending money under Bob’s first plan to reconfigure the airplanes again, so extra legroom will remain. That’s when the decision was made to just bring back EarlyBird priority boarding and let people sit wherever they want when they board. This makes EarlyBird a whole lot more appealing which means they can make a lot more money selling it.

If this move is successful, Bob said he wasn’t against the idea of bringing back more past innovations that have fallen by the wayside. When I asked him what he had in mind, he said the first thing on his list was to bring back lounge seating at the front of each airplane, but that was closely followed by flight attendant hot pants.

When I asked how the transition back to open seating would occur, Bob shrugged, mumbled something about how this wasn’t his problem, and told me to talk to Andrew . Andrew said that unlike the original change, they weren’t going to do a hard transition at the end of schedule. Instead, he said travelers would just take their seat number and move the letter to the before the row number. That will be the boarding position. If you were in seat 18A, you’ll now board with number A18.

With this simple switch, it enables the airline to implement the change immediately, as of today. Or actually, it will be as of never, because… Happy April Fools’ Day to all.

• Introduction to Cranky’s Mexican Adventure
• Cross Border Express is Great, But It Can Be Tricky
• Viva Kicks the Trip Off the Right Way
• Mexicana is Weird, But the E2 is a Delight
• The Spectacular But Distant AIFA Airport
• Mexico City is More Than Worth the Visit
• Aeromexico Does It Right in the Air but Not on the Ground
• Señor Air Has the Best Name and an Experience to Match
• Los Cabos and La Paz Couldn’t Be More Different
• TAR Was a Wild Ride
• Volaris, the Purest ULCC

After getting off the TAR flight, I again was told I had to leave security to make a connection, so I did. Mazatlán is one of those places that has seen some decline in tourism from its headiest day thanks to narco-related concerns. But it was fairly busy on this day.

It took about five minutes to get through security this time, probably the longest wait I’ve had outside of Mexico City.

On the other side, they hadn’t posted a gate. They apparently don’t post gates here until 50 minutes before departure. I did, however, see a lounge and it accepted Priority Pass, so I went over there and found a comfy chair where I could work. The lounge had drinks with some light snacks but that was it. I didn’t really care. I just wanted a nice seat.

When the gate posted, the lounge attendant came through and told everyone. I slowly made my way to the gate, not realizing that the reason it posts as early as it does is because there is one heck of a walk. You have to go to one of two concourses, but the walkway goes on forever before you ever see a gate.

On this concourse, there’s one gate with a jet bridge, and everyone else has to walk downstairs to a holding area for ground boarding. My flight was downstairs.

The boarding area was packed, and they had posted signs for boarding groups one and two. I was in five. Now, I can’t think of a better way to describe Volaris’s boarding than being both simultaneously organized and chaotic. Once groups one and two were moving, they put up signs for three and four a little further back.

And then later, groups five and six went up. The thing was, they were boarding both lines at the same time, which I found very confusing since you’d think it would go in number order. Instead, everyone just had to merge as they walked out.

They were boarding both front and back stairs, but that just led to insanity with people pushing forward from the back of the aircraft and backwards from the front. At some point, an agent came and asked people where they were sitting to try and direct people in the right direction. I was told to stay in the front.

As I waited, I noticed this US-registered airplane could have used a paint job. It also had an errant white engine cowling. But hey, it would do the trick.

Volaris 3191
January 22, 2026

From Mazatlán
➤ Scheduled Departure: 151p
➤ Actual Departure: 147p
➤ From Gate: 8
➤ Wheels Up: 201p
➤ From Runway: 27

To Tijuana
➤ Wheels Down: 259p
➤ On Runway: 27
➤ Scheduled Arrival: 319p
➤ Actual Arrival: 304p
➤ At Gate: 20

Aircraft
➤ Type: Airbus A320-233
➤ Delivered: November 6, 2014
➤ Registered: N525VL, msn 6332
➤ Livery: Standard White

Flight
➤ Cabin: Coach in Seat 14A
➤ Load: 90% Full
➤ Flight Time: 1h58m

On the aircraft, I was surprised to see some pretty comfy-looking seats as I approached my row.

As we pushed back, I saw that the interior matched the exterior. This airplane could use some love.

This was a full flight, and for the first time on this trip, I had someone in the middle next to me. That was a pretty good run.

I noticed that Volaris felt more like a ULCC than any other airline I’d flown. There was advertising on the seatback, advertising on the overhead bins, and they had removed the net from the seatback pocket, presumably to make it so you couldn’t leave trash onboard.

We got up into the sky pretty quickly, and the seatbelt sign was off very fast. I was surprised it stayed off until the descent despite some bumps along the way.

Annoyingly, there were a lot of high clouds. So, we climbed up and sat in an on-again-off-again thin layer that was above a solid layer. Why was this annoying? Because I couldn’t see anything. Volaris has an IFE option that costs MXN 20 (about $1), but I didn’t really want to bother. There was no wifi. Instead, I just turned on some music and stared out the window at a whole lot of white.

The flight attendants came through and did a service along with multiple trash pickups. The crews looked to be working hard, though I didn’t buy anything myself.

At the top of the Sea of Cortés, I could see little bits of shimmering water lead into brown as the clouds thinned. But then, they thickened right back up as a system was swirling off the Pacific coast. We came in for a landing from the east and slowly made our way through multiple layers of clouds before touching down early.

Every single one of my flights on this trip was on-time, which is some kind of miracle.

Getting off the plane was pretty interesting. The flight attendants walked a couple rows from the back and front, and as they passed the row they opened the bins. The people between them and the doors got up and left in an orderly manner. Everyone else stayed seated. I wish everyone would do this, because it was ideal. You know what… here’s a video to show you.

We were dumped off in one of the ground-boarding gates, 20, so I made my way upstairs to find that unlike the smaller airports, Tijuana is built for connections and you don’t have to leave the secure area. I had about 500 pesos left, so I tried to buy food and a few other things before I found my way out.

In baggage claim, there is a sign for CBX. You go up the escalators and then you have to scan your CBX ticket, your passport, and your boarding pass. I do not recommend electronic boarding passes if you’re doing this, because I had to find mine and the thing timed out too quickly.

Once I got through, then it was time to walk across the bridge. Finally, I was back home. Sort of.

Of course I had to go through immigration, and I apparently broke the camera sensor. It first gave me an X and then it just said System Error, so I had to talk to an agent. Maybe it was this scruffy beard that had been growing for the last few weeks.

I had bought a ticket through CBX on the 4:30pm Limousine Bus which went to Santa Ana, and I could take an Uber home from there. But when I walked up to the counter, the woman there said no, I would have to take the 5:30pm bus. It was 4pm at this point. I was not happy, but she got her supervisor who spoke better English to tell me that some business had bought the seats on the 4:30pm bus so I was bumped. Not that I had another choice.

Or did I?

Next door was an Omex Bus which was apparently heading up to LA with a stop in Fullerton. This was no different for me, so I asked when their next bus was leaving. The friendly agent said 5 minutes. Giddyup. I bought a ticket for $35, $5 less than the Limousine Bus.

I asked the Limousine Bus people for a refund, and they said no. That’s ridiculous, but I didn’t have time to fight. I resolved to take that up another day, and after emailing CBX, they did refund me.

The Omex Bus was a delight. It had plenty of legroom, a footrest, and in-seat video. The video, however, was all in Spanish. Even English movies were dubbed. Oh, and it also had wifi. I was happy.

My grand adventure had come to an end.

Before we get into the weeds, let’s talk about operating margin. December was particularly good for Spirit. I shouldn’t say that. It was relatively good for Spirit. January fell off further, but that is not in any way a surprise. January is always worse than December since you only have a few days of holiday travel that month.

Spirit Operating Margin by Month

Now, you’ll remember that November was the first month when the new, much smaller Spirit made its debut. Despite a small bump in capacity around the holidays, it stayed relatively flat until early spring break began in Feb.

In other words, the performance in December and January finally has a baseline to compare against, using the November data. To start, let’s look at the cost side of the equation. There is some wonkiness in here.

Some of the December numbers look like cost timing issues. For example, landing fees were off more than a quarter compared to November, but they bounced right back up in January. Aircraft rent went in the complete opposite direction, with December seeming oddly high. This would smooth out when looking at quarterly numbers, so we just have to take the choppiness as the way things are going to be.

There is one big cost issue we need to address. I noticed that after November salaries had dropped only 7 percent from October, December salaries were relatively flat. But that then plunged by 17 percent in January. I imagine there was something around the timing of severance combined with when people left that delayed the cost benefit of the reductions in the business. So, January is probably more indicative of future months, but we really don’t know what the steady state will be yet, especially since more cuts are coming.

There is a fair bit of noise in these numbers, and there’s not much we can do about that other than speculate.

On the revenue side, December was a solid improvement, but there was backsliding in January. All that being said, every month is still a far cry from the horrendous 8.2 cent unit revenue in September. After November came in at 10.0 cents, December surged to 11.1 cents while January fell back off to 10.2 cents. But, as unit costs come down as the old Spirit sheds its excess cost base, the margin should improve further if unit revenue can stay up.

So, that’s the good news, and it’s not even that good because the airline is still losing money. Now, for the bad news.

The operation has completely fallen off the rails. In November, Spirit canceled 2.1 percent of flights. That rose to 3.3 percent in December and 6.5 percent in January. Canceling that many flights does help a little in the sense that you consolidate people from those canceled flights on to your other flights, helping boost revenue on the flights that operated. But it also erodes any trust in the operation that existed, and it pushes more people away, especially those who want to pay more money for that new premium-ish product.

For what it’s worth, things have not improved since then. February looks like it was a point or so worse while March is on track to erode even more, closer to 10 percent, or just under it. This is not a healthy airline, operationally speaking.

Of course, we haven’t even touched on the 800 lb gorilla… the war in Iran and rising fuel costs. None of that is reflected in any of these numbers. We won’t see that even start to be reflected until March, but when it hits, it’s going to push Spirit ever closer to that ledge.

This weekend, the airline cut another nearly 20 percent of capacity in May to mid-June, spread across the network. It’s possible some of this is just lining up future schedules with the reduced fleet even better, but let’s just take it at face value. The airline is trying to shrink, shrink, and shrink again until it finds profit. That is not easy to do.

