Record heat, crowds drive offseason boom in international travel – CNBC

Shoulder season travel is doing well, and that means good news for everyone. The longer an airline can justify a long-haul route during the year, the more airplanes it can justify buying. I chatted with Leslie Josephs about it.

This week Brian and I answered one of YOUR questions… is there room for an all-premium airline? It was actually Outer Space Guy who asked the question here, and we turned it into a podcast. Listen in and join the discussion to LinkedIn.

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Delta Q2 Profit Nears $2 Billion, Revenue Nears $20 Billion

Revenue continued on its record trajectory for Delta as the carrier boasted a $19.8 billion gross revenue for Q2, a whopping 19% increase from last year. But profit fell by a quarter, from $2.1 to $1.6 billion as the carrier dealt with climbing costs for both fuel and Biscoffs. Delta’s fuel costs jumped 66% at the pump, paying $3.66 per gallon, compared to just $2.21 a year ago. While fuel prices have eased in the last several weeks, prices for the industry at-large are still up 32% YoY.

On the revenue side, premium sales were greater than main cabin for Delta, at $6.92 billion in the front of the plane compared to $6.85 billion behind the curtain. Delta’s Q2 unit revenues increased 17% but was outpaced by a 21% jump in unit costs.

Looking forward, Delta’s guidance for Q3 expects an operating margin of 11-13% and between $2 and $2.50 in earnings per share. It sees that figure ballooning to between $6.50 and $7.50 for the rest of FY26 and sees its free cash flow somewhere between $3 and $4 billion for the rest of the year, which might leave enough left over for the airline to actually fix its lagging operation.

Delta Unveils Basic Premium Fares

Three months after United first began its unbundled business fares, it’s Delta’s turn to give it a shot with what we’re calling Delta None.

The concept is exactly what you’d think — you get the smugness that comes from sitting up front along with the shame of knowing you’re on a Basic ticket. What stays? The seat, the meal, and a first checked bag. What is excluded? Lounge access, full mileage earning, advanced seat assignments, and a second or third checked bag.

Delta’s release doesn’t specifically address SkyPriority access, but does say Basic Business (or Basic First Class for domestic flights) does retain Zone 1 boarding, which saves Basic customers from the indignity of having to board with economy passengers. Basic Business (generally flights with Delta One even though it’s not called Delta One) won’t be implemented until this fall, while Basic First (domestic, Canada, Caribbean, and Latin America) is for sale now on select routes.

United still permits United Club access on its Basic Business fares while keeping the hoity-toity Polaris Clubs to full-fare paying, non-basic customers. But on DL, all lounge access (barring another way to enter such as a credit card) will go away soon. Basic Business customers will still receive access to Delta One and Sky Clubs through January 18 to allow for a transition period. But if you’re available, join us on January 19 as we fan out to Delta One lounges across the country to sit near the check-in desk and watch. We’ll bring the popcorn.

JetBlue Begins Its Massive Fort Lauderdale Increase

JetBlue announced it has now started flying the first tranche in its big increase from its Fort Lauderdale hub as the carrier continues to double triple down on FLL since the demise of a yellow tinted airline earlier this year.

Two new cities joined the JetBlue network from FLL this week with five more to come.

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

Meanwhile six cities that already have service from elsewhere on JetBlue started their FLL flights this week and one more hits in November.

• Cleveland (1x daily begins July 8)
• Nashville (3x daily begins July 9)
• Detroit (2x daily begins July 9)
• Houston/IAH (3x daily begins July 9)
• Chicago/ORD (2x daily begins July 9)
• Ponce (1x daily begins July 9)
• San Diego (1x daily begins November 19)*

*FLL-SAN will be on Mint-equipped aircraft

Air Canada Poaches New CEO from SAS

Air Canada announced today that Anko van der Werff will leave SAS early next year to become the new CEO of Air Canada, replacing Michael Rousseau.

Rousseau’s retirement will become official on August 31, and it comes after 19 years at the airline at which point he was forced out chose to retire because he didn’t speak enough French following an aircraft’s collision in New York earlier this year. His replacement, van der Werff, has more than 25 years experience in the industry and perhaps most importantly…he speaks (some) French. At SAS, van der Werff led the airline through bankruptcy and a switch to SkyTeam.

His time at SAS was preceded by stints at Avianca, Aeromexico, KLM, and Qatar Airways. To prepare for his interview, he memorized every Canadian winner of the Stanley Cup by year, learned how to make poutine from scratch, and started beginning his days with a shot of maple syrup.

EasyJet Agrees to Takeover Offer…Or Does it

As Europe’s second-largest ULCC, easyJet has been the apple of Castlelake‘s eye for quite a while now. And it what is at least its 5th attempt, the investment firm finally made an offer the board accepted. For those of you who weren’t with us earlier in the semester, this comes after Castlelake took a 1/3 stake in SAS in partnership with Air France-KLM in 2023.

Castlelake’s offer came in at £6.90 per share and was expected to go to a full vote early next month. Castlelake is not European, so it cannot take a majority stake in the airline on its own — it’s going to need a European partner. The transaction will also require a yes vote from easyJet’s shareholders and regulatory approval.

However, a plot twist emerged in the early hours of July 10. Apollo Global Management has swooped in at the last minute and and offered £7.15 per share, about 3.5% more. In addition, Apollo offered existing easyJet shareholders an opportunity to roll their shares into the holding company that it uses to acquire the carrier, allowing them to remain shareholders of the airline. Apollo will have the same issues to deal with as far as not being based in Europe and it’ll have to sort that out.

EasyJet’s board has reportedly pulled its agreement from Castlelake and plans to move forward with Apollo. For now. But considering Castlelake made five different proposals and bids to takeover easyJet, we have to assume they won’t accept this new development without a fight. Apollo has until August 7 to submit a binding bid.

• Air Premia‘s is Southwest’s newest interline partner.
• Air Zimbabwe is resuming service to London/Gatwick.
• Arkia is close to being sold.
• Azul debuted on the NYSE on Thursday.
• Breeze now allows the straight purchase of Very Nice BreezePoints via Plusgrade.
• Copa is bucking the free Starlink trend.
• Etihad is near an agreement for 10 B787s.
• Frontier is selling 11 A321neos it doesn’t have in its possession yet to Irish-based lessor Avolon.
• GOL scored its first wet-leased A330-200.
• Jet2 says bookings for summer holidays are up.
• Mandarin Airlines is wet-leasing a high-density A321neo.
• Philippine Airlines raised $300 million.
• Riyadh Air is adding Mumbai service.
• Saudia ordered four new freighters.
• TAROM will take delivery of its first A320 later this summer.
• United will have to move forward with a trial over its windowless window seats.
• Wizz Air is growing in Spain this winter.

Why do we say ‘slept like a baby’? Babies wake up every two hours crying.

I want to sleep like my dog. Hours at a time, any time, any place, no responsibilities, zero regrets.

When airlines put on media days, they are always focused on making sure there’s some flash. They need to make news, announce new routes or aircraft configurations or… something that’ll get coverage. Visuals? Oh yeah, they need those too. But JetZero? None of that. Oh there could have been some good visuals, but photography is strictly forbidden. Even beyond that, I had to put a cover on my phone camera when I entered the facility. At least they did provide some renderings which you’ll see below.

Instead of announcing something new and exciting, JetZero announced nothing except that it is meeting milestones and moving forward on time and under budget. As someone who doesn’t cover manufacturers as much, I had to turn to those who do to confirm that this mundane presentation was actually a good thing. Indeed, people seemed to agree.

JetZero met its goals last year, and it even had a pleasant surprise. It was moved from the AIR-600 certification group at the FAA which is more for innovation and experimental aircraft to AIR-500 which is for Part 25 aircraft meant for Part 121 airlines. That’s where you find Boeing, and it’s a big deal for JetZero to be categorized that way as it prepares to apply for its type certificate.

The company set forth four main goals for this year.

• It will do a Series C funding round that will exceed the recent $195 million Series B round
• It will open its first office building and begin manufacturing testing at the new North Carolina factory
• It will submit its type certification application to the feds
• It will finish building the Jet1 demonstrator aircraft in partnership with the US military

These are all pretty big milestones in their own right, but I want to focus on that last one. See, JetZero is going down two parallel paths right now. First, it continues to work on its Z4 commercial aircraft which will fit in the middle of the market between the largest B737/A321 and the smallest widebody, refining the design and preparing to apply for the type certificate. Second, it is actively building the Jet1 demontrator which was part of a military contract to prove that this entire blended wing concept works. (Think, B-2 stealth bomber on serious steroids.)

When I heard they were building a demonstrator, I figured this was something like Boom building an irrelevant small aircraft with different engines and no real relation to the production aircraft. That is not what’s happening here. They already have Pathfinder remote control aircraft to help test a variety of things including wind tunnel performance and more. The Jet1 demonstrator is an enormous aircraft that is nearly the size of the Z4. Let me try to help frame this. Here is what the Z4 was going to look like as of last year.

^{Image via JetZero}

There are no updated renders yet, but we do have a new look at the Jet1 demonstrator, now with a fancy v-tail and cool little engine fins on top. (This design change will allow takeoff with one engine out. It’s a safety change that will help the Z4 get certified.)

^{Image via JetZero}

The problem with this rendering is that it doesn’t really show the scale. It also doesn’t help explain just how far along things are in the process. So, to show us that this wasn’t just some paper dream, they rolled up a 40-year old Saab 340A to the hangar where media day was being held and flew us out to Mojave. There, Scaled Composites is building the demonstrator right now.

If you thought JetZero was strict on photographs, well, think again. I’m pretty sure the PR person out there at Scaled was thinking about tackling people if they even touched their phones. I wish I could show you photos of the two assembled cockpit sections (one for testing, the other for flight) or the massive join where those sections will be affixed to the blended wing, but all I have is some pre-approved images directly from JetZero that aren’t as recent. Here is one of the cockpits not ready for primetime:

^{Image via JetZero}

What you can’t see here is that this airplane will take up the entire hangar. It was hard to fathom how big this airplane will be before seeing the early build in person. But now? It’s even harder to believe. It is not very long, but it is incredibly wide. I cannot wait to see this fly. I’ll put this image to try to help give you a sense of scale, but it still doesn’t do it justice. If the cockpit sits where that bulbous structure is, the wing will stretch almost all the way to the far wall.

^{Image via JetZero}

The demonstrator will just have a pressurized cockpit section. Everything behind is just to show the characteristics of blended wing flying. When the testing is done, JetZero will get to keep the airframe to use for other testing purposes, but then it can focus manufacturing efforts in North Carolina on the Z4.

Right now, the Z4 progress is focused on some of the known bottlenecks in manufacturing. Apparently landing gear has a really long lead-time and is remarkably complicated, so that is well underway. Structures are also in progress, and engine selection is being reviewed. And yes, seats have started to be settled on, knowing how hard it has been to get those certified and flying.

I hate that I can only describe this and not show photos, but the amount of progress in the last year is encouraging. In-service dates are pegged in the early-2030s. That sounds quick, but as CEO Tom O’Leary said on stage, he is in the business of the “art of the possible.” This is possible if everything goes as hoped, but of course it might extend further out. That seems reasonable to me.

I look forward to doing this again next year, and I hope it is again a boring presentation simply repeating the same story over and over again.

You may have heard about the Delta pilots setting up a website to help travelers deal with disruption. This is nothing but a negotiating ploy. The contract becomes amendable later this year, and they are just starting to chirp about it. This won’t help negotiations, but it does attract a lot of media coverage which Delta management certainly doesn’t like. The hope is presumably that this will put pressure on Delta to make concessions to get a deal done. It won’t, and the reality is… I don’t care about this at all.

What I do care about is that this effort is coming from somewhere — the union isn’t making this issue up. Delta does have an operational problem. So today I’ll focus on what has been going on.

In a note from COO Dan Janki in May, the airline indicated it was happy with its on-time performance, but “we need to improve controllable cancels and IROP recovery.” I’m not sure I agree. Oh sure, it does have a problem with cancellations and irregular operations, but on-time performance has suffered as well. While there are several issues that have led to this decline, one of the hot button topics is centered around pilot availability.

A letter from Ryan Gumm, SVP Flight Operations from April, explained that trips that needed coverage saw acceptance rates plummet from 37 percent to two percent. To me, this sounds like an effort to blame labor, so I spoke with Delta’s pilots union chair Eric Criswell to get his side. Eric said they don’t have access to the dataset that Delta referred to in that latter, but he wanted to point out that the number of trips made available has jumped significantly in the last year. You would expect acceptance rates to drop in a bigger pool. From the union’s perspective, staffing is a primary concern in this whole mess.

In 2025, they say pilot demand hours increased 4.2 percent versus last year, but the actual number of pilots employed at the airline fell. Thanks to that, they also said that pilots are working on their days off at a higher rate than in the past. In a recent Chairman’s Letter from the union, it said “the Company is now hiring aggressively to address their self-imposed staffing shortfall.” The airline certainly doesn’t dispute that. It is hiring as we speak, so clearly some pilot modeling went wrong last year.

Regardless of the reason for these issues, Delta is not living up to the carefully-constructed brand image as an operational rock star over the last couple decades. Though as mentioned this isn’t just about cancellations and IROPS, let’s start with those cancellations first. As usual, I turned to Anuvu for the data.

This is where Delta used to excel the most. It almost never canceled flights back in its heyday, but now it is doing that far more often. Instead of looking at aggregate numbers, I thought it more help to compare to the industry.

Delta Completion Factor vs Industry By Month

^{Data via Anuvu, Industry includes AA/AS/B6/DL/HA/UA/WN}

Remember, a good standard is to try to complete 99 percent of flights or better, so if Delta is consistently up by 1 to 2 points on the industry as it was for years? That’s a huge difference. But it has slipped, and this year it has been downright worse than the industry overall in more than one month. Outside of April, it has not been above 99 percent in any single this year.

We’ve talked about why that might be happening, but what about on-time percentage? I don’t like what I see there either. Delta doesn’t seem concerned in its communications, but maybe it shouldn’t be…

Delta A14 % By Month

^{Data via Anuvu, Industry includes AA/AS/B6/DL/HA/UA/WN}

Delta was performing better than industry even until the end of 2024 with just a little hiccup thanks to the Crowdstrike failure at the end of July that year. But then, A14 has continued to trail off. It has rebounded after a pretty bad winter, but it is still below where it has been historically.

One of the big issues here seems to be block time. Delta was known for padding block times to improve performance, and there’s nothing wrong with that as a strategy. It certainly bought the airline massive goodwill. But that seems to have changed, and it just hasn’t given itself the block time it needs to run an on-time airline. Let’s take a look.

Delta B0 % By Month

^{Data via Anuvu, Industry includes AA/AS/B6/DL/HA/UA/WN}

As a reminder, B0 is the percentage of time that a flight operates within the allotted block time. It can run 5 hours late, but if the airline files a schedule that shows gate pushback to gate arrival is 74 minutes and the flight operates in 74 minutes or less? That counts as meeting block time.

In the chart above, you can see a marked fall-off in 2024. Delta must have lowered its block times to try to improve utilization and lower costs, and the result has been performance degradation. It has in some recent months performed worse than the industry overall.

So what is Delta doing? We’ve already talked about pilot hiring which will help bolster the reserves that are needed to cover trips, but the airline is also bulking up in crew scheduling and customer-facing agents so it can better help when things go wrong. It has also been having issues with what it calls “fleet health, so it is working with the maintenance organization to try to fix some of those gaps. There are other moves it can make around the edges as well.

What isn’t clear to me is where Delta wants to be. Is it hoping to get back to the more expensive but more reliable operation it had? Or is it ok being a little lower down the list if it saves the airline some money? Now that Delta has built a brand on operational excellence, it probably has a more complicated decision than others might.

For those who don’t know how the Metroplex is structured, You have Fort Worth to the west and Dallas to the east. When it opened, Dallas/Fort Worth was planted in the middle as an airport to serve the whole region. This was supposed to shut down commercial service at all other airports in the area, but we all know the story of Southwest and Love Field.

So, DFW became the big monster in the middle while Love Field in Dallas remained a regional operation limited, at least on larger aircraft, to flights within Texas or surrounding states. Over time those restrictions went away. The only remaining restrictions are not having a customs/immigration facility and on the total number of gates, which keeps it small and limited almost entirely to Southwest. Some of the final other restrictions have now expired.

Over time, some airlines have occasionally tried to make a go of service in Fort Worth, but it never lasted. Mesa ran flights from Meacham (FTW) to Houston/Hobby in 1997 for a couple of months. I don’t think anyone has ever tried Alliance (AFW), though it is was home to an American Airlines maintenance base.

Over time, the Metroplex has grown, as Metroplexes do… and the bulk of that growth has gone north and east. While Fort Worth may have some attractiveness to someone, it’s the wrong direction compared to where the growth is. And so steps in McKinney. The only problem? Well, see that green dot for yourself…

That’s right. Godzilla opened up a human bbq joint right between those northeastern ‘burbs and the main airports, so it’s been a real problem for residents there. After all, those town are growing fast in that direction. In 2000, McKinney had fewer than 55,000 residents. That’s approaching 250,000 today. And that’s just McKinney itself. Collin County in total has risen from just shy of 500,000 people in 2000 to about 1.3 million today. Median household income in the county has risen from $77,000 in 2000 to about $125,000 in 2024.

In short, you have a large and growing population with some money to spend and a long, perilous drive to the nearest airports. And by “long,” I mean half an hour with no traffic… which means more than half an hour but not actually all that long for someone like me who lives in the LA area.

So, McKinney decided it wanted an airport terminal. Voters shot down a bond measure in 2023, but the city decided to budget for it. And now it’s getting ready to open. Avelo was the first one to take the bait. It will start service on November 11 with B737-800s as follows:

• Fort Lauderdale and Orlando (Monday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday)
• Fort Myers (Wednesday, Saturday)
• Las Vegas and Tampa (Monday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday)

Yes, this is Avelo, so it is not flying every day on any of these, at least not to start. And Avelo is virtually unknown in the Metroplex, only having a twice weekly flight from New Haven to DFW today. Undoubtedly this is going to come with a lot of marketing money from McKinney and presumably a whole host of other incentives to be the first one in the door. Awareness and then changing behavior will be the biggest challenge.

This market does fit Avelo’s modus operandi well, but it’s just unclear if this will be enough to work. While there are similarities to what Avelo is doing in New Haven — closer to a wealthy population center where Avelo is the dominant airline — there are also real differences.

For example, from Bridgeport in Connecticut, you have to drive an hour in no traffic to get to the nearest big airport while New Haven is only 25 minutes. Traffic to the New York airports can be nightmarish with Google saying a Monday morning could be over 2 hours. From McKinney, DFW tops out at 45 minutes on a Monday morning commute.

You also don’t have the same kind of systemic delays as you do in places like JFK and LaGuardia. Sure, you get storms rolling through, but that’s different than just general congestion. It doesn’t feel like as much of a hassle when you’re looking to book a flight.

Then there’s the issue of flight frequency. People who want to go to Fort Myers will either have to take one of the twice weekly flights in each direction or they can fly American 4-5x daily. Orlando? Sure, Avelo has 5x weekly, but during peak times, American has more than 10x daily, Southwest has 8x daily, and even Frontier runs a couple daily. FRONTIER. Frequency matters.

That’s not to say this won’t work for Avelo. It clearly has looked for some of the biggest leisure markets. Though my regular data source doesn’t have the full DOT data which now includes segmenting by advance purchase, Courtney at Visual Approach keeps his own database and pulled this for me.