Trump says he’ll sign order to pay TSA agents as travel chaos continues – NPR Morning Edition

The question of what travelers can do to be made whole for their expenses due to missed flights thanks to outrageous TSA lines continues to be asked. And the reality is… not much. The airlines aren’t going to pay, and nor should they. The feds should be on the hook, but as I lamented to Morning Edition, they can’t even figure out how to pay their employees.

Dayton airport security wait times still less than 5 minutes; CVG around 30 minutes – Dayton Daily News

Everyone in the country is freaking out about long security lines, but of course, not every airports is impacted. In fact, the vast majority of airports aren’t.

United Shows Off Its New Toys at Media Day

United Airlines held a media day this week, and it rolled out its fanciest new airplanes, including a surprise glow-up on even the lowly CRJ200.

In all, United will take on 250 new airplanes in the next two years, with the idea that if it takes all the capacity in Chicago, it might as well take all the airplanes also.

The carrier said it plans to take delivery of:

• 47 B787-9 Dreamliners with the so-called Elevated interior (33 of which will have 99 premium seats with the rest at a mere 83)
• 40 A321neo Coastliners out of 50 total on order which, to be clear, will fly between the coasts and will not actually “coast” through the sky
• 41 CRJ450s which are a 41-seat, dual-class version of the CRJ200
• 28 A321XLR out of 50 total on order to fly primarily shorter European flights run by the B757 today
• 119 B737 MAX which might even include the -10 when/if it ever gets certified
• 18 A321neos in the regular configuration which sounds really boring after all those other airplanes

A spokesperson for every other airline on earth said they would collectively be waiting until 2028 to be able to take delivery of a plane again.

United detailed the order in its press release in a performance of PR-speak that even the North Korean Information Ministry would be impressed with. The CRJs are described as having a private jet experience for those traveling in first, while the A321 XLRs had three seats taken out to include a snack bar at the back of the plane, a clear dig at American’s configuration on the same airplane. We’re so confident that’ll last until the next economic downturn that we’ve pre-written the “United Removes Snack Bar to add seats to A321s” story, so it’s in the can for when the time comes.

For more on media day, see yesterday’s post on crankyflier.com.

JetBlue Keeps Growing FLL While Rumors Swirl

The rumor mill was busy this week as it was reported that JetBlue had hired advisors to investigate being sold to Alaska, Southwest, or United. (Obvious candidate American, we should note, was notably absent from that list.) But while rumors spread like wildfire, JetBlue is just doing what it does best… growing Fort Lauderdale like crazy.

JetBlue announced this week that starting in July, it will finally fulfill the dreams of all South Florida residents by beginning daily nonstop service from FLL to Cleveland. In addition, it will increase frequencies from sub-daily to once daily on the far less exciting routes to Aruba, Norfolk, and St Maarten. But wait, there’s more. JetBlue will also add an extra daily flight to this laundry list of cities:

• Atlanta
• Jacksonville
• Las Vegas
• Newark
• Philadelphia
• Santo Domingo

This spirited increase in service further clarifies that JetBlue is hellbent on owning FLL, and it’s doing a good job of trying to make that happen.

Air Canada Jazz CRJ900 Hits Fire Truck at LaGuardia, Two Killed

Upon landing at LaGuardia, an Air Canada Jazz CRJ-900 operating from Montréal hit a fire truck that was crossing the runway at exactly the wrong time. The two pilots of the aircraft were killed and several others were injured.

The vaunted swiss cheese model of safety that has prevented so many accidents over the years failed this time. Both the Transportation Safety Board of Canada and the National Transportation Safety Board in the United States will be investigating to see where things went wrong. As is always the case, we expect there will be many failure points along the way that led to this tragic disaster.

Those who jump to blame the air traffic controller should take a breath. We already know that the controller cleared the truck to cross the runway when he shouldn’t have, but the truck also did not stop when the controller reversed course. Further, the truck didn’t have a transponder onboard which also could have potentially prevented this accident. To top it all off, it was a late night with conditions undoubtedly impacted by the soaking wet airfield.

United Flight Attendants Get Their Second Tentative Agreement

The Week of United_TM continues with more good news for the airline as it has now reached a new tentative agreement on a contract with its flight attendants.

The flight attendant negotiations have been lengthy and at times contentious. The previous tentative agreement reached last year was resoundingly rejected, but this agreement seems to address the biggest pain points from the last agreement, including pay for long scheduled connections, restrictions on redeyes, and hazard pay for all flights touching Newark.

The union’s negotiating committee takes this to leadership on April 1 when they will have to convince them that this is not, in fact, a joke. If they approve, it will head to the membership on April 3 with voting taking place between April 23 and May 12.

Say Hello to Montreal’s Newest Metropolitan Airport

Since the whole Mirabel experiment was abandoned, Montréal has seen air service almost entirely consolidated at its Trudeau (formerly Dorval) airport. But get ready, because there’s a new sheriff in town. The long-awaited, rebranded Saint-Hubert Airport on the east side of the St Lawrence River is now Montréal Metropolitan, and it will have its first commercial flights from Porter on June 15.

Porter is not starting small. In that first week, it will begin flying from the airport to Calgary, Charlottetown, Edmonton, Halifax, Hamilton, Moncton, Québec City, St John’s, Toronto/City, Toronto/Pearson, Vancouver, and Winnipeg. This will instantly make Porter’s operation at Metropolitan bigger than the one at Trudeau, though whether that makes it a profitable venture is far less certain.

Porter is trying to recreate the convenience of Toronto’s City airport… just in a different city with an airport that’s further away from downtown. But the small terminal will be attractive, especially to those who live closer to that area, and it should be a very nice passenger experience.

• Air Belgium retired its final A330-200 (P2F).
• American continues to think about catching up to its competitors.
• Boeing‘s B787s have put on some weight.
• Delta is telling Congress they can suck it up until they fix their mess.
• Finnair was able to scrounge up an order with options for up to 46 E195-E2s that United overlooked.
• Hopscotch Air will partner with Euroairlines to get started as it aims for Best New Partnership at next year’s Cranky Network Awards.
• IAG is losing interest in tapping TAP.
• JetBlue pilots do not see Blue Sky as they sue over the United partnership.
• Porter is making award redemptions more costly.
• SAS joins the cool kids now that it has its first aircraft with Starlink flying.
• TAP is feeling blue as it deals with a lawsuit from Azul.
• United will fly Chicago – Keflavik through winter so that Chicagoans can warm up.
• United has decided to tell people which rows are for Relaxing on its airplanes
• Virgin Atlantic spiffed up its Clubhouse at Heathrow.
• Wizz is toying with the idea of installing wifi.

My mom gave the same advice my whole life. I spent decades thinking she didn’t understand my situation.

She understood my situation.

United rolled out a lot of hard product changes this week. We had the chance to walk through the new premium-heavy B787-9 (the so-called Elevated interior) which goes into service in less than a month. We were told about the new Coastliner A321neo which will become the transcon airplane of choice. And yes, there was more detail about the A321XLR configuration, including the new flat beds that we could sit in. We were told about the new Relax Row (Air New Zealand’s Skycouch), and there were a bunch of soft product changes as well.

Overall, it shows an airline that is making serious, firm, expensive investments, and it’s nothing short of impressive to watch. But in the corner of the hangar, in the shadow of that B787-9, sat a shiny CRJ200 — I didn’t even know they could be polished up enough to look shiny anymore — that to me held the most interesting change of all. Say hello to the CRJ450.

Does it just look like a CRJ200? That’s because it is. And in fact, this doesn’t require a new type certificate or anything like that. The CRJ450 is a marketing name for what is ultimately a vastly improved product that will breathe life into this airframe.

Instead of 50 regular coach seats, these SkyWest-operated airplanes will now have seven First Class seats, 16 Economy Plus, and 18 regular Economy seats onboard. For those who aren’t great at math, this means there will now be only 41 seats onboard the airplane. If you’ve ever seen the CRJ550 which is a CRJ700 with 50 seats onboard, then you’ll get the idea.

United has also said it is growing its CRJ550 fleet, but the world is running out of CRJ700s that can be converted. With a still substantial fleet of CRJ200s flying around, it had to make some decisions on what to do with those. United has seen what a true dual-class operation can do for revenues, and this math works. I spoke with someone at United who said he would have laughed this off a few years ago, but seeing what revenues do when there’s a true dual-class airplane over the last few years, he is now a true believer.

So what is it like on the inside? Well, take a look at this sweet ride.

It’s a big improvement from the old interiors, but the way this has been designed is pretty slick in several ways. Up at the front left of that photo above, you’ll see a cabinet. Here is the full view:

There are seven compartments, one for each First Class seat to store a full-size rollerbag. It’s not shown here, but the cabinet is pretty deep, so you can push your bag back and have room for coats or small items as well. Then up top, the closed cabinet you see is also available for extra items if needed. This allowed United to remove the overhead bins entirely in First Class, making for a much different feel than the usual CRJ200 cramped cabin. (The bigger CRJ700/900/1000s have lower floors, so they don’t feel nearly as cramped.)

In the back, there is a near 50-50 split between Economy Plus and regular coach seating. But with only 34 total seats back there, all of a sudden there is room for most rollerbags to be stored sideways in the bins.

Sure, you still have to hunch over to look out the window, but overall it is a much better experience for everyone onboard. This doesn’t even take into account the fact that United will install Starlink on all these airplanes.

I think we can agree the experience looks great, but it’s what this enables that really makes me interested in this plan. The CRJ450 will fly from the Denver and Chicago hubs. (I was told eventually it may very well fly to Houston too in some form.) But the idea here is to connect small and mid-size cities to United’s big domestic hubs, so people can connect beyond.

I dove into Cirium data and found that from Denver and Chicago, this coming July has 84 routes scheduled on the CRJ200. Now, 50 of these markets are only on the CRJ200 for all flights, but that means 34 of them have mixed flying. Here are those markets:

^{Data via Cirium, Maps generated by the Great Circle Mapper® – copyright © Karl L. Swartz.}

This is a really bad experience for the local customer who gets very different offerings on different flights. This will now go away completely with the CRJ450.

Think of this in another way, in a competitive sense. There are 79 cities that are scheduled to receive CRJ200 service in July 2026, and 44 of those also have service from American, Delta, or Alaska on dual-class airplanes. United is less competitive in those markets, and now that issue will go away.