Dallas Metroplex % of Nonstop Tickets Purchased > 90 days in Advance

^{DOT O&D Data via Visual Approach, markets include all DAL/DFW > 150 PDEW in Q1 2026}

What you’re looking at in the chart took all markets with more than 150 daily passengers each way in Q1 2026 and then ranked them by the percent of nonstop tickets purchased more than 90 days in advance. Tickets purchased that far out are almost entirely going to be for leisure travel, so a high percentage suggests it’s a leisure market.

As you can see, the purple markets are the new options from McKinney that Avelo will fly. San Juan probably isn’t on Avelo’s initial list because of how far it is. Miami is expensive, and Salt Lake, well, that might be an opportunity at some point but that is probably more about visiting friends and relatives and less about pure leisure vacationing. The ones Avelo chose are just big vacation markets.

As mentioned, it’s not clear to me whether these will work since we’ve never seen service in McKinney before. But there are a lot of people there, and they would probably really appreciate a shorter, less painful drive to start their family vacation if they can get it. Then again, if they don’t earn those AAdvantage miles or Rapid Rewards points, will those people survive?

Predictions for the future of aviation as Cruising Altitude departs – USA Today

Zach Wichter is moving on from USA Today (best of luck, Zach!) and so he did a final column looking into the future. I gave my own take.

Airlines embrace stopover itineraries in Hawaii, Panama and beyond – Travel Weekly

Why don’t more US airlines have stopover programs the way airlines like Icelandair do? It’s just not that kind of market, I told Travel Weekly.

American AAdds Three from Chicago

Things may have cooled for a while in the Battle of Chicago between American and United, but AA is back this week adding three new routes from O’Hare including a return to Tokyo/Narita from the airport. Whether this supplements joint venture-partner JAL’s Narita service or replaces it remains to be seen.

Shockingly — or perhaps not — American has no flights from Chicago to Asia, but that will change when ORD-NRT debuts (or returns — it was last flown prior to the pandemic). The will join Dallas/Fort Worth as the two airports AA serves from NRT, along with DFW, JFK, and LAX from Tokyo/Haneda. AA will operate ORD-NRT using its fleet of B787-9 Dreamliners which include 30 business class seats in the front and 21 premium economy seats on the wrong side of the curtain. The flight will operate 1x daily, year-round.

And now, for the news you’ve really been waiting for… along with Tokyo, American will now fly from ORD to both Charlottesville (CHO) and Ontario. CHO service begins November 2 and will fly 2x daily on an E170 while Ontario will be 1x daily beginning in December on a B737. As for United? It already flies ORD to both CHO and ONT and surprise, surprise — it plans to launch ORD-NRT in October.

Avelo Goes Deep in the Heart of Texas

The Dallas metro region — or Metroplex for those in the know — is getting a third airport with scheduled service. We’ve known this was coming for a while, and we’ve also known Avelo planned to fly from it, but now the airline has actual plans, destinations, and airplanes to fly from McKinney National Airport (DTX).

The airport has been around since the ’80s for general aviation, but last summer it broke ground on a 46,000-square foot terminal to welcome airlines. The airport is supposed to be ready this fall, and with that in mind, Avelo announced five routes from DTX to inaugurate service with and it went pure leisure — Las Vegas and four destinations in Florida.

Service from McKinney on Avelo will look like this:

• Las Vegas (4x weekly begins Nov. 12)
• Fort Lauderdale (5x weekly begins Nov. 19)
• Fort Myers (2x weekly begins Nov. 11)
• Orlando (5x weekly begins Nov. 12)
• Tampa (4x weekly begins Nov. 19)

All five routes will be operating with Avelo’s fleet of B737-800s with 184 seats, although they’ll need to have room for more than 200 passengers because everything’s bigger in Texas. The question now becomes — who will follow Avelo into McKinney? Our bet is on Conviasa.

Delta’s Pilots Go on the Offensive

Delta’s pilots and their union – The Air Line Pilots Assoication — launched the curiously named website deltapilotscare.com to throw shade and innuendo at the airline on its recent operational liability (or lack thereof).

It’s a site that any political campaign would appreciate. It talks at length about how dedicated Delta pilots are to their jobs, and it suggests that any operational issues the carrier might have cannot be blamed on the flight crews. Three bullet points spell this out in detail from the page:

• Delta pilots will continue to prioritize safety – every day and on every flight.  
• We have been working on our days off in record numbers to help you get to your destination.  
• We empathize and share in your frustration over the delays, cancellations, and disrupted travel plans you experienced. We agree; it is unacceptable.  

The insinuation, of course, is that the frustration should be directed at the carrier. The site even goes on to remind customers how to complain to the DOT when things go tits up. Why now? Delta’s pilots contract becomes amendable at the end of the calendar year, and ALPA knows there’s no time like the present to ratchet things up ahead of potential negotiations.

DOT Considers Amending Fare Display Regulations

We’re about 15 years into the era where carriers are required to display an all-in price most prominently when advertising fares. That policy is potentially coming to an end as the Department of Transportation released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in which it wants to permit airlines to show individual parts of the price (airfare, taxes, fees, etc.) equally in prominence.

The government says “these proposed changes would ensure greater flexibility in how air fare is displayed while ensuring information is presented clearly to consumers…” In addition, the Department is considering a full repeal of the policy, which would permit carriers to list the cheapest base fare only and leave us to fend for ourselves when it comes to finding the actual price.

The comment period for both proposals remains open until July 31, and we’re sure the federal government would appreciate whatever thoughts any Cranky readers might have.

Korean Completes Final Hurdle in Asiana Merger

As Asiana’s days as its own brand wind down, its new overlord Korean Air received approval from South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport to complete the merger.

The merger is scheduled to complete later this year on December 17. Asiana announced its exit from Star Alliance last week as part of the transition. The transaction was first announced nearly six years ago in late 2020 and will finally wrap up later this year. In order to go through, the two carriers sought — and received — regulatory approval from 13 worldwide competition authorities.

Korean accepted a 63.88% of Asiana in the deal as opposed to a 100% takeover to help quell the concerns of competition authorities around the world, though with majority control either way, we have no idea why that matters. The largest shareholder in Hanjin Group (Korean’s parent company) is (surprise, surprise) Delta. The combo of Delta plus both of South Korea’s major carriers merged into one give the airline as close to a monopoly on the U.S. – Korea market as would be allowable.

• Air Algérie will debut its B737-8 MAX fleet later this year.
• Air Congo took delivery of its first Dreamliner as a wet lease from Ethiopian.
• Air Peace added an E175.
• American is opening a grab-and-go lounge concept at New York/JFK.
• Avianca is back in the Venezuela business.
• BA is renovating its Newark lounge. Our advice: Put it in the Hamptons.
• Finnair is still on the hunt for additional A320s. If you’ve got any available, give them a call.
• Hawaiian unveiled a rendering of its A330 decked out in oneworld livery.
• Qantas will have scores of opportunties to fly to Japan and New Zealand during its summer.
• Philippine Airlines is adding frequencies to North America.
• Riyadh Air is adding service to Kuala Lumpur and Málaga.
• Royal Jordanian is considering flying its planes really far.
• SAS announced an order for as many widebodies as can reasonably fit in all Scandinavia.
• Thai operated its first flight to Amsterdam in 28 years this week.
• United is expanding in Colombia.
• Vietjet is seeking approval to begin a domestic LCC in Australia.
• Vietnam Airlines secured a nearly $3 billion loan to purchase 50 B737-8 MAXs.
• WestJet ran a good operation in May.

Fireworks are like my jokes: everyone pretends to enjoy them, but deep down they’re waiting for them to stop.

[Disclosure: Hawaiian provided the air, hotel, transport, and meals for this event at no cost]

The event itself was a bit more muted than they had originally hoped. The oneworld-painted A330 was supposed to be unveiled, but there were delays in Singapore where the plane was being painted, so they had to sub a standard A330 instead. That being said, they did put renderings out of the new airplane, which will now likely arrive next week. I had no idea airlines had as much latitude with the livery to do as they please, but Hawaiian opted to put “Aloha a puni ka honua” under the oneworld name, which means “Aloha around the world.”

^{Rendering via Hawaiian Airlines}

Itʻs a nice sentiment and also a reflection of the fact that Hawaiian and parent Alaska take the dual-brand and its importance very seriously. And it was on that topic that I spent a good chunk of my conversation with Diana that afternoon.

^{Hawaiian CEO Diana Birkett Rakow at oneworld joining ceremony}

I have heard from many of you who are skeptical that the Hawaiian brand will stick around. Iʻm not in that group, but I pushed on the question. What is to stop Alaska from cutting costs and ditching the brand?

The Hawaiian Brand Is Staying.

She just couldn’t even fathom the idea of that happening. The plan is that “both brands exist in perpetuity as strong, distinct brands… and what you have to believe is what we believed going into this, which is each brand on its own has incredible value.”

But what if cost cuts become necessary? Is this not on the table? She didn’t flinch by sayng, “it’s just our new business model. It’s not like network decisions. We don’t redo our business model every season or every schedule or every year. It’s just who we have chosen to be, and we’re growing our way into it. But that’s the brand strategy, the business strategy.”

You may think this sounds like lip service, so I kept pushing. Couldn’t the Alaska brand still be well-respected and successful here? Isn’t it what you make of the brand?

The Alaska brand is one that’s respected here, and that’s fantastic. I think it is credit to Daniel [Chun, Alaska’s Managing Director, Hawai‘i Public Affairs & Sales from before the merger], and we have a board member from Hawaiʻi who still lives here. But that sort of reminded us and taught us the right way to do business in Hawaiʻi, that’s different than being local. Hawaiian is local.

Diana certainly believes this, as do I, but I know some of you still don’t. I think part of the reason people out there question the commitment to the brand is because the final plan hasn’t been fully determined. It is a work in progress. Diana admitted for the first time that not every flight that touches Hawaiʻi will be on Hawaiian. The operational complexity makes that too challenging. A “significant majority” of flights will be on Hawaiian, but there are seasonal variations, and they don’t want to completely isolate the fleets when the opportunity is there to get better utilization in the combined operation.