I would argue that even in the other cities without competition, this becomes quite attractive. Of course, many of the cities that get CRJ200 service today are markets that are funded by Essential Air Service subsidy. Offering a dual-class airplane in those bids will undoubtedly give SkyWest an even greater leg up than it already has in winning those bids.

SVP Global Network and Alliances Patrick Quayle pointed out on stage at media day that United serves more cities than any other airline on earth — he even challenged me from the stage to look it up. Sure enough, the airline has 393 airports on the route map in 2026, 24 more than second-place Air France-KLM. (I took the definition of “airline” generously and included whole airline groups.) I would imagine that this might help up that count even further with such an attractive offering to EAS communities.

The cherry on top of all this is that you know a ton of these flights don’t even get over the 82 percent seat factor required to make the loss of 9 seats onboard even matter. That’s especially true in EAS markets where passenger loads tend to be lower.

I can’t see loads by flight, but looking at all of 2025, United flew the CRJ200 in 94 markets (excluding random one-offs). Of those, 59 markets had a lower than 82 percent load overall. The CRJ200 had a systemwide 75 percent seat factor. Again, that’s not flight-specific, but it shows there is slack there in many cases.

In the end, this is a creative move that just improves United’s relevance and competitivness in small to mid-size markets. Now it needs to figure out what to do with the remaining ERJ-145s, the only single-class airplanes left in United’s future fleet. Today, those fly out of Houston and Washington/Dulles, but they are too narrow to do the same conversion. United will once again have to get creative, but that really doesn’t seem like an issue for the airline.

This is just one small piece of what United announced this week, but Jon and I get into so much more, including higher-level discussion, on this week’s episode of The Air Show which will be up later Thursday afternoon.

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• Introduction to Cranky’s Mexican Adventure
• Cross Border Express is Great, But It Can Be Tricky
• Viva Kicks the Trip Off the Right Way
• Mexicana is Weird, But the E2 is a Delight
• The Spectacular But Distant AIFA Airport
• Mexico City is More Than Worth the Visit
• Aeromexico Does It Right in the Air but Not on the Ground
• Señor Air Has the Best Name and an Experience to Match
• Los Cabos and La Paz Couldn’t Be More Different
• TAR Was a Wild Ride
• Volaris, the Purest ULCC

TAR is not exactly considered to be a beacon of operational excellence. I did have a backup plan — there was a later nonstop from La Paz to Tijuana on Volaris — but I wanted some reassurance. Looking around the morning of my flight on Airfleets and other sites, it seemed like there may be only two active airplanes in the fleet, but neither one of these was going to get to La Paz in time for my flight, yet it still showed on time. I was stumped, so I figured I’d just show up and see what might happen.

I had checked in online, and I got to the airport about an hour early which was more than enough.

The ticketing area was completely empty save for a couple of TAR agents. Other airlines didn’t have flights until later.

There was nobody around in the security line either, so it was easy to get into the gate area. And then I sat in the nearly-abandoned terminal. It was just a handful of us and a cockroach who was slowly crawling around.

I had a couple hours to connect in Mazatlán to Volaris so there was some buffer, and TAR inexplicably had another flight to Mazatlán scheduled one hour later. That one I could see through flight tracking, and it looked on time. So I was feeling pretty good that I’d get there eventually, if not when I expected.

Then, out of nowhere, a TAR aircraft landed.

What the heck? Well, funny story, this airplane — XA-AFH — is an old Continental Express aircraft that TAR had been flying for Mexicana when that airline first started. That agreement ended, and the fleet sites showed it having been stored. (I submitted an update to Airfleets after, and it now shows as active there.)

It turns out, this airplane doesn’t seem to show up on the flight tracking sites like Flightradar 24 at all. That was… weird. Why do some of their airplanes show up but this one doesn’t? I don’t have an answer. But hey, at least we were going to be on time.

They called for boarding and told everyone to line up in a single-file line. Then they called two of us to the podium, presumably since we had both done web check-in. They gave us paper boarding passes despite having done web check-in, just like Mexicana had, and we got back in line.

As we walked to the airplane, they kept running up an engine out there and then pulling it back down, and I’m not sure why. But I am no aircraft mechanic, so… let’s board this thing. We were led in a long line — ok, not that long since it was pretty empty — and we boarded by stairs.

TAR 703
January 22, 2026

From La Paz
➤ Scheduled Departure: 1050a
➤ Actual Departure: 1038a
➤ From Gate: 2
➤ Wheels Up: 1047a
➤ From Runway: 36

To Mazatlán
➤ Wheels Down: 1133a
➤ On Runway: 27
➤ Scheduled Arrival: 1150a
➤ Actual Arrival: 1136a
➤ At Gate: 10

Aircraft
➤ Type: Embraer 145LR
➤ Delivered: September 10, 1998 to Continental Express
➤ Registered: XA-AFH, msn 78
➤ Livery: White with Red Tail

Flight
➤ Cabin: Coach in Seat 14C
➤ Load: 19/50
➤ Flight Time: 46m

This airplane looked old on the inside, but it also looked tired and beaten up. Most concerning, I noticed the exit door looked like it had seen better days.

It was not full at all, so I walked back and took my seat with nobody next to me or across the aisle.

All loaded up, there was no reason to wait, so we pushed back early and were in the air before our scheduled departure.

We had a nice view of the region upon takeoff before looping all the way around toward the west, south, and eventually coming out of the turn heading east past the southern tip of Baja. I couldn’t see much as we were in the clouds and rain for a short time. We soon got out and over the water where things cleared out.

One of the two male flight attendants came back and served us drinks, but I didn’t want any water or juice. Done with his job, he took a seat in the exit row and pulled out a book. It took about 10 seconds before he was, at best, resting his eyes. Who knew they had crew rest on such a short flight?

The seatbelt sign never came off, but we weren’t exactly going very far on this trip anyway so I didn’t need to get up anyway. There was rather strangely an inflight magazine on this trip.

I don’t know what the point of this magazine is but it can’t be for TAR passengers. After all, the big feature was on the Yucatán and TAR flies nowhere near there.

Soon, the mainland came into view. The pilots announced our descent, and that woke the flight attendant up from his brief catnap. Maybe that’s why they announce the descent…. He sprung into action and collected trash.

It was a long, slow descent, but we had some really nice views of the lush Mazatlán area and all the farms surrounding it. We touched down early and had a quick taxi back to the terminal.

This was an adventure that I probably don’t need to repeat. But I suppose it’s hard to complain when your 45 minute flight operates on time and you live to tell the tale.

It didn’t help that my first three trips in the new year would gain no benefit from Alaska status. The first, as you all know, was my adventures in Mexico where Alaska has no partner. The second was a day trip to Phoenix. There was no way I was going to drive up to LAX to fly American just on the off chance I’d get an upgrade for an hour. I went with Southwest. And the third involved a speaking engagement in Vegas. Alaska no longer even flies there from LAX, so it was either take one of only three daily, poorly-timed flights on American or… fly Southwest. I did the latter, and you’ll hear about that soon.

So things weren’t off to a great start, but we have a Hawaiian trip planned for this summer, and I was excited to get my benefits while also putting my credit card companion certificate to use. This too did not go well.

When you use the companion certificate, you have to book online, and you are required to only book two people in a reservation. I, as you know, have a family of four. There is no way to put that in a single booking, so I’d have to do two separate ones. The problem, of course, is that elite benefits only apply to companions in the same reservation as yourself. That’s frustrating since I didn’t want to book this separately.

Now, we aren’t talking big benefits here. As a Silver, I get a free checked bag (which I get from the credit card anyway), and free preferred seating. I am only entitled to an upgrade to “Premium” (extra legroom) or First Class with one companion anyway, so I didn’t expect that to happen. I was downright determined to get free preferred seating, because… well, because, damnit. That’s the only benefit that would matter.

I started by using Alaska’s chat function to ask if they could give free preferred seating to my other companions since it was Alaska that was forcing me to book in separate reservations. The agent told me that I could only upgrade one companion with my benefits anyway.

Frustrated with her lack of understanding what I was trying to do, I uploaded this very screenshot from the Alaska website.

She said that it was only one companion, but I could try calling reservations. Confused, I did just that.

Shockingly, the reservations agent said the exact same thing. She consulted her manual and said that upgrades were for only one companion. I tried to explain to her that preferred seats aren’t an upgrade, and the website clearly states it’s for the entire party. She would not budge. Since she was telling me the website was wrong, I asked her how this could get fixed. She said I could file a report, whatever that means. I hung up exceedingly frustrated that I had wasted time on this. It’s not like preferred seating is even all that great of a benefit.

I wasn’t planning on doing this, but I was so jaded by this experience that I decided to burn last year’s and this year’s companion pass on this trip, thinking I might not want to bother keeping the credit card. Then, in a fit of confusion, I booked myself in the preferred seats and paid for the other two not in my reservation to sit there. I should have just put us all in the regular seats, but I was stupidly determined to squeeze ANY benefit out of this silly elite status.

Not satisifed at all once I calmed down, I emailed the communications team at Alaska to ask for clarification on the policy. Would I not have been entitled to preferred seating for the whole family even in a single reservation as these two reservations agents suggested? It took more than one person and some time to get me an answer, but in the end, I was right. Of course, this wouldn’t have helped me get the other two free preferred seating since they were on separate reservations, but I was told that reservations agents are empowered to make exceptions in circumstances like that. I apparently found the two reservations agents who couldn’t even understand the policy in the first place. Alaska did refund the extra preferred charge which I appreciated, but it brings up the bigger question….

In the end, why do I even care? Upgrades on a trip with the family aren’t happening since that only works with one companion. The checked bag is free with the credit card — something that frustratingly also won’t apply to the other two people when I have to book separately anyway — and so that leaves me with preferred seating and priority boarding on a family trip? Who cares?

I have thought about trying to extend my elite status by matching to another airline to see if I’d feel the same way with others. If I have it, might as well try it. The obvious option is Southwest, but their policy is to do a challenge that requires booking AND traveling six one ways within a 120 day window. Having already booked my first two trips on Southwest, those would not have been eligible. But really, that’s fine. I would rather get off this roller coaster ride.

I give up. I will let this play out this year, but then I’m back out of the game. It’s just never worth it for a lowly entry-level status-holder to even bother.

Spirit Files Bankruptcy Plan

Spirit filed its restructuring and reorganization plan with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York, and it’s highlight is a further effort to reduce the size of its fleet. When Spirit filed for this bankruptcy last year, it had 214 aircraft in its fleet. It expects to be down to as few as 76 planes by Q3 to cement its cost savings. While most industry insiders believe the savings will come from selling the planes that were owned, rejecting leases on others, and not having to deal with maintenance or upkeep, a Spirit insider told Cranky the real savings will come in the form of needing less yellow paint.

The carrier says it expects to start adding planes back to its fleet between 2027 and 2030 which is a comically long window of time, with the caveat it’ll be done “commensurate with profitable growth opportunties.” The next time Spirit finds a profitable growth opportunity will be the first in a very long time.

It says its debt and lease obligations will be down to just $2 billion after the reorg, down from a whopping $7.2 billion when it initiated this bankruptcy process.

Who’s Got the Power? Not Denver

Denver International Airport located in Denver near Denver about halfway between Denver and Nebraska has had a bad go of it for more than a year with its trains breaking down on a semi-regular basis leaving passengers backed to the TSA checkpoints and beyond. The airport had a new one this week — the power went out Wednesday at about 9:20 a.m. MT paralyzing the airport’s entire operation.

Supposedly the outage was caused by a “piece of equipment shutting off” at a nearby Xcel Energy substation, but we’ve received reports that Blucifer, the Blue Demon horse living on the airport grounds, was seen near the main electric input at the time of the outage.

Power remained out for just short of two hours, coming back on around 11am. A ground stop was issued at 9:54am that stayed in effect until 11:30am, causing cascading delays and cancellations all day. Luckily for some AAirlines, passengers barely noticed the power outage, having come to the airport expecting a delay or cancellation.

Delta Makes its Baggage Guarantee Harder to Redeem

Delta’s enhancement team is back at it again, enhancing its 20-minute bag guarantee to require submission from passengers no more than two hours after their flight arrives. Before this change, passengers had 72 hours to file a claim, but its now been shrunk to two.

It’s one of those things where Delta will probably save a little bit on customers who forget to file amongst the chaos that is baggage claim, but how is this worth it? The payout is 2,500 SkyMiles, and our Cranky Valuation Machine ™ prices 2,500 SkyMiles at approximately 14 cents. This was a deal with passengers that the airline values our time — at least a little bit — and it made this token gesture when it didn’t live up to its own expectations.

Unlike a Medallion devaluation or price increase, this change is unlikely to result in public uproar. Most travelers probably don’t even know this exists, and those that do can’t exactly be getting rich off 20-minute bag guarantee arbitrage opportunities. It seems as if the bean counters on Virginia Ave bean counted a little too hard on this one. Keep climbing, friends.

Frontier Adds Four New Frontiers

Frontier Airlines will launch four new routes in May and June, in what feels like its first route announcement that didn’t involve Atlanta in several months.

Beginning May 5, it will operate 1x daily between Dallas/DFW and Newark, proving that airlines will try literally anything to get customers to go to Newark. On May 21, it’s two more for Frontier, including 4x weekly DFW-Orange County and 1x daily Fort Lauderdale – Washington/Dulles. Lastly on June 11, it will start 4x weekly service between Las Vegas and Nashville.

These are all somewhat crowded routes, with AA, Spirit, and United flying DFW-EWR; Southwest and Spirit on BNA-LAS; AA flying DFW-SNA; and UA running FLL-IAD.

Lufthansa Dives Into the Basic Premium Class Pool

Lufthansa is finally joining the Basic Business club with the new fare class debuting across each Lufthansa Group carrier: Austrian, Brussels, Discover, Lufthansa, and SWISS. It’s not just business class getting basicfied as it will enhance its offerings with Basic Premium Economy fares as well. Just to be clear, it’s not calling them basic, it’s calling them light. Because light fares test better than Basic. But we know.

What’s included? One checked bag (down from two), a charge to select your seat prior to check-in, increased change fees, a cone of shame to wear around your neck during boarding, and a DB rail pass on trains guaranteed to be late (spoiler alert: that’s all of them.)

To begin, the basic fares in premium cabins are available on flights to and from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Central and South America. Excluded are flights to North America, China, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore… for now.

• American‘s app will now give more detail into delays and cancellations, and it should work well seeing as it’s had a lot to work with during testing. The airline is currently workshopping a new slogan: “American, you’ll still be late, but you’ll have a little more information.”
• Air Tahiti Nui is weighing A350s and A321XLRs. Must take a big scale.
• Andes Líneas Aérenas is seeking permission to fly World Cup charter flights to the United States.
• Breeze will be blowing into Costa Rica.
• BA is beefing up its winter schedule for pale Brits who want to go literally anywhere else in winter.
• Cathay Group posted a $1.8 billion profit for the full year 2025.
• Congo Airways likely has some leadership changes coming.
• Ethiopian will resume non-stop service to Atlanta on May 21 after putting in a temporary suspension beginning in February.
• Finnair is suspending flights to Doha (through March 29) and Dubai (through July 2).
• Gol really scored with its new Rio de Janeiro/GIG and Orlando service that will operate 4x weekly.
• LATAM would like to grow.
• Ryanair opened a fancy new maintenance hangar in Madrid.
• SWISS is offering a bonus to any full-time FAs that voluntarily leave the airline by the end of this summer.
• t’way Air s’cured $17 million in shareholder backing.
• United unveiled the new B737-8 MAX to be based in Guam. The aircraft was seen buying sunscreen and a panama hat to prepare for the move.
• Wizz Air is adding a 4th airplane to its Venice base.

I set my Wi-Fi password to 2444666668888888 so that when guests ask me for the password I can tell them it’s just ‘12345678’

What it comes down to is this… demand is through the roof. Every single airline that took the stage was beaming that the numbers are much better than expected. Just look at some examples:

• Delta had 8 of its 10 highest sales days in Q1
• American had 8 of its 10 highest sales weeks in Q1
• United’s first 10 weeks of 2026 were also its 10 highest sales weeks

This isn’t just at the top of the chain either. JetBlue raised its revenue guidance for Q1 from being flat to up 4 percent all the way up to now being up 5 to 7 percent. Frontier expected stage length-adjusted unit revenue to be up 10 percent. It’s now going to be up in the mid-teens.

Though Delta CEO Ed Bastian said Delta is in good shape because it serves the high-end traveler who is less impacted by economic pressure — it’s that K-shaped economy which apparently doesn’t bother him — Southwest CEO Bob Jordan confirmed that this trend isn’t just limited to a specific part of the business.

That strength is in all geographies. It’s across all fare structures, it’s across business, it’s leisure, and as far as we have visibility, that demand strength is across all forward months

Andrew Watterson, COO of Southwest, dropped this stunning number. If Southwest didn’t receive another dollar of corporate bookings after last Friday, March would still be its biggest corporate month ever. That’s only halfway through the month!

It’s the 1920s all over again. Times are good, what could possibly go wrong?

Undoubtedly the airlines are all preparing for what could happen, but I often look to United to tell the real story here. As was the case during COVID, United has generally been more conservative (and right) in where it thinks the business could go. Of course it hopes for the best, but as the saying goes, it plans for the worst.

So, when United CEO Scott Kirby took to the stage toward the end of the day, I was listening closely. Is he concerned that oil is running up toward $100 a barrel so quickly? It’s even more pronounced for the airlines since jet fuel itself has spiked even more.

As usual, Scott turned to numbers to help explain his airline’s view of the world.

Yes, higher oil isn’t ideal, but United — and it seems much of the industry — is on its way to being able to recoup that extra cost thanks to strong demand. In other words, fares are going up, and people are still buying tickets.

At United, Scott said the oil price run-up has added about $4.6 billion in cost. This number can change if prices fluctuate, but for United to cover that, it needs to increase its unit revenue by 8.5 points. That’s a hefty increase. But Scott points to more numbers to show that it is happening. In the last week before he spoke, booked yields are up 15 to 20 percent. Fares are climbing very quickly to offset the cost increase. Now, that doesn’t mean it gets to an 8.5 point increase in the end once all is said and done, but it is a very realistic possibility.

The way Scott sees it, this is just delayed inflation finally reaching airfare, and that’s why it’s being accepted by the public. He points out that while inflation in the US was up by about 25 percent from 2019 to 2025, fares were down 2 percent. So there is room for airfare to catch up without pushing people away in droves as would normally be the case.

Still, Scott says United is being conservative, and it has already cut capacity by about one percent in May and June. This is off-peak flying that performs the weakest, but by cutting supply, it can help bolster fares. Other airlines are wavering on making cuts until there’s more data on what’s happening. Even United doesn’t think it needs to do this now, but it wants to be conservative in case things do turn worse. As United sees it, it’s worth the minor loss of revenue on those flights if things don’t get much worse in order to prevent a bigger loss if things go in the opposite direction.

Fortunes, of course, change dramatically if oil continues to shoot up and prices stay high for a long time. This looks increasingly likely as the war drags on. But Scott says that they’ve even run up scenarios where oil hits $175 a barrel, and United can still grow its profit margins. It’s far from a guarantee, but the idea that this is even a possibility shows how much the industry has structurally changed.

I suppose I should narrow that to say that “part” of the industry has changed. You still have the ultra low-cost operators trying to find a strategy that works. Frontier will lose money in Q1 and it will be at the lower end of its previous guidance even with the strong revenue guidance. American is losing money in Q1 as well as it continues to try to become like Delta and United despite being well behind. It isn’t cutting capacity, which may seem like an odd choice. I guess it’s easy to play to the upside with all the euphoria that’s sweeping the industry right now.

There is a lot of uncertainty right now, but somehow the airlines aren’t feeling it nearly as much as they have in previous times of crisis. It’s all sunshine and rainbows… until it’s not. It’s just a matter of time.

Want to hear more about the JP Morgan conference? Brian, Jon, and I spent this week’s episode talking about the big picture but also some other bits and pieces which caught our eyes. This should be live before this post goes out, but if it’s not, check again later today.