Fleet Decisions are Coming Soon

That brought me to the question about the fleet. Diana was tight-lipped on what would happen, saying a decision is coming. The one thing we do know is that the A330s will stay Honolulu-based, will be retrofitted with a new interior, and will be Hawaiian-branded. No decision has been made on the A321neo fleet yet, but she did make it clear that the overall fleet at Hawaiian will need to be bigger than pre-merger since most of those Alaska flights will become Hawaiian.

Though she wouldn’t confirm, my sense was that they either need to decide to keep the A321neos and grow that fleet, or they will decide to eventually retire those and create Hawaiian-branded B737s for mainland flying. Even though I came up empty-handed on that point, I was assured that a decision is coming soon.

What is clear, and what was echoed by the very senior flight attendants who flew me home, is that a lot of change has already hit the airline which moved at a very different pace prior to the merger. Nobody was complaining about this, but they are all trying to digest this rapid change while steeling themselves for more.

Why Healthcare Made Diana a Perfect Fit

With that background on the importance of the local brand, Diana may seem like a strange choice to run Hawaiian. After all, she has no prior connection to Hawaiʻi. Apparently Alaska CEO Ben Minicucci saw something in her and asked her to step in when Joe Sprague retired as planned. So what was it?

She jokingly said that her last role also followed Joe Sprague, so she just keeps following him. But in reality, her prior experience was directly relevant. Diana spent 20 years in healthcare at Group Health in the Pacific Northwest. According to her — and some of you locals can confirm in the comments — this company was very well-liked, but then they sold to Kaiser. She had to work through this merger which kept the brand going, similar to how Alaska came in to take over Hawaiian. In that case, she was on the other side, working at the company being acquired. That made her a good fit for Hawaiian.

Diana is not an avgeek, and she’s not an ops person, so she definitely had a steeper learning curve to take on this role. But when I asked her about the airline’s recent operational troubles, she was able to speak about it authoritatively. She understands the importance of a company that plays a critical role in the community, and she spoke about the emotional ties to the brand. She may not be from there, but she gets it. And she didn’t have to wait long for a big test.

The Interisland Operation: Trial by Fire

In the interisland market, Hawaiian has fallen from having near 90 percent of flights arriving within 14 minutes down under 80 percent since December. March was even below 70 percent. Diana said there have been several problems. First, in the winter, there was a series of Kona lows that brought a lot of rain and bad weather that snarled the operation. There also was some adjustment required when they switched over to using the single Alaska operating processes. That I understand, but why did the poor numbers continue through May?

The other two issues are tougher to fix. One, the B717s have really started to show their age over the last 3 years or so, needing more maintenance and downtime than they used to. On top of that, there was an additional aircraft down for maintenance that helped create something of a perfect storm.

I asked if the airline might consider acquiring some retiring Delta B717s as a temporary stopgap until there is a new fleet, but she made it sound like that was highly unlikely. More likely, they will press A321s into interisland service if needed, as they’ve done a little over the last few months. They will just need to do a better job of scheduling the fleet in the new reality, and those fixes are already in place. I’m sure it was a relief to many in the islands when June performance bounced back to about 84 percent, the best performance since November.

Though there are still big decisions to be made, I couldn’t help but get the feeling that things are moving at a rapid pace. It is a challenging time for everyone, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Everyone just keeps pushing ahead in the newfound quest to bring aloha a puni ka honua.

Delta will operate twice daily on the following schedule:

• LAX 7:40am Newark 4:15pm
• LAX 9:25pm Newark 6:00am (next day)

• Newark 7:30am LAX 11:05am
• Newark 5:25pm LAX 9:00pm

All flights will be on the A321neo, and no, these aren’t the fancy ones with a million temporary First Class seats awaiting flat beds. These are in the standard configuration with 20 domestic First Class seats, 60 in Delta Comfort+, and 114 in coach.

Newark, if you aren’t aware, lies about 30 road miles to the west of New York’s JFK airport. JFK, of course, is a big Delta hub, and Delta already flies from there to LAX 11 times a day in the current spring schedule. So… why?

Well, you don’t read this blog unless you know something about this industry, so you probably already have your suspicions. Plenty of others who write about this have already speculated this is a warning shot aimed at United. United, after all, flies LAX to Newark 11 times a day, but other than a brief stint during the pandemic, it hasn’t flown LAX to JFK since 2015 when it left. Now, however, United has its growing Blue Sky partnership with JetBlue, and it plans to get back into the LAX – JFK market soon enough.

So, sure, Delta may very well be sending United a message that it should stay on its own side of the Hudson, but I’m not convinced that this is the entire reason. I don’t even believe this is the primary reason. It may very well just be a fun side effect.

I recently wrote about how now is a good time for Delta to try to make gains in LA. And the reality is that Newark is a big market from LAX. Without being asked, Delta sent out an email with this quote from Scott Santoro, the airline’s VP of Los Angeles and Sales-West.

Los Angeles plays a central role in Delta’s network, and this new nonstop service to Newark reflects our commitment to connecting customers across key business markets. From our state-of-the-art Terminal 3 at LAX to our industry-leading Delta Sky Clubs and the Delta One Lounge, we’re continuing to invest in a premium, seamless travel experience. By offering twice-daily flights on our Airbus A321neo, we’re delivering more choice, comfort and reliable connectivity between the East and West Coasts.

There’s a lot of fluff in there, but it does confirm — as you would assume — that this is about Los Angeles and not New York or Newark. It also says that this is about connecting customers in key business markets.

A lot of people on the West Coast think of Newark and JFK as both being gateways into Manhattan, but it’s more complicated than that. That is definitely the case, don’t get me wrong. But they also have their own catchment areas in the other direction. For Newark, that involves the vast northern New Jersey market.

We don’t need to do a full analysis, but just look at this map. There are 12 New Jersey-based Fortune 500 companies that would use Newark as their primary airport. There’s no chance they’re all driving over to JFK. They’re flying United.

^{Map via Claude}

Does the addition of two new flights on Delta to LAX change that reality? Absolutely not. But what about those Delta loyalists who need to go do business with these and all sorts of other companies? This will serve those people. It makes it easier for Angelenos to give all of their business to Delta.

Just look at the this chart we put in Cranky Network Weekly this past week:

Delta recently started serving Chicago from LAX. Now it has Newark. That means it serves all the top 20 destination airports from LAX except for Philly which is much further down the list… for now.

Of course, Chicago is different in that Delta doesn’t fly to any other airport in the region nonstop from LAX today. With Newark, it already has JFK. A lot of those people flying to Newark now are just going to New York but prefer (mostly) United. Delta won’t recapture that traffic. But it does let Delta woo those who fly to Newark because they need to be in New Jersey. I’m not sure how big that market is compared to the total Newark market, but it’s probably bigger than Philly.

This is what I assume is the primary justification for starting up this flight. That being said, do I think it’s going to make Delta money? I suppose it’s hard to say without having visibility into Delta’s corporate contracts. If this enables Delta to score a commitment from a big account and pull it away from United, well, it’ll probably pay for itself. Most likely this is not going to make Delta money directly, but it is the kind of investment that helps Delta to position itself.

• May 2026 ​was our second-best May ​for arrival ​performance (A-0) in the ​past ​decade.
• The only ​stronger ​May ​was May ​2023, but May 2026 ​had 23% ​more departures ​than 2023.
• May 29 was our best single ​day ​summer ​performance in the ​history ​of our ​airline.
• Our ​May ​[Net Promoter Score] was better ​than ​the ​past two years.
• May ​was our best May ​for [Mishandled Baggage Rate (MBR)]. DOT reporting ​for April MBR ​(the latest ​reporting) ​has ​American in 6th place ​(Page 35) with ​a YTD ranking also ​showing ​improvement.

But not all is well in reality. Today I want to zoom in on some of the painpoints that came out of my digging through Anuvu operational performance data. I have four charts to help drive this discussion.

Overall, American has been doing ok compared to the other big airlines. No, it isn’t going to win any gold medals, but it was at least doing better than JetBlue in most months even if it was trailing the other big airlines. But now, it’s summer, and things have not been going well. For June through the 24th of the month, American had 70.0 percent of flights arrive within 14 minutes of schedule. Only Southwest was lower at a dismal 64.6 percent, but Southwest made a tradeoff of canceling less. It completed 99.3 percent of flights while American only completed 96.2 percent.

You’ll remember American made noise by rescheduling Dallas/Fort Worth and Philly to improve the operation, but I don’t see much of that in the high-level data. Maybe the storms are snarling too much, but you’d have hoped to see something look better here despite American apparently being pleased with its progress.

There has been plenty of focus on DFW and, of course, O’Hare which is bursting at the seams, but the biggest problem child may very well be a dark horse… Washington/National (DCA).

American DCA Departures vs AA System

^{data via Anuvu}

This chart shows B0 and A14 for American’s DCA departures compared to the whole system. Let’s talk about exactly what you’re seeing.

A14 means arrivals within 14 minutes of schedule, and as you can see, it has been on a steady downward slope compared to the system for years now. That huge downward spike you see in early 2025 is after the accident of American 5342 and the airport remained in operational flux for awhile, which I’d expect. But it has remained well below the rest of the system since then.

Part of the issue may be B0, which means the percent of time that flights operate within their scheduled block time. So, it could depart 10 hours late, but if the flight is supposed to take 94 minutes from gate to gate and it completes the flight within that time, it counts in B0. What we see here is that American has not met system B0 average from DCA since 2024 except for a brief stint earlier this year. With some of the retiming the airline did recently, you’d think DCA could get up to system level this summer, but it’s not looking good.

DCA is a problem child right now. And then there’s Chicago/O’Hare (ORD).

American ORD Departures vs United

^{data via Anuvu}

With the dramatic ramp-up of service at ORD between United and American, I’ve been watching this market quite closely. And I sliced and diced this a bunch of different ways. In the end, I decided to go with a more zoomed-in look going back only to April 1 of this year.

This chart shows A14, arrivals within 14 minutes of schedule, for all ORD departures. What we see is that up until the FAA restrictions on capacity went into place, American was actually outperforming United. But then, June arrived, and American has had a very ugly month. It is consistently worse than United right now, and sometimes by a lot. The real takeaway here seems to be that at least recently, United is much better at recovering from a mass weather disruption than American is. You can see it in here clearly that often when the A14 rates tank, United is quicker to get back to where it was.

Now, we have to look at DFW, don’t we? After all, it’s DFW that has received the bulk of the focus from American when the new structure went into place in April… along with the bulk of the weather lately.

American DFW Operational Stats

^{data via Anuvu}

Here I decided to use a different metric, D0 which is departures that leave the gate on-time or earlier. I figure that with this new bank structure, things should run more smoothly with less traffic throughout the day, so D0 should rise. It did not. Remember, the new structure went into place in April, and it has been only downhill from there. Maybe it’s weather, and things actually are better will all else being equal… or maybe not. Here’s how American talks about the weather lately:

June ​has been challenging with ​weather, but ​even with ​that, the progress ​is clear. For ​some perspective, ​we’ve had more ​of our ​most ​severe ​events at our hubs ​so far this June than any ​other full month ​in our history. Despite ​very challenging ​weather at our largest ​hubs, ​we ​are seeing improved arrival ​performance ​year-over-year.

I also have B0 in here so you can see that these new block times may have improved performance versus last spring, but it’s not better than it had been in winter.

Lastly, I put TXO which is taxi-out time. This is how long it takes for planes to get from the gate to the runway. This is no different compared to last year, and it’s slightly higher than in the winter. This is somewhat puzzling to me. If you have fewer airplanes in concentrated banks, you would think your taxi-out times would drop. But that wasn’t the case.

Lastly, let’s move on to the land where weather disruptions almost never happen… Los Angeles (LAX).

American LAX Ops vs Delta/United

^{data via Anuvu}

Once again I took A14 rates here, but I’m comparing the big three at the airport, American, Delta, and United. Right up until the end of 2024, American was right in the mix on performance, but then something changed. It has now fallen well below both Delta and United. What is going on?

Yes, there is construction at the airport and that has been particularly focused on American’s terminals. But that isn’t a good excuse. It’s not like American didn’t know it had construction going on. It needs to schedule differently if this is a construction issue. Or perhaps this is a problem with how the rest of the system is impacting the airline in LAX. That dip in June would suggest that might be the case to some extent. That could be due to too many aircraft routing through too many hubs and impacting the entire operation. I haven’t done that deep analysis.

Overall what this looks like is an airline that isn’t preparing itself as well for disruptions as others are, and then it’s also not as good at recovering when things do go wrong. This doesn’t even take into account tech and customer service and all of that. This is just me looking for themes in the data.

Like I said, American isn’t running a terrible operation, and it seems almost giddy with how things are going. But after all these years, there is still a lot it should do better.

This week’s episode of The Air Show is live, and if you’ve been reading the blog this week, you might not be surprised to hear we’re taking a deeper look at the Hawaiian interisland market. Jon tells us more about this discussion with Alaska’s incoming President Shane Tackett, and we look back at how this market developed over the last 100 years. (Though yes, Jon makes me speed the history lesson along….)

The Air Show

A podcast about the business of the sky

Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts

Avelo Adds Six

Avelo is back it, throwing darts at a map of the eastern United States to decide its newest routes. The carrier will be growing its presnce to three vacationing hotspots: Puerto Rico, Florida, and…Houston.

From both its New Haven home and Lakeland, FL, the carrier will begin serving Aguadilla on Puerto Rico’s northwest coast. Both routes will operate 2x weekly, with LAL beginning November 18 and New Haven a day later on the 19th. Not surprisingly, Avelo will find itself as the only carrier on both routes.

From Concord, NC or as Avelo calls it, “Charlotte,” the airline will add flights to three Florida destinations. Fort Myers will begin November 19, operating 2x weekly, Orlando will begin November 18 operating 4x weekly, and lastly, Tampa will begin November 20 at 2x weekly. Lastly, Avelo will add a new airport to its map, with Houston/IAH joining the fray on September 21. IAH flights will operate 2x weekly from New Haven. While IAH is a new airport for the carrier, Houston is not a new city — Avelo currently serves Hobby from New Haven, but the service will conclude on September 20.

Alaska Cuts Capacity to Mexico

Alaska Airlines is drawing back some service to Mexico in an effort to boost its presence in Hawai’i. This is a prudent move for the carrier, but one has to wonder if there is a Hawaiian-based airline that’s operated in the islands for decades that it could partner with — or merge with — to grow its Hawaiian operation. We’ll never know.

Five seasonal routes will not return for Alaska:

• Las Vegas: Puerto Vallarta, Los Cabos
• Los Angeles: Cancún
• San Francisco: Cancún, Loreto

Four of the routes were previously scheduled to resume in November, with SFO-LTO to follow at the start of darkest winter in January. Despite the loss of service, the carrier is maintaining service to all four airports from other U.S. cities.

Breeze Adds Three Cities

Breeze Airways added three new destinations to its route map this week: Baltimore, Dayton, and Trenton. The airline will connect these three cities to its east coast network while also beefing up service to other spots.

In Baltimore, the carrier is entering slowly and strategically, only offering initial service to two cities often confused for each other, Burlington and Vero Beach, instead of challenging Southwest directly from one of its fortress hubs intentional connecting opportunities. In Dayton, the focus is very clearly beefing up service for Florida residents to visit Central Ohio — a huge untapped market — as the airline added non-stop service to Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, and Raleigh-Durham along with connecting service to Sarasota.

As for Trenton, Breeze will be the third airline at the airport and it will offer non-stop service to Charleston (SC), Fort Myers, and Vero Beach with connecting service to Fort Lauderdale.

Other new routes for Breeze include Atlantic City – Vero Beach (finally), Provo – Raleigh-Durham, and Madison – Fort Myers. Every new route will operate 2x weekly except for the two from BWI which will fly 3x weekly.

For more on Breeze’s latest expansion, see this week’s Cranky Flier post.

Atlanta to Finally Get Delta One Lounge…Eventually

When Delta opened its first round of Delta One lounges in Boston, Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle they opened quickly after being announced, and surely Delta will do the same at its home airport of Atlanta…right? Well, no. Delta will open a D1 lounge in Atlanta, but if you’re preparing to wait in line outside the entrance, you’re gonna be there a while, as the lounge is currently slated to open in 2029…or 2030.

The airline will be adding a 39,000-square foot lounge in Concourse E, one of Delta’s two (primarily) international concourses at ATL. At that size, the ATL lounge will be Delta’s second largest D1 lounge, just behind New York/JFK. The airline is going to be starting from scratch on this lounge, not repurposing an already-existing space, which is why the timeline is so drawn out. The carrier says it’ll take 30 months to build the lounge which puts us in early 2029, and if we know anything about construction at airports, that probably means 2030.

On the bright side, that gives Delta plenty of time to backfill its Biscoff stock prior to the opening of the lounge. While a line isn’t quite yet forming outside what will be the entrance, you can rest assured that Atlanta-based VIT (very important travelers) and Medallions of all colors are working up their complaints to the lounge agents when their first class ticket to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Latin America doesn’t give them access as the flight isn’t operated with a D1 cabin. Should be great.

FAA Extends Slot Waiver…Again

The FAA extended slot relief at the three airports still living under level 1 slot rules: New York/JFK, New York/LGA, and Washington/National. The broader operating caps at JFK and LGA now run through late October 2028, while the slot-usage relief at JFK, LGA, and DCA runs through late 2027. When asked to comment about the news, the LGA rats said “not our problem, we don’t live there anymore. If the FAA wants to cap bus departures at the Port Authority, then we’ll talk.”

At JFK, the cap remains 81 scheduled takeoffs and landings per hour during slot-controlled hours which are 6 a.m. through 10:59 p.m., leaving the 2 a.m. hour wide open for anyone who wants to build the world’s least convenient hub bank. Generally, carriers are required to use least 80% of their slots or risk losing them under the “use it or lose it” rule. But for now, airlines can continue to fly 10% fewer flights and still keep the slots, which is great news for anyone whose core competency has become not operating.

“Hey, there’s one thing we’re in compliance with…reduced operations!” said the four skeletons left behind at Spirit’s Miramar offices to wind down the carrier.

So now the race is on: which happens first: the New York slot waiver finally ends, or ATL’s Delta One lounge opens?

• Air France is pulling out of Mali.
• Asiana will bid 안녕히 가세요 to Star Alliance at the stroke of midnight on December 17.
• BA has a new codeshare partner and it’s Porter Airlines.
• Cargolux is buying four B747-400 freighters from China Airlines.
• China Eastern is is placing a big order from Airbus.
• Delta had its day in court Tuesday with the DOT with regards to its JV with Aeromexico. The carrier is also taking direct aim at United as it prepares to launch 2x daily LAX-EWR service in the spring.
• easyJet is rejecting Castlelake’s £4.74 billion hostile takeover.
• French Bee will begin buzzing around Malé and Colombo this December from Paris/Orly.
• JetSMART is investing $550 million with the intent to grow its fleet.
• JSX is adding service between Oakland and Santa Monica that will operate up to 3x daily.
• Korean and its JV partner Delta are expanding the Remote Baggage Screenings that allow passengers to skip claiming and rechecking bags to include flights from ICN to Los Angeles and Seattle. The program now covers flights on DL/KE from ICN to Atlanta, Detroit, and Minneapolis/St Paul in addition to LAX and SEA.
• Malaysia and Singapore Airlines launched their strategic partnership.
• National Jet Express added a 13th Q400 to its fleet, giving it 21 aircraft total.
• Norse Atlantic is adding to its already beefy service to Thailand.
• Qatar added two positions on its executive team.
• SAS is expected to add to its long-haul fleet.
• Singapore‘s CEO role pays well.
• Southwest‘s first aircraft with Starlink entered revenue service. The internet access was assigned Seat 29C and paid for two checked bags.
• SWISS is extending the suspension on its service to Dubai through October 24.
• Syria Airlines plans to resume Amsterdam service next month.
• Thai received its first Dreamliner with GE engines. We assume previous Dreamliners delivered to the carrier had engines also but cannot confirm.
• t’way Air s’ecured a $71 million cash infusion.
• United operated its first widebody revenue flight with Starlink earlier this week.
• Vietnam Airlines is receiving $2.9 billion in financing from the U.S. Export-Import Bank for future aircraft acquisition.
• WestJet has a new Toronto Blue Jays themed aircraft.