• Listen on Spotify
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• Introduction to Cranky’s Mexican Adventure
• Cross Border Express is Great, But It Can Be Tricky
• Viva Kicks the Trip Off the Right Way
• Mexicana is Weird, But the E2 is a Delight
• The Spectacular But Distant AIFA Airport
• Mexico City is More Than Worth the Visit
• Aeromexico Does It Right in the Air but Not on the Ground
• Señor Air Has the Best Name and an Experience to Match
• Los Cabos and La Paz Couldn’t Be More Different
• TAR Was a Wild Ride
• Volaris, the Purest ULCC

I will gladly admit that I’m not the biggest fan of Los Cabos. Cabo San Lucas itself is a small town that has been built up mostly to serve the tourist market. Further east, San José del Cabo has more of a sense of place with locals, but it’s also not where most tourists spend their time. When this area developed into a tourism hub just a two hour flight from Los Angeles, hotels were built along the ocean shores, usually nowhere near town at all. The “Corridor” is exactly that. Between the two towns, there isn’t much other than resorts catering primarily to foreigners, and most of them don’t even have swimmable beaches.

Even in the towns, Americans never need to speak a word of Spanish or even exchange their dollars into pesos. It might as well be the US. If I’m going to another country, I don’t want a carbon copy of what I already live every day.

This isn’t to say that the Park Hyatt wasn’t spectacular. It absolutely was. And I can imagine a lot of travelers falling in love with the place.

My wife flew down for this part of the trip to meet me, and she really liked what she saw. We spent most of the days by the pool watching what looked like a literal playground for whales. We took a class in the kitchen making tortillas out of masa. And I have to say I looked amazing wearing that hat around that they provided in the room.

This is the luxury version of visiting another country, but it certainly sanitizes the experience. For some, this is the right balance. For me, I was ready to move on.

My wife hopped on a plane back home, but I got in a bus for the three-hour drive up to La Paz. La Paz sits on the Sea of Cortés, but it is north-facing in a protected bay with several islands ringing the area.

The first thing I noticed when I arrived was that there was an actual sense of place in La Paz. This was a city, a city where people worked and lived. It’s also a city where I could wander freely and not feel any safety concerns.

I stayed at a one La Paz, the lowest rung on the food chain of the Fiesta Americana brand. It promises (and delivers) spartan but clean accommodations with free breakfast and a good price. I got a travel agent rate of $65, and I was happy enough.

After wandering from the bus depot to the hotel and dropping my bags, I immediately walked back toward the water, because… isn’t that what you do? And La Paz has a sizable and bustling malecón that stretches all along the bay.

What’s more, they have created several art installations ranging from old statues…

… to more modern endeavors.

There were a couple of piers, one for transport and another ostensibly for fishing though I saw nobody actually doing that. Along that main street, there were several restaurants and hotels. Some were very touristy and completely unappealing while others seemed to hold a story from the past that I would have liked to learn.

When it was time for dinner, I followed the advice of the Park Hyatt. Ok, so it wasn’t the hotel itself, but it was the advice of two of the bellmen who suggested I get some lobster at Bismarckcito. This looked pretty touristy in its own right, but I had a solid lobster fettucine, and really, can you go wrong with a view like this? (If you read TripAdvisor, apparently you can.)

After, I strolled the streets and did a little shopping to bring something back to the kids. Then, I found something so rare, most of you have probably never even heard of it…

I didn’t actually go into Sears at all, but I did like going into some of the local shops and puttering around town with nothing pushing me in any particular direction. People were out and enjoying themselves.

It is impossible to compare La Paz to Cabo San Lucas since they couldn’t be more different. La Paz and San José share more similarities, but San José is still much more tourism-focused while La Paz is certainly not.

In Los Cabos, it’s fun to go and sit on the beach, even if many aren’t swimmable due to strong current. I don’t ever think about wanting to go back there. In La Paz, I’d like to go back and explore a lot more. This visit was just an introductory taste. I didn’t get to any of the islands or explore the areas outside of town. It looks like there is a lot to see, and with Alaska flying there now, it is probably worth a return visit.

Specifically today, I’m talking about the Origin & Destination Survey which has historically taken a 10 percent sample of all domestic tickets (and some international which is highly restricted, so I never use it in posts) and then provided the fare and passenger detail quarterly. Tools like those offered by Cirium then gross up the data and clean it to present a respectable estimate of the total market. (If you’re doing it from the raw data, be very careful how you use it.) I use this data all the time, though you may have heard me refer to it as DB1B.

As of July 2025, DB1B has become DB1C, and the data is much better. You can read the lengthy and exhausting file in the federal register if you’d like. Cirium also has a summary.

So, let’s go through some of the most important changes.

Sample Size Grows from 10 to 40 Percent

The biggest change is that we are no longer going to have to rely on a small 10 percent sample. Airlines now have to submit 40 percent of tickets to the feds which will make for more accurate reporting, especially in small markets where there just isn’t much data to be filed.

Frequency Goes From Quarterly to Monthly

As far as I’m concerned, the best change is that we will no longer be beholden to quarterly releases. The data will now flow monthly. This is huge since it has required some awfully uncomfortable groupings in the past. Does it make sense that if I want to look at June, I also need to look at April and May? Or if I want to see July, why do I also need August? Now we will be able to better isolate performance by actual seasons.

This also means data will flow more freely. Normally, we have to wait about 80 days beyond the end of a quarter for that data to be released. Now the target has been reduced to 75 days, and it’ll be every month. So July data will show up by mid-October instead of mid-December. DOT hopes to reduce that turnaround time even more. Oh, and for T100 traffic data (no fares), the wait will drop from six months to three months.

Advance Purchase Data

Maybe the most exciting change is the inclusion of how far in advance each ticket was purchased. This isn’t an exact number, but it will be lumped into three buckets: within three weeks of travel, three weeks to 90 days, and beyond 90 days. Obviously more granular would be useful, but getting a sense of when people booked will be a very welcome addition.

No More Making Up Taxes

It used to be that the fare had to be provided, but taxes were not in there. Some models would estimates taxes. Now, the taxes are included so there’s no estimation required.

Reporting Carrier Clarity

In the old system, the airline that “lifted” the first coupon on the ticket at time of travel would be the reporting carrier. This led to some confusion and probably bad data. For example, if United issued a ticket where the first flight was on JetBlue, JetBlue would have reported previously but it wouldn’t surprise me if it got reported twice or incorrectly. Now, the airline that issues the ticket has to report it regardless of the first airline, and that makes it very clear who does what.

The only place where it gets iffy is when a foreign airline that doesn’t report issues the ticket with travel partly on a US carrier. In that case, the first US airline still has to report.

All Airlines Reporting

Before this change, smaller commuters — those with aircraft under 60 seats only — didn’t need to report at all. This didn’t impact regional partners of big airlines, but it did exempt little guys. Now they all have to report.

There are a few other minor changes, but as you can see, this is going to be a big upgrade for the data. I’m writing about it now, because Cirium first loaded the data into its tool last week. I can finally see July 2025 all the way through October 2025 data. There are going to be some issues with year-over-year comparisons for a bit, but it’s already exciting to see this stuff.

You didn’t think I’d leave you without any data at all, did you? Here’s a look at some fare data which shows that Southwest really took a big hit after peak summer on its short-haul fares in the LA area. Others did too, but look at how October saw fares creep up.

Average Fare for Trips Under 500 Miles Departing the LA Basin by Month

^{Data via Cirium}

Just some random food for thought. Stay tuned for more.

For O’Hare, there are multiple storylines here. And in fact, this seems like a good time to introduce the long-requested name for our favorite new soap opera:

This week on Beyond ORD Gates, Southwest decided it just absolutely was not worth continuing to compete. But then again, it never really found a niche that made sense at O’Hare anyway.

Southwest Monthly Departures From Chicago/O’Hare

^{Data via Cirium}

When Southwest first started in the market, the focus was on connecting O’Hare to its biggest hubs in blue. It then grew into hybrid markets like Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Orlando which are both hubs and major leisure destinations. Pure leisure was icing on the cake.

By early 2024, Southwest had given up on this plan. It nearly eliminated pure leisure flying and it scaled back its flying everywhere else to just a little over half where it was.

This last winter, we saw another shift. Yes, flights were cut again, but leisure returned. The pure hubs all but disappeared. For spring, Southwest tried to reintroduce more leisure, but it seems clear the airline just decided it wasn’t worth it any longer. With United and American ramping up capacity dramatically at O’Hare, that must have been the final straw. Southwest will now donate its two dozen daily operations to the pot as the FAA tries to reduce flying at O’Hare this summer.

Meanwhile, at Dulles, it’s a different story. Southwest has served that airport since 2006, and it opened it like it did just about any other new station back in the day, by connecting it with regular flights to the nearest hubs.

Southwest Monthly Departures From Washington/Dulles

^{Data via Cirium}

Florida survived until 2010 when Denver took over as the second connecting point at the airport beyond Midway. By 2016, even Midway was gone, replaced by Atlanta as Florida again returned. Then Midway came back and Atlanta was gone. It never really worked.

For the last two years, Dulles has been a key point in the strategy to serve flights that are beyond the perimeter from nearby Washington/National. But that has meant only flights to Phoenix and Denver. (Remember, Southwest has a beyond-perimeter slot exemption to serve Las Vegas from National already.)

This is a much smaller operation than what was at O’Hare, and it’s probably not a big deal to see it finally go away. But it is indicative of this idea that primary airports in markets where Southwest has a big hub at the secondary airport won’t really work.

Yes, Washington/National still exists in the shadow of Baltimore, but that is a special case. Slots make airlines do crazy things, but also… it’s a great airport to serve if you want to get in good with the politicians. It’s no surprise to see this remain important in the network.

Other than that, the closest we have to this dynamic is in the LA Basin and the San Francisco Bay Area. I don’t count Fort Lauderdale and Miami since neither are large operations any longer. The same goes for Boston vs Manchester/Providence and Islip vs LaGuardia. That’s not the same thing.

But even in LA and SF, it’s a different kind of story. In full year 2025, BWI had 81 percent of all Southwest departures from the region. (If you’re wondering, National had 17 percent and Dulles was a rounding error.) In Chicago, Midway had 94 percent of departures. These are massive hub operations for the airline with around 200 daily departures on average (a little less at Midway).

In the LA Basin, LAX is actually the largest station with 29 percent of departures, but it’s all fairly even followed by Burbank at 22 percent, Long Beach and Orange County hovering around 18 percent, and Ontario at 14 percent. LA also has less than 70 daily departures. The Bay Area is similar with Oakland at 47 percent, San Jose at 41 percent, and the balance at San Francisco.