Who invented King Arthur’s round table?

Sir Cumference.

This week we learned about the launch of 11 new routes starting between late September and early January:

• Atlantic City: Vero Beach
• Baltimore: Burlington (VT), Vero Beach
• Dayton: Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Raleigh/Durham
• Madison: Fort Myers
• Provo: Raleigh/Durham
• Trenton: Charleston (SC), Fort Myers, Vero Beach

If you think it looks like someone threw darts to pick these routes, well, that’s because that’s exactly how it looks. But that is also how every Breeze announcement appears. That being said, there is always some method to the madness. And in this case, I can make some guesses about what’s happening.

This time around, the airline will launch three new cities: Baltimore, Dayton, and Trenton, also known by scholars of contemporary American history as “completely unrelated cities.” I guess that’s not entirely true. You could look at all of these as secondary airports, but they are still rather different from each other.

Baltimore, of course, is a big airport that serves the biggish city of Baltimore. It just so happens that it is also a secondary airport for Washington, DC… and a huge Southwest base. These routes to Burlington and Vero Beach seem carefully chosen. After all, Southwest doesn’t serve either of those airports at all, so the risk of Southwest entering is low.

The bustling Baltimore – Burlington corridor hasn’t been served since 2008 when AirTran gave it a go. It lasted 16 months. BWI may serve as a secondary airport to Washington, DC but in this case it’s not about that since American and United both fly it 3-4 times a day from National and Dulles respectively. Perhaps those who just really want a cheap seat will make the drive, but I’d imagine this is more for Marylanders who are looking to do some fall leaf peeping and winter skiing. Perhaps more importantly, Burlington just applied for a Small Community Air Service Development Program (SCASDP) to support Breeze service to Myrtle Beach or Savannah. Maybe this is a thank you note for trying.

Vero Beach is a different story. Breeze already serves the route twice weekly from Dulles and has since 2024. It doubles that to four weekly this fall. But Breeze also flies to Vero Beach from eight airports before today’s announcement. Now it’ll be up to 11 with the addition of not only Baltimore but also Trenton and Atlantic City. (You aren’t the only one who would like to see the crowd boarding those flights.)

Vero Beach has been Breeze’s market to discover. Until last December when JetBlue started one daily to both Boston and New York/JFK, no other airline was in the market. Then starting in February of this year, American began a daily flight to Charlotte and will fly weekly from Philly in the upcoming winter. This just looks like a rare untapped Florida market that Breeze realized works, especially on its smaller aircraft. It will keep growing until things stop working.

Dayton is not getting Vero Beach service, but it will be getting a duo of sun destinations along with service to Breeze’s growing Raleigh/Durham base. This is actually an interesting market. AirTran used to love it for being close to Cincinnati… but also cheap. Southwest inherited that but eventually moved its operation to Cincinnati. To this day, Delta only serves Atlanta. Nobody serves Florida except for Allegiant which has surprisingly limited operations with a couple weekly flights during peak season to Orlando/Sanford, Punta Gorda, and St Petersburg along with Myrtle Beach in summer. I assume that Allegiant’s base in Cincinnati makes Dayton an afterthought.

With that, it certainly seems sensible that Dayton would be a decent opportunity for Breeze. And Breeze is willing to do more. Dayton applied for a SCASDP grant of its own to help fund the start of a flight to Vegas on Breeze. Maybe this is another thank you note… but it’s still a move I like.

Trenton, however, is possibly the most interesting of all. This is Frontier territory and has been for years. The only other airline in the market is Allegiant which just entered this year with a couple weekly flights to Fort Lauderdale, Orlando/Sanford, Punta Gorda, and St Pete. But the reason Allegiant probably felt comfortable moving in is because Frontier has scaled way back.

Looking back as recently as 2024, Frontier flew to eight cities with more than eight daily flights during peak season. This past winter, however, it only flew to Orlando and Tampa except for a handful of spring break-only flights to other spots. That is a big drawdown, which I assume we can attribute to Frontier’s ever-growing gauge. That leaves some markets behind. And when that happens, Breeze sees an opportunity with its smaller airplanes. Frontier hasn’t filed its winter schedules yet for next year, but Breeze doesn’t seem concerned. Then again, it’s not even trying to fly routes that Frontier would likely fly anyway.

Breeze continues to be a very unique airline. It’s hard to believe that these are all markets with opportunities for profit, but we don’t have the most current data on the airline. We do know that it seems to be getting closer and closer (you know, excluding the fuel cost run-up). And with these three new cities, Breeze is up to more than 85 airports systemwide. To put it into perspective, that’s almost as many as Frontier, though Breeze’s frequency tends to be about half what Frontier flies in a city.

All I can do know is root for a rumored IPO for Breeze to come sooner rather than later. Then we’ll get some real financials to sink our teeth into and find out just how well this airline is doing.

Southwest started flying interisland in April of 2019 with the B737-800, but that was always a stopgap until the MAXs were an option. The first MAX went on interisland flying in June 2021, and the last -800 flew in April 2022. It’s been all MAX since that time.

Southwest peaked its operation in summer of 2023 with 64 daily interisland flights, less than half what Hawaiian was doing but with a bigger airplane. Starting in April 2025, Southwest cut its operation in the state, and that saw peak day departures drop to 50. It has stayed there pretty much ever since.

The Southwest and the Hawaiian networks are almost identical. Both airlines fly from Honolulu to Līhuʻe, Kahului, Kona, and Hilo. They also both fly from Kahului to Kona and Līhuʻe. Hawaiian alone flies Kahului to Hilo along with Kona to Līhuʻe, but those arenʻt very frequent with the former operating 6x weekly this summer and the latter 1x daily. Overall, Hawaiian just has a lot more flights than Southwest on each route. For example, on the key Honolulu – Kahului route, Hawaiian has 19 daily compared to Southwestʻs eight.

Despite the differences, thereʻs enough similarity here to make looking at Southwestʻs structure useful for how Hawaiian could consider a similar model. For this, I took a look at Friday, June 19 for more detail.

That day, Southwest had 14 different aircraft operating the 50 flights. But itʻs how they flow thatʻs most interesting. Thanks to Claude’s design work, here is how it looks.

^{Data via Cirium}

We have some airplanes like N8775Q and N8728Q that just fly around the islands all day long. Others come in from the mainland and then do some interisland flying while some start interisland and then head off to the mainland. But even those that fly around the islands all day donʻt stay for long.

In this group, of the airplanes starting their day in the islands, two arrived on June 16, two on June 17, and three on June 18. Of those that stay in the islands at the end of their day, all were scheduled to fly back on June 20 with one exception.

N8790Q looks to be an operational spare that sits in Honolulu. It was pressed into service on the 19th, but it hadnʻt flown before that since June 16. Iʻm not sure how long the airplane stays in Honolulu, but it will rotate back into the mainland once its tour of duty as a spare is over. Another aircraft will take its place.

This kind of flying is good for these airplanes, especially for the engines on these B737 MAXs which need more time between flights than any older engine. Putting them on a mix of long and short flights means that the cycle counts donʻt climb too high, and they donʻt face that same operational stress that dedicated interisland aircraft deal with for lengthy periods of time.

Could Hawaiian be interested in this model? Itʻs entirely possible, as I suggested yesterday. After all, on June 19, Alaska already had many B737s flying into the islands.

• B737-800: SAN-OGG, SEA-LIH, SFO-KOA
• B737-8 MAX: BUR-HNL, PDX-LIH, SAN-LIH, SEA-LIH, SFO-LIH, SLC-HNL
• B737-900ER: SEA-KOA
• B737-9 MAX: ANC-HNL, LAX-HNL, ONT-HNL, PDX-OGG/KOA, SAN-HNL/KOA/OGG, SEA-OGG/HNL/KOA, SJC-KOA

Some of these routes have operational issues with shorter runways, like Burbank and Līhuʻe. Other markets just arenʻt all that big, like Salt Lake to Honolulu. And remember, this is summer. In winter when demand is lower, a smaller B737 starts to look more attractive for the income statement on more routes.

This seems like a good way to run your fleet, but only if you donʻt need a different interior configuration — as talked about yesterday — and youʻre okay with the additional maintenance headaches that come with older aircraft. Were it not for those, Iʻd say this would be an easy decision to emulate Southwest. But there are a lot of ways to skin this cat, and Hawaiian management is going to have to evaluate them all before making a final decision.

But first, let’s forget about those challenges and bask in the glow of AI. Gemini put this bad boy together for me.

Sure, it’s not perfect. The flower in Pualani’s hair looks rather suspect, but come on, still fun to envision this in the 1980s-era livery. Not feeling it? Ok, let’s update it with the airline’s current look.

That looks great on this airplane. But enough fluff, let’s talk about what really matters here. This is going to be a change in how Hawaiian operates.

Today, the B717 has 8 seats up front and 120 in coach. These airplanes work very hard. With a fleet of 18, Hawaiian puts together a schedule with up to about 150 daily departures within the islands. Yes, that’s more than 8 flights per aircraft per day on those peak days, and often not every airplane is flying. (Two of them haven’t flown in a couple months.)

These airplanes are uniquely good at doing this work. The old Douglas-designed airplanes are tanks that could technically fly forever, and the unique Rolls/BMW jointly-designed engines are excellent at quick turnarounds. For newer engines, that isn’t the case. They take longer to spool up and cool down, and there needs to be more time in between flights. The B717 is just the ultimate rock star in this very specific use case.