In these markets, especially LA, it’s about providing good, useful service across the entire region. There isn’t that massive draw to take away from from the primary airport in the same way as there is in DC, Chicago, and yes, Houston.

So another Southwest experiment ends as the airline continues to refocus on markets that work. It’s not a surprise to see these two on the outs. The only real surprise is that Southwest was willing to make the right move and walk away.

How the Iran War Could Affect Your Summer Airfare: What You Need to Know and When to Book – Investopedia

This isn’t the only outlet asking me what will happen to fares now that we are in a war with Iran with no end in sight. Of course, I don’t know the answer to that, but I can sure help explain how the airlines will think about it. If they lower capacity, fares will rise. They might be waiting to see if they can glean any more insight into where this is whole mess is going first.

Skiplagging Flights Is Not A Travel Hack – It’s Theft – Forbes

Amen. The airlines set the rules about how you can use their product, and because of that, you should obey them. Skiplagging –better known as hidden-city ticketing — is not allowed.

Jon is back on the pod this week, and he led us through the stormy waters surrounding the invasion of Iran. What exactly does this mean? What will be the impact? Talk it through with us.

• Listen on Spotify
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Southwest to End IAD and ORD Service

Plot twist: We’ve got an airline actually ending service to Chicago/ORD, bucking the current trends.

Southwest Airlines revealed to employees this morning that it would be ending service at two airports: Chicago/O’Hare and Washington/Dulles. Its exit will be completed on June 3, giving it just under three months to wrap things up. These exits are unlikely to create seismic changes in the Southwest ecosystem as it already has a much larger presence at other airports in both regions.

In Washington, Southwest has had a limited schedule out of IAD for more than a decade, with its main east coast hub home of intentional connecting opportunities up the BW parkway at Baltimore/Washington International. A little closer by, Southwest flies to and from 21 destinations from Washington/National’s historic Terminal A, making it the second largest carrier at the airport behind American.

As for Chicago, the carrier has a much larger operation across town at Chicago/Midway, compared to its tiny presence at ORD. Southwest began flying to ORD post-pandemic in 2021, and reduced the size of its operation there in 2026. As of today, it’s scheduled to serve about 12 destinations from the airport with one — Panama City (FL) — scheduled to begin next month.

Despite the move out of ORD not yet having been formally filed, both American and United are jockeying for position. American CEO Robert Isom told Southwest officials it would be willing to pay for movers to help get Southwest out of the airport and freeing up the gates as soon as possible. Upon hearing this, United CEO Scott Kirby one-upped his colleague and rival, offering to come down to the airport and help with the move himself. Then they both realized Southwest was in Terminal 5 and decided they couldn’t care less.

Spirit to Recall Pilots

Spirit Airlines is recalling many of the pilots it placed on furlough as attrition in the cockpit has struck the carrier with many of its pilots opting for greener not-as-yellow pastures where they’re more likely to receive a stable paycheck.

As you might call on a previous episode of As the Spirit Turns, part of its strategy to shrink costs as it went through not one, but two bankruptcies was to put hundreds of pilots on unpaid leave as it shrunk its operation and didn’t need them. But now the tables have turned, as Spirit needs to backfill the flight deck. The carrier sent notices to about 500 pilots who have been out of work between six and 20 months to come back to work.

As part of a welcome package for coming back, pilots will receive a six-pack of BuzzBallz (only to be consumed off-duty) and a BOGO for any Fort Lauderdale area Howard Johnson.

Southwest Restricts Jumpseat Access

Southwest seems to be taking its new assigned seating policy further than we originally thought, as the carrier is now restricting jumpseat access to flight crew — FAs and pilots — leaving other non-rev fliers forced to take a seat in the cabin or wait for the next flight.

This change came as a request from TWU 556 Union, Southwest’s FA union which sought to keep jumpseats for pilots and flight attendants. The union said in a statement that the change enhances safety and ensures those occupying the jumpseat have an understanding of the operational demands and work taking place in the galley. When hearing that, a select group of Southwest pilots laughed and said “yeah, we have no idea what they do back there, but whatever makes it easier for us to get home works just fine…”

Toronto to Take Worldwide Lead in Preclearance Facilities per Capita

One preclearance facility is good, but two are better. More than a decade after adding preclearance at Toronto/Pearson, the city’s main airport, the other option in the city, Toronto/City, known to some as Billy Bishop Airport added one as well.

This is great if you’re traveling on Porter back to the U.S. or on Air Canada’s limited service from the airport, but beware — it comes at a price. To pay for it, YTZ is adding a $16.56 fee on every passenger who uses it for the first year. Canadian passport holders will be permitted to opt-out of the fee if they bring a pint of fresh maple syrup to the facility.

The service will also open up the possibility of service from YTZ to U.S. destinations without a CBP clearance, specifically making both New York/LGA and Washington/DCA open to service to the airport. It’s so convenient that Air Canada will begin 4x daily YTZ-LGA service later this month. Porter will also expand its large U.S. footprint with this addition, adding flights first to Nashville and moving its Chicago/Midway service across town to ORD.

JetBlue Grows Fort Lauderdale

JetBlue Airways announced an expansion of four current routes out of its Fort Lauderdale hub, continuing its trend over the last year to put a boot to the neck of its largest FLL rival – Spirit. Cartagena, Dallas/DFW, Jacksonville, and Tampa will grow for JetBlue, starting in June, complementing the 20 destinations its added from the south Florida airport in the last year.

Cartagena will grow from 4x weekly to year-round, 1x daily flights beginning June 11, while Jacksonville will grow on June 18 to daily year-round service, upped from limited spring break-only service. Dallas/Fort Worth and Tampa will both double on June 18 from 1x to 2x daily.

• Air Baltic reduced its full-year loss 40% to $51.2 million.
• Air Canada is growing its Landline service from Toronto.
• Air New Zealand is feeling the fuel crunch.
• Asia Pacific applied for rights to serve both Hong Kong and Manila from Guam.
• Air Premia is down to just one CEO. How clever.
• Air Transat posted a Q1 loss.
• AirAsia will leave Darwin in April.
• Breeze is starting 2x weekly service between Madison and Fort Myers. It’s no Appleton – Fort Myers, but it’s close.
• Cathay Pacific is increasing its current fuel surcharge by more than double.
• Condor will wet-lease an E190 later this month, stripes and all.
• Delta will reportedly begin serving Manila from Los Angeles next summer. It’s also extending its pause of service from JFK to Tel Aviv until March 31 and won’t resume ATL-TLV service until August.
• Hawaiian is going to self-tagged bags.
• IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers IndiWent out the front door, resigning his position.
• JSX is adding 4x weekly turboprop service from Santa Monica to Napa.
• KLM took delivery of its 13th and 14th A321neos this week.
• SAS is partnering with Google to track your movement, spy on you, and listen in on your calls track bags more efficiently.
• Spirit is blaming the FAA for everything.
• Southwest will now interline with ANA, making it easier to check your bags on that HOU-DAL-AUS-NRT itinerary.
• STARLUX is leasing an additional eight A321neos.

Therapist: What bring you in today.

Patient: I have a overwhelming fear of tsunamis.

Therapist: How bad is it?

Patient: It comes in waves.

• Introduction to Cranky’s Mexican Adventure
• Cross Border Express is Great, But It Can Be Tricky
• Viva Kicks the Trip Off the Right Way
• Mexicana is Weird, But the E2 is a Delight
• The Spectacular But Distant AIFA Airport
• Mexico City is More Than Worth the Visit
• Aeromexico Does It Right in the Air but Not on the Ground
• Señor Air Has the Best Name and an Experience to Match
• Los Cabos and La Paz Couldn’t Be More Different
• TAR Was a Wild Ride
• Volaris, the Purest ULCC

Señor Air is undisputably the airline with the best name around, but it is also a relatively new entrant that seems to have spawned in some part out of the ashes of Calafia. This airline’s focus is on bringing people from nearby domestic destinations to the close-in airport in Cabo San Lucas. No, that’s not where you’ve probably flown. Nearly all commercial flights go to the Los Cabos (SJD) airport in San José del Cabo which is quite far from Cabo San Lucas itself. JSX is an exception, and so is Señor Air which charged me just about $200 for the privilege, including the extra cost of a seat assignment.

I was able to check-in online without any issues, but I wasn’t quite sure if this was a private jet-style situation or if I went to the terminal in Puerto Vallarta. I couldn’t find anything saying otherwise, so I went to the terminal. I didn’t need a ticket counter, but I looked for one to make sure this airline existed.

I can’t help but love that logo. It looks old-school like many of the bird logos that graced airlines back in the day, but it also kind of looks like the tilde (~) in the name as well as a manly mustache. This is good work, people.

Security was empty, and once again I was back ready to make friends in the close quarters of the PVR domestic concourse. I wasn’t interested in the lounge after my first cramped experience. Instead, I decided to just walk. There wasn’t a single airplane on the ground at the international concourse this early in the morning, and sad, sunburned travelers were only starting to trickle in for their flights home.

I stood and watched our the airplane arrive, hoping to get a good photo. But then I saw it was stopping out at a bus gate, so it wouldn’t get very close. I headed to the gate.

Fortunately, this was not a busy time of day, so it wasn’t nearly as stifling as when I last flew through. We were all the way down at gate 2, which has no jet bridge. Boarding was scheduled to begin at 10:35am.

Shockingly, someone showed up right on time and started boarding promptly. My pass was scanned, my ID was checked, and I was told to go down the stairs to bus #4. So I did. And everyone else followed me until we had 37 people onboard. It was a completely full flight.

The short ride out to the airplane ended with me taking a million pictures. I was so excited to fly this airline.

Our chariot was XA-SEN, a 25-year old Embraer 135LR. This airplane started life as an Intel corporate shuttle, so it had to be low time. And as I ascended the stairs, I was transported to an era that time forgot.

Señor Air/Cabo Flight Center 708
January 19, 2026

From Puerto Vallarta
➤ Scheduled Departure: 11a
➤ Actual Departure: 1056a
➤ From Gate: 2
➤ Wheels Up: 1103a
➤ From Runway: 22

To Cabo San Lucas (CSL)
➤ Wheels Down: 1058a
➤ On Runway: 29
➤ Scheduled Arrival: 1115a
➤ Actual Arrival: 1101a
➤ At Gate: Uh, let’s call it 1 or 2, you pick

Aircraft
➤ Type: Embraer EMB-135LR
➤ Delivered: July 24, 2001 to Intel Air Shuttle
➤ Registered: XA-SEN, msn 450
➤ Livery: Blue Tail

Flight
➤ Cabin: Coach in Seat 6A
➤ Load: 37/37
➤ Flight Time: 55m

The first thing I noticed about this airplane is that it had those great, old, comfy, cushy coach seats that don’t exist anymore. The second thing I noticed was that my row (6) and row 10 were gray while the rest were blue. That’s weird. It wasn’t an exit row or anything special.

I had pre-reserved seat 6A so I could have the single seat on the side and have what I hoped would be a stellar view of Cabo San Lucas on the way in. I sat down and saw the interior was a little worse for wear, but man was that seat comfortable. I didn’t realize I missed the old seats that much.

There was no pushing back on this flight since we were at a hardstand. The pilots just fired up the engines, and forward we went. The single flight attendant was young and raced to deliver her messages in Spanish and English before we left the ground. She barely made it.

I always listen to the safety briefing, but I can’t say anything usually stands out. This time, however, I was surprised to hear that there were no life vests onboard the aircraft. It was seat-bottom cushion or nothing for an airline that almost exclusively flies over water.

We were off the ground quickly as we started a slow climb over the Bay of Banderas before hanging a right to head out toward Baja, passing over Punta Mita on the way.

There were several layers of clouds which we climbed through, but it was in the first one when I started trying to figure out what was wrong.

Someone a few rows up was making a yelping noise which I can’t really even describe. At first I thought it was a very weird laugh, but then it became clear it was more like a panic. As we climbed higher and higher, he got more and more anxious. His yelps turned into screams and became more frequent. This poor man was terrified, but I wasn’t sure that everything was ok.

The flight attendant came through with a service, and I asked her about it. She said he was just a very nervous flier, and it was ok. I guess he must have briefed her before we flew, though there was certainly concern from the other passengers throughout the airplane. It was loud and anxiety-provoking, to say the least.

Like the airline, the beverage service was also old school. She had coffee, water, or juice available for the short flight, and a selection of sweets. I took some chocolate chip cookies.

We settled in to cruise right in the top layer of clouds, so there wasn’t much to see. As you can imagine, the fearful flier did not like this. It was hard not to feel really bad for this guy. Fortunately, we weren’t at cruise for long. When we started our descent, all of sudden, he was quiet. I’m glad it was a smooth ride.

At long last, Baja came into view on the right side of the aircraft, but the real show wasn’t until later when we came over land just east of Cabo San Lucas. I had a spectacular view of the bay.

Just a couple minutes later, we had landed. Then we did u-turn to backtrack on the runway until we got to the gate. We had the whole fleet together as sister ship XA-SEA was getting ready to fly off to Mazatlán.

Walking off the airplane, I got a finger wag for taking a picture. It may just have been for stopping instead of continuing to walk, but I got what I wanted anyway.

The terminal building has a surprising and pleasant cactus garden out front.

We walked by it until we got to the far side where there’s a small arrival area for domestic flights.

When I booked my flight, I had added on the Cabo Cardinal transport from the airport to the hotel for MXN 350 + tax. What a great deal. When I left baggage claim, they had a sign with my name on it. A driver was ready to take me right away, with his car sitting on the curb at the sleepy airport. We had a nice ride to my next stop, the Park Hyatt Cabo del Sol.

When I made the change, the morning flights had no award space, so I booked the 1pm. Even though there didn’t appear to be a mechanism for same day changes, I thought I’d try to go early and see if I could squeak on an earlier flight. That did not go well.

• Introduction to Cranky’s Mexican Adventure
• Cross Border Express is Great, But It Can Be Tricky
• Viva Kicks the Trip Off the Right Way
• Mexicana is Weird, But the E2 is a Delight
• The Spectacular But Distant AIFA Airport
• Mexico City is More Than Worth the Visit
• Aeromexico Does It Right in the Air but Not on the Ground
• Señor Air Has the Best Name and an Experience to Match
• Los Cabos and La Paz Couldn’t Be More Different
• TAR Was a Wild Ride
• Volaris, the Purest ULCC

I headed to the airport and got there about 1h20m before the next earlier flight, so I could try to get on. My Uber driver was a really curious guy, and we had a great conversation in Spanish. The ride went by quickly.

Aeromexico uses Terminal 2 on the south side of the airport, and every part of it seemed to be under construction, even the approach at the curb.

I walked inside and went to the counter where a lineminder understood what I wanted to do and when the flight was, so she pointed me to the line I needed. I got in it, and waited. There was one agent working this area, and she promptly left. At this point, a baggage checking agent and a SkyPriority agent would occassionally take a break and call one of us over. It was very slow.

By the time I got to an agent, he told me that the flight closed one hour before departure… which was 5 minutes earlier. Had Aeromexico’s lineminders been willing to help or had there actually been an agent working our line, I might have had a chance. The agent I eventually saw scolded me (in a nice-ish way, I guess) for not getting to the airport early. He then pointed me to the security area and wouldn’t have any further discussion.

I resolved to try the gate, so I went through security only to find he had directed me to the checkpoint near Hall M, furthest from the earlier flight’s gate, so I had a long walk. There was a central help area where I didn’t see anyone. (Maybe I missed them? There was a lot of construction going on here.) I went to the gate and waited for boarding to finish. I asked nicely if I could get on but was told no. I was willing to pay. It just seemed like Aeromexico’s default answer was no to everything, when I could find someone to ask.

So that was that. With only 2.5 hours until my flight, it wasn’t that bad, but I did have time to kill. I trudged back to the Priority Pass lounge where I got a sad and tiny plate of chilaquiles alongside largely non-functional internet and waited for my flight.

When the gate posted, it was on the other concourse this time which was closer to the lounge. This one was just as chaotic as the other concourse. There was active work being done which included a cacophony of drill and other loud noises that drowned out any announcements. It was a lot to take in.

I got to the gate about 45 minutes before departure and people were already lined up.

Soon after, boarding began.

Aeromexico 334
January 16, 2026

From Mexico City
➤ Scheduled Departure: 1p
➤ Actual Departure: 102p
➤ From Gate: 66
➤ Wheels Up: 122p
➤ From Runway: 05L

To Puerto Vallarta
➤ Wheels Down: 230p
➤ On Runway: 22
➤ Scheduled Arrival: 248p
➤ Actual Arrival: 235p
➤ At Gate: 6

Aircraft
➤ Type: Boeing 737-9 MAX
➤ Delivered: April 26, 2022
➤ Registered: XA-MFO, msn 43761
➤ Livery: Red Line Swoop Livery

Flight
➤ Cabin: Coach in Seat 20A
➤ Load: 85% Full
➤ Flight Time: 1h08m

The airplane was beautiful on the inside, outfitted with big inflight entertainment screens and giant bins. I took my seat behind the exit and settled in. Unfortunately, IFE wasn’t usable while we were at the gate. It just scrolled through pre-programmed messaging.

We pushed back a couple minutes late. The nice part of Terminal 2 is that you’re close to the end of the runway, so it’s not a long way to go. We began our elevation-influenced, long and bouncy takeoff roll before heading up into the sky. I had a nice view of what could (should) have been a lovely new airport at Texcoco on my left.

Right after passing it, we did a long sweeping turn to the south to point our nose west for the short flight to Puerto Vallarta.

Aeromexico has Viasat internet, and it worked well. I watched a video to get a paltry 15-minute wifi session. If I wanted to pay, it was $5 for an hour or $8 for the whole flight… which was basically an hour. I didn’t bother.

The flight attendants came through and handed out… peanuts! You don’t see that in the US anymore. I had my headphones on and was looking out the window, so the drink cart just skipped me entirely, which was a bummer.

It was a pretty day outside with several large isolated thunderheads dotting the landscape. I only wish they were more isolated so I could have seen the terrain below.

We began our descent through several layers of clouds. The flight attendants came through to collect trash, but when they got to me, the guy looked at my peanut wrapper and told me to put it in the seatback pocket. Uh, ok.

We descended through the hazy sky until landing nice and early. We parked right back where my Mexicana flight had left from on Monday, and I again confirmed that there are no connections behind security allowed there, even if you arrive at a jet bridge. They route you straight into baggage claim and then out the door, which was exactly where I wanted to be this time.

I spent the next three nights at the Delta Hotels Riviera Nayarit which is not your typical Puerto Vallarta vacation. It’s west of the airport toward Punta Mita, and it’s in a valley. There are pools and buildings on different levels throughout the property.

There are great views, but unless you go to the beach club, you aren’t going to be in the sand. For me, it was perfect as I could rest up before the next part of the journey.

As we all know by now, the US and Israel have invaded Iran, and Iran has fought back by firing missiles at and targeting drones in just about any country within reach. Iran can’t reach the US directly, so instead it is largely looking at US targets in the region — plus Israel, of course — but it is also seemingly just shooting for chaos. Case-in-point: the attacks on Dubai’s airport.

With the US and Israel seemingly wanting regime change and requiring “unconditional surrender,” it was up to Iran’s leaders to either roll over or get wild. Iran is very weak after years of sanctions and the last round of nuclear infrastructure targeting by the US and Israel, so if it didn’t roll over, it was going to have to find a way to fight differently. To the surprise of absolutely nobody outside the government, Iran has chosen the “scrappy and desperate” plan. To prove its path, it has named hard-liner (and son of the last hard-liner) Mojtaba Khameini as the new supreme leader.

It seems like all of this hit home this weekend when oil prices started to skyrocket. That is, of course, a huge concern for the airline industry. Fuel costs are shooting through the roof as well.

Iran has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz which happens to be an annoyingly important transit route for oil. Let’s map it.

Remember the Gulf War in 1990/1991? That was at least partially over an oil drilling dispute that ended with Iraq invading Kuwait at the top of the Persian (or Arabian, depending upon who you ask) Gulf. This is a very oil-rich region, and tankers are a key way to get oil and gas out of there and around the world, especially into Asia. About a quarter of all tankered oil goes through the Strait of Hormuz and a fifth of all liquified natural gas does too.