But alas, that airplane hasn’t been built in 20 years, and while they can keep these going for a few more years, the end is near. Of the 156 B717 aircraft built between 1998 and 2006, 95 are still active. Hawaiian has 18 while Delta has 77. That’s it. Now, could Hawaiian try to acquire some airframes from Delta to extend the life? Yeah, since those Delta airframes undoubtedly have fewer cycles than the Hawaiian ones do. But that would just be a bandage. The airline will need a replacement sometime, so it might as well rip that bandage off when its current fleet hits its limits.

Now, the B737-800 is a much bigger airplane. Today, Alaska has 16 seats up front, 30 in premium class, and 115 in the back for a total of 161 on its retrofitted airplanes. It has just shy of 60 airplanes in the fleet built between 2005 and 2012. These aren’t spring chickens, but they certainly do not have the huge number of cycles that the Hawaiian B717s have. This feels like it would be an interim replacement instead of a long-term solution, but maybe that’s ok. After all, Alaska already has these airplanes, and it is rapidly taking delivery of new MAX aircraft. These airplanes will be easy enough to slide into the interisland market by the time the B717s are done.

But how exactly will Alaska do this? Will it follow the Southwest model of flowing airplanes from the mainland? Or will it use a dedicated fleet as it does with the B717 today? Shane has opinions on this as well.

They’ll be branded Hawaiian, they’ll be based in the islands. It could take us five years to get there, but that would be my expectation.

Well I’m not surprised they would be branded Hawaiian, of course. And based in the islands? Yes, that makes sense as well. But this doesn’t tell us whether or not the airplanes will ever leave the islands. Several things will probably go into that decision.

Most importantly, what does Hawaiian want to do with that interior? The flights within the islands are very, very short with no flight taking more than 45 minutes in the air. They do need a small first class cabin, but they don’t need a lot of extra legroom seats. They also can go with lower pitch in regular coach. From that perspective, it would make a lot of sense to outfit these airplanes in a dense configuration that would work better in the interisland market.

On the other hand, does Hawaiian really need more than 161 seats when it has far less today? Flight frequency is really important in the islands. There might be an opportunity to trim some flying but with no other option to get between cities, frequency can’t go dramatically lower. So maybe Hawaiian would be ok keeping airplanes in a more generous configuration. If they did that, they could rotate them to mainland destinations as well.

That might be nice to have a smaller airplane then the current Hawaiian A321neo fleet going to the mainland, but there is a downside. These are older airplanes, and they don’t have the legs of the MAX fleet which can handle this with ease. Yes, the -800s fly to the islands today, but as they age even more, this is likely going to become less attractive. Maintenance will also be an issue on aging aircraft, but you’d want a small airplane like this to go to an outstation like Burbank, not a hub where maintenance is easier.

To really understand this better, I have been looking at the way Southwest routes its airplanes between the mainland and the the interisland market. I’ll look at that tomorrow. But suffice it to say that I’m skeptical these airplanes would leave the islands once they get that Hawaiian coat of paint on them.

That, of course, is if this actually comes to fruition. Shane was clear this was not a done deal.

A new airline is coming to Cleveland. Here’s what travelers should know – Cleveland.com

Imagine you aren’t familiar with Avelo, but they come to your town for the first time. How do you describe the airline? I spoke with the Cleveland paper to explain that this is truly basic air transportation. And though nobody is going to turn them away, this isn’t about finding travelers in Cleveland. It’s about bringing passengers in Avelo’s bases to The Land.

I know it’s been spotty this month with travel schedules, but we are back into a regular cadence after this week. (We are taking July 4th week off however.) This week, Brian and Jon regale me with their stories from the IATA annual general meeting. There was talk about who is on the list for a couple of CEO jobs, why sprinting on the beach matters, and what makes Jon smile more than anything. It’s an action-packed half hour.

ALSO, one thing I don’t love about podcasting is that it’s a one way medium. So, if you want to join the discussion, we’re taking it to LinkedIn. Follow our page and then participate every time we post a new episode.

The Air Show

A podcast about the business of the sky

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JetBlue Reduces at EWR, LGA, Grows FLL Again

JetBlue Airways with its significant presence at New York/JFK has been drawing back at NYC’s other two airports — New York/LGA and Newark — and instead focusing on warmer climes. The carrier, which is fighting a mountain of debt, is looking to put airplanes where they can actually make more money while also reducing costs.

As part of the drawdown, the carrier will close its flight attendant base at Newark and its maintenance bases at both airports. This comes after the carrier stopped flying Newark – Las Vegas last week and will axe its LAX service from Newark on January 4, at least seasonally. Both routes will continue to be served by B6’s BlueSky partner United during the off-season. No staff will lose their jobs with the closures as the carrier will offer transfers to all who want to follow their grandparents down to Florida.

Along with grandparents, those airplanes have been moving south where the news is better. The carrier will add to its growing flights from Fort Lauderdale by resuming service in November to San Diego. This minty-fresh equipped flight will operate 1x daily. It also plans to up its minty-fresh airplanes on flights from FLL to both Los Angeles and San Francisco, with as many as 8x daily on tap for FLL-LAX and 3x daily to SFO.

The Sun Will Come Up Tomorrow, Bet your Bottom Australian Dollar On It

After several announcements, press releases, delays, retractions, and general consternation, Qantas finally announced Project Sunrise will debut (unless it doesn’t) in October 2027. That’s a long time from now, and a lot could put the project off track in the next 16 months, but this is the most definitive step Qantas has taken towards launching Project Sunrise since the idea was first kicked around.

Non-stop service from Sydney to London/Heathrow begins in October ’27, with flights going on-sale in February. The 20+ hour flight will be operated by a premium-heavy A350-1000ULR. Both Airbus and Qantas will tell you the ULR stands for “ultra long-haul” while we know the truth, as it actually stands for “Unbelievably Long Ride.” The aircraft will feature six first class seats for the passengers who will arrive somewhat sane, 52 in biz for those who will survive the journey, 40 premium economy seats for those who are moderately sadistic, and 140 seats for the SICKOs in the back.

SYD-JFK service is expected to launch shortly after SYD-LHR does, with the carrier wanting to see what the carnage is in the economy section before expanding. SYD-LHR will overtake SIN-JFK for longest flight in the world when it flies. It’s unlikely to be overtaken anytime soon, especially with Spirit’s demise canceling its planned Perth-Myrtle Beach service that would have challenged for the title.

For more on Project Sunrise and how it’s going to really work, please visit Thursday’s post on crankyflier.com.

EU Strengthens Passenger Rights

The Council of the European Union and the EU Parliament reached an agreement to update air passenger rights after more than 10 years of negotiations. The negotiations could have been completed in less than a year, but when negotiators all took their smoke breaks which, combined with their annual 6-month sabbaticals, dragged negotiations out for more than a decade.

As part of the new agreement, passengers can still claim compensation if a flight arrives more than three hours late (that sound you hear is AA pulling back all its European flights) or is canceled less than 14 days before departure. Compensation remains roughly the same as it was under EU261, ranging between €250 and €600. Carriers are now also required to display fares that include carry-ons by default, and they can no longer deny boarding for a passenger who skipped the first leg of a trip, presumably to try to save money and not just for sport.

The new framework also makes the claims process far more clear cut. When a delay could potentially lead to passenger compensation, carriers are required to inform passengers via e-mail or text within 96 hours after arrival while explaining the passenger’s rights and provide clear instructions on how to submit a compensation request.

Airlines will also have to acknowledge claims immediately and respond within 30 days, either by paying compensation or giving a clear reason for refusal. Those that don’t comply will be forced to add service to Newark immediately.

Riyadh Air Receives DOT Permission for US Flights

Riyadh Air, the Saudi-based startup airline that just now started flying actual people won rights to operate to and from the U.S. from the DOT on Tuesday.

The carrier, which operated its first flights to London last week says it intends to operate to more than 100 international destinations by the end of the decade. Delta has already partnered with Riyadh Air, and it will begin Atlanta – Riyadh service this fall to provide feed for the carrier amongst other reasons. Riyadh Air is expected to have eight aircraft by the end of July which will give it the capacity to fly to 22 cities by next March.

This authorization doesn’t immediately allow it to launch U.S. services, it does take care of the primary legal hurdle and puts the new airline in a good position. This is because the DOT’s ruling recognizes Riyadh Air as eligible to operate flights between Saudi Arabia and the United States which is more than (spoiler alert) Venezuela’s Conviasa can say.

Conviasa Has Sanctions Lifted

Conviasa’s long path back to being off the U.S. Treasury’s sanctions list took a major step forward Thursday. The Office of Foreign Assets Control exempted the carrier from the 2019 executive order which banned transactions with the Venezuelan government and its subsidiaries, of which Conviasa is one. While it’s not yet fully cleared to operate to or from the U.S., the Treasury did sign off on the carrier updating its LinkedIn status to “looking to network.”

Most practically, it will allow the airline to receive airline parts and maintenance work from the U.S. to keep its fleet up-and-running. Specifically, the order allows the airline to participate in “processing of payments, supplying parts, inspections, maintenance and repair, delivering software and technology, and “other services related to the maintenance, repair, upgrade, refurbishment, improvement, safety, or airworthiness of aircraft.”

Conviasa currently possesses 25 aircraft, but only nine are currently active due to its inability to get its airplanes serviced. #AvGeeks and plane spotters across the world are ratcheting up the pressure on the government to remove all sanctions and open flights to the U.S. as they told the government in a petition, “It’s rare we can get regular A340 service to the U.S., and a little shadiness is a small price to pay.”