The strait is circled in red on the map. It just happens to be a very narrow point where the tippy top of Oman (yes, that’s an exclave of Oman and not part of the United Arab Emirates), sits a mere 24 miles away from Iran at its narrowest point. There isn’t much room to spare, having only one shipping lane in each direction. Each are two miles wide. Closing the Strait causes major global oil problems. But why would Iran want to hurt the entire globe? Ah…

Remember that whole “scrappy and desperate” thing I mentioned? Well, when you can’t fight fire with fire, you get desperate to play to any strengths you have. And for Iran, one enormous strength is the ability to close off the Strait of Hormuz. None of this is a surprise. Every time Iran got mad at the US over the years, it would threaten to close the strait. This time, it actually did it.

Most of this oil doesn’t come to the US, but that doesn’t matter. Oil is a global market, and even the threat of reduced supply will spike prices everywhere. With the realization this past weekend that this situation wasn’t going to end quickly, the markets responded and prices shot through the roof.

Despite some frenzied overreaction that saw oil rise to over $110 a barrel over the weekend, it has settled back down to a still painfully-expensive $85 a barrel range as of the time of writing. I imagine this will continue to be volatile for some time.

The bigger issue for the airlines, however, is that jet fuel is proving to be spiking even more than barrels of oil alone. Take a look:

Yesterday, jet fuel was averaging $3.67 a gallon in the US, and it’s going higher. So what does that mean in practice? Let’s use Southwest as an example since it very publicly decided to stop hedging fuel at the worst possible time.

Southwest in 2025 averaged $2.41 per gallon for a total of $5.24 billion in total fuel expense. That was 19 percent of the airline’s operating costs. In Q1 of this year, it guided to an expected $2.40 per gallon price.

At $3.67 per gallon, just as a thought exercise, this would be another $2.7 billion fuel cost annually based on 2025 usage. This is more than a 10 percent increase in operating expense right off the bat.

If this were truly a short-term spike, it can be easily weathered, but the whole point of this post is to show that it doesn’t look like it’s going to be short term. The Iranian regime has every incentive to do everything in its power to prevent the stated goals of the US and Israel from happening, and we know it doesn’t care about what it may have to do to the people of Iran to achieve those goals. There will be ups and downs and twists and turns as this conflict drags on, but it’s hard to see how it doesn’t… drag on.

Of course, it’s possible oil prices could come down quickly, but that’s actually a worst case scenario. That would indicate that demand for oil has plummeted which would in turn mean we are all in for tough economic times ahead.

If you’re an airline what do you do? You cut capacity. (Ok, maybe not to India since that traffic isn’t going through the Middle East right now as it usually does.) I imagine they’ll probably wait a little to ensure that this isn’t truly a one week spike in oil, but even with some decline in demand for tickets, there (hopefully) isn’t going to be enough let-up to allow oil to settle back down to where it was. The only lever airlines have to deal with that cost spike is to cut capacity and raise fares.

For an airline like Southwest or Delta, this is a relatively straightforward effort. But it could be the death knell for an airline in a more precarious position, maybe one based on Fort Lauderdale? Smaller shocks have pushed airlines to the brink before.

The 114-page “results release” is insanely long, but the meat is contained in far fewer pages which are full of interesting nuggets. So, today, I’m going to share those bits and pieces with you, so you don’t have to read the whole thing yourself.

I’ve combed through the release, and this isn’t supposed to be a broad overview of the business. Instead, I’m just going in order. When I saw something I was interested in, I put it aside to mention here.

Return of excess cash of €1.5 billion
–and later–
In line with our policy to manage an efficient but strong balance sheet and in anticipation of the step-up in capital expenditure over the next five years, we will distribute excess cash to shareholders when net leverage is below 1.0x to 1.5x.

When IAG says it this way, it makes sense, doesn’t it? If IAG doesn’t need a ton of cash, why not return it to shareholders? But this is really just a share buyback program, and it’s in addition to the dividend which it just upped for 2025 to 8.9 percent of the share value. Everybody does the share buyback program thing, but that just sounds far more crude. But how do you know how much cash you need? I think we could argue that right about now… more cash is important. Just look at those oil prices (which I’m going to cover soon.)

So this sets a good target, but it also explains other opportunities where cash might be needed. For example…

We are currently participating in the partial disposal process by the Portuguese government of TAP, which we think is a strategically interesting opportunity for the Group but will have to be on terms that create value for IAG’s shareholders.

Mergers and acquisitions obviously create opportunity, and they consider that when determining how much cash to keep around. But also, giant self-inflicted oil price spikes are another reason to keep cash around.

Iberia delivered a 16.2% margin, an excellent performance, with British Airways not far behind at 15.2%

I’ve written about this before, but the rise of Iberia has been nothing short of a miracle. BA has it easy with a focus on heavily slot-controlled Heathrow. But for Iberia to deliver better margins? That is truly amazing.

During 2025 British Airways’ capacity was broadly flat [on the North Atlantic], as lower aircraft availability offset growth

Overall, IAG wants to grow capacity 2 to 4 percent per year, but unsurprisingly, BA is not the growth vehicle. Interestingly, BA is the only airline that could actually grow from Heathrow over the North Atlantic, because it could shift slots from other geographies. But that opportunity doesn’t appear to be worthwhile. That being said…

Both Aer Lingus and Iberia started to deploy their new A321XLR aircraft, profitably delivering growth from greater
frequency, year-round services and targeting secondary destinations. (Note: IAG later says “which are already exceeding expectations from both a customer and financial standpoint”) Competitor growth into both Spain and Ireland from North America has been significant, so the ability to deploy these efficient aircraft is strategically important.

There’s a lot to unpack here. First, it is notable that IAG says the A321XLR deployments have been profitable AND have exceeded expectations. We don’t know how profitable, but this could have gone differently. But yes, in Spain and Ireland, there has been a lot of growth over the Atlantic. IAG sees that, and likes the idea of growing in differentiated ways using narrowbodies on routes that others probably can’t or won’t touch.

Whilst there is more capacity now being added [over the South Atlantic] by other airlines, Iberia’s competitive cost base, investment in its customers and operational efficiency is delivering exceptional performance.

This is a surprise. IAG crows about also putting the A321XLR into Brazil, as well as being the largest airline over the South Atlantic. But I do wonder what IAG means by Iberia’s “competitive cost base.” Is it better than BA? Well of course. But it can’t compete with someone like LATAM. Maybe the Latin carriers aren’t concerning at this point?

[For short-haul,] we have seen good performance in our core market of Spain but demand in Northern Europe has been weaker, exacerbated by higher costs to operate in those markets.

This certainly bodes well for a company with its big Iberia and Vueling operations in Spain. But Northern Europe, well, that would seem to be bad news for the likes of Aer Lingus. Sure it’s not great for BA, but BA has a defensible fortress in a high-dollar market. Aer Lingus doesn’t have that same dynamic, so it will probably spend a lot more time going to sunny spots on the Med than elsewhere.

Our two most important non-financial metrics are On Time Performance (OTP) and Customer NPS

“Non-financial” is certainly the key here since this is a very finance-forward company. Historically, these are not airlines that would win on either metric, but BA has certainly improved its product dramatically, and the whole group has seen on-time performance rise with BA getting its act together most of all.

[IAG Loyalty is] seeing growth coming predominantly from new members collecting Avios from existing IAG partners, as reflected by the business increasing its active customer base by 10% in the year and issuing 13% more Avios in 2025 than in 2024

Credit cards will never be as lucrative in Europe as they are in the US thanks to consumer protections being stronger, but IAG is still making money on this business. And now it’s making more with profit having doubled since 2019 as it keeps doling out those Avios.

[Holidays] higher quality revenue coming mainly from changes to the British Airways Club scheme. It saw a 9% increase in revenue per booking and 83% of revenue now comes from British Airways Club members. In particular, revenue from members of British Airways Club elite tiers is growing more than 15 times faster than revenue from other members

If you’ve ever wondered why airlines change their loyalty programs around, well, here you go. It’s wildly profitable if you do it right, and it can hit the business in different ways.

We now have the objective to ensure our gross leverage remains between 1.5x and 2.0x by increasing the number of unencumbered aircraft in the fleet

There’s a lot of talk about the right amount of debt, and IAG is pretty conservative. I guess that’s what happens when you work to gain and maintain an investment grade rating, something most airlines in the US would envy. (I believe only Alaska, Delta, and Southwest have that today.) But what’s interesting is how IAG is going to focus on its leverage. Instead of just paying down debt — which, to be clear, it did do to the tune of €1.6 billion in 2025 — it is just paying cash for airplanes and boosting the value of its debt-free assets.

Iran war threatens $11.7 trillion global travel industry as passengers get caught in crossfire – CNBC

I know the headline is about Iran, but Cranky Network Weekly was quoted in here with our look at what is happening in Puerto Vallarta. Remember when we all thought that cartel violence was a big deal? Ah, the good old days…

The end of the Spirit era: How a budget airline reshaped Cleveland’s skies – Cleveland.com

Here’s a nostalgic look back at Spirit’s time in Cleveland now that the airline has announced it will end service to the city. This is the right way to look at Spirit and what it offered travelers over the years, even if its future in general is far from certain. Sure it may have stranded people more than it should have, but it absolutely was a pioneer in providing low fares in the US.

Breeze Airways launches first international service from RDU – The Business Journals

This one is paywalled, but with Avelo having left the Caribbean from RDU, the local market seems a little gunshy about whether new service will last. Breeze, however, certainly has a better chance of lasting in RDU to Punta Cana thanks to its strategy in the city.

Out-of-control airline passenger caught on video ripping into flight crew in ‘sad’ meltdown – Fox News

Am I really posting something from Fox News with a breathless headline about a passenger meltdown? Reluctantly, yes. But I was quoted in the article, so I figured I’d share even over-hyped “news” coverage like this. Basically, I said that unruly passengers are still rare despite the persistent media coverage, and travelers should listen to crews and avoid getting involved if it does happen. It’s not rocket science, but more importantly, it’s highly unlikely this will happen to you anyway.

It’s a two-fer this week as Brian and I spend the first half of the show talking about Spirit’s latest plan, and then we shift to Chicago for the second half. Jon was out again this week, but he should return next week.

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