• Aerolineas Argentinas retired its leased B737-700 fleet.
• Air Baltic is entering into a codeshare with El Al as it prepares to return to Tel Aviv.
• Air India is getting basic.
• Air Oceania is suspending all ops.
• Air Serbia unveiled its new loyalty program on Tuesday which also marked the carrier’s 99th birthday.
• Air Vanuatu named Philippe Busson as its new CEO.
• Alaska broke ground on a new hangar in Portland. It also promoted Shane Tackett to president along with the CFO job.
• American‘s Steve Johnson, a long-time executive at AA and current Chief Strategy Officer, is retiring.
• Arkia is adding two A321-200s on lease from AerCap.
• El Al is joining the Starlink family.
• Emirates is diving into the travel insurance game.
• Etihad operated its first flights to Krakow and Mallorca.
• Gol finally figured out what passengers really want. Draft beer.
• Hawaiian‘s B717s could be replaced by Alaska’s B737s on interisland operations.
• Horizon Air FAs have voted to authorize a strike. Consider this a friendly reminder that that doesn’t mean nearly as much as it sounds like it does.
• Oman Air has an idea for a new worldwide hub in the Middle East. Spoiler: It’s in Oman.
• Porter began flying from Montréal/Metropolitan (YHU) this week.
• SKY Airline received approval from the Chilean government for ABRA’s takeover of the carrier.
• Southwest put out a stream of useless press releases this week.
• United pilots opted not to operate a flight when they were timed out but because two soccer commentators were onboard, the carrier and the pilots are being raked over the coals on social media.
• Virgin Australia resumed service to Doha.

The older I get, the more I realize my dad wasn’t “resting his eyes.” That man was taking elite-level tactical naps.

Why announce this so far in advance? Well, Qantas is looking to get any press it can as the journey toward launching this aircraft continues. It just rolled out the first A350-1000ULR in the Qantas livery in Toulouse, so why not make a big deal out of it? The airplane itself looks like any other A350-1000 on the outside. It just has room for a lot more fuel and a lot fewer passengers onboard.

How many passengers? Look at it this way. The premium-heavy British Airways puts 331 seats on its A350-1000s, Qatar has 327 seats in its less dense version, and Cathay Pacific puts 334 seats onboard. Qantas will have a mere 238 seats on the airplane. That combined with the extra fuel onboard means it can fly for a very, very long time. And that’s exactly what it will have to do to get from Sydney to London.

Let’s put it this way. The longest flight in the world today is on a Singapore A350-900ULR from New York/JFK to Singapore. That flight is 9,537 miles and is blocked westbound at 19 hours and 15 minutes. The Sydney – London flight is over 1,000 miles further at 10,573 miles. Block times haven’t been released yet, but it will easily break the 20 hour barrier.

The rationale for having only 238 seats onboard is pretty simple. Nobody in their right mind will want to do this flight in coach, so it is very premium-heavy, at least by Australian standards. The plan is to have six First Class suites, 52 Business Class suites for the less fortunate, 40 Premium Economy seats for those willing to endure pain, and 140 Economy seats for your worst enemies. At least those seats will have 34 inches of pitch in the back, but they will also come with complimentary horse tranquilizers to make the journey more pleasant. With the airplane flying 3-3-3 abreast, I’m told those in the middle of the middle will receive a signed certificate upon arrival proving they completed the journey.

We can joke about the onboard experience all we want, but the business case is real. The general thesis is that people care a lot about saving up to four hours over the stops that are required today. Not only will Qantas recapture share, but it will also get higher-paying travelers. There is certainly something to that argument, but whether it will be justified to fly those planes with 238 seats for so many hours is still a question mark.

Qantas does have research to back up its claims. In February, it asked people “how likely would you be to book this type of flight in the future, if you were flying to [INSERT DESTINATION]?” I’m guessing this was for both New York and London since it’s meant to get answers to ultra-long-haul demand. And the answers?

Well, I don’t know. Because all Qantas says in its presentation is that 68 percent of premium travelers and 53 percent of coach travelers would… be likely, I guess? I’m assuming they asked people to pick a number between 1 and 10 on how likely they’d be and this percentage is of those who chose the top end of the scale, but that isn’t clear.

What is clear is that after the war in the Middle East broke out and people were stranded, they became even more likely to fly nonstop. Those numbers rose to 80 percent and 63 percent respectively in May, but I don’t believe that bump one bit. The war is still fresh. Give people a convenient connection with a cheap fare and they’ll shift back to how they felt in February, especially if it’s a connection not in the Middle East. It’s not like there is a shortage of options.

Today, the Middle East is a big connecting point, but so is Southeast Asia. Let’s not forget the good number of people flying Qantas direct via Perth as well. Here’s a look at Cirium ARC/BSP data showing the passenger breakdown by connection point over time.

Sydney – London Passenger Share by Connecting Point

^{ARC/BSP data via Cirium}

Things had shifted recently thanks to the war in Iran, but I’m sure that will get back to where it was. This has been a relatively stable market in terms of connecting point, especially when you consider seasonality.

So, will this work? We will find out. It’s not like there isn’t precedent. Singapore has done well with its less dense A350-900ULRs going ultra-long-haul. And these markets are enormous. During peak northern winter, London has more than 800 daily passengers each way. To London, Qantas captures less than 25 percent of the market today — less than 20 percent during peak northern winter — so there is plenty of room to shift share with a nonstop. There is also presumably room to charge a premium, though what people say is not always the same as what they do in practice.

In the end, this will probably work, but I’m not as confident as Qantas is externally. Then again, worst case if it doesn’t pan out, the airline can use those huge fuel tanks to just shuttle fuel OVER the Strait of Hormuz as an aerial tanker. That’s a guaranteed money-maker.

As a reminder, the charts are all laid out the same. The lines show the number of departures by airline while the dots are sized depending upon the number of destinations served by that airline from that location. Now, let’s do this.

We will start with a look at the Latin operation which was sparked by the purchase of Eastern’s Latin network in late 1989.

Miami by Airline (1980-1990)

^{OAG schedule data via SkyGo}

Miami was Eastern country, as anyone who grew up in the area back then will remind you. Eastern was just so much bigger than anyone else in its hometown, that it was hard to imagine another airline stepping in. Sure, there was National, but Pan Am bought that airline in 1980 and proceeded to do very little with it until later in the decade. Air Florida came and went quickly, so it was never a lasting threat. In 1987/1988, Eastern hit the height of its market power.

American was just about nothing in this market, but in the latter half of the decade, it saw Eastern and Pan Am both teetering and started to grow. When it bought Eastern’s Latin America routes in late 1989, that was the end of the competition. Sure, Pan Am was up there in 1990 when it was shedding everything else and hoping Latin America would keep it alive. But we know how that ended. By the end of 1991, Eastern and Pan Am were gone, and American reigned supreme.

San Juan by Airline (1980-1990)

^{OAG schedule data via SkyGo}

San Juan wasn’t much for anyone in 1980. Eastern had the biggest presence of a major airline, but the largest carrier by far was a little prop operator named Prinair flying around the Caribbean. Eventually, Prinair and fellow prop-operator Crown Air both died off. Eastern tried to make a run but American wasn’t far behind for long.

When Eastern’s Latin American routes were sold to American, it not only helped in Miami but also in San Juan. This was the beginning of a strategic hub which American kept going for a long time before finally walking away in 2013.

The Latin network was gelling, but American was concerned that it still wasn’t built to capture north-south flow in the domestic market. After all, it had always been an east-west airline, and its main operations were all at the northern and southern edges of the country. And so it was that American embarked on a journey to add three new hubs that ultimately did not last. But at the time this was a bold idea.

Nashville by Airline (1980-1990)

^{OAG schedule data via SkyGo}

Nashville was more of a backwater than anything else in 1980. Surprisingly, Republic was the airport’s largest carrier, but it was passed by USAir in 1981. By 1985, Delta had become a fast-rising number two. But then in 1986, the American hub was born. That was the same year Southwest started flying to the airport.

American grew this hub fast, and that had the effect of pushing Republic (and later Northwest post-merger) to shrink significantly. USAir did the same, even after acquiring Piedmont. Delta fell into the number two spot by default by the end of the decade, though it had stopped growing. American never really had any competition here, though its efforts in Nashville — which were later abandoned — set the stage for this to become one of Southwest’s biggest and fastest-growing stations.

Raleigh/Durham by Airline (1980-1990)

^{OAG schedule data via SkyGo}

If RDU seems like it came out of left field… it did. Eastern was the largest airline in the market followed by Piedmont, but neither were particularly large. By the middle of the decade, Piedmont did make a move to grow, but it wasn’t until 1985 that American even served this market at all. When it entered, it entered big.

The hub really got going in 1987 as Eastern was continuing to weaken. Piedmont and then acquirer USAir maintained a steady presence, but it wasn’t any match for American’s hub operation which nobody challenged until American itself walked away and Midway tried to fill the gap. Today, it’s a smörgåsbord of airlines fighting it out, but one surprising winner is Breeze which in many months sees RDU as its largest operation.

San Jose by Airline (1980-1990)

^{OAG schedule data via SkyGo}

Unlike RDU, American had served San Jose at the dawn of the decade, but it didn’t have much there. AirCal was the big dog in the market followed closely by PSA. It was mostly regional flying in the west that dominated this airport. Republic was a surprising third… surprising only until you remember that this was a product of the merger with Hughes Airwest.

This hub was not organically grown. American bought AirCal and USAir bought PSA. At the time, it was a two-horse race, but American focused on San Jose while USAir backed away. United had picked up some slack after commuter WestAir began flying under the United Express banner, but nothing competed with American. That hub died, was resurrected by Reno Air, bought again by American, and then finally dismantled for good in the early 2000s. It’s now Southwest territory.

If we zoom out and look at American in 1980 vs 1990, it’s a completely different airline. Sure, the core of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Dallas/Fort Worth are there, but that’s about it. In 1980, the airline’s fifth largest station by departures was St Louis. By 1990, not only had American built its Latin network centered around Miami, but it also established three new hubs in Nashville, Raleigh/Durham, and San Jose for north-south service.

This wasn’t just about the network. American had gone from an airline flying B727s as the backbone of its fleet to newer and efficient MD-80s… airplanes which were flown by cheaper labor on B-scale wages for new hires. It also built a regional network buzzing with feed from small aircraft. During that decade, it created the AAdvantage program, and it became the godfather of modern revenue management.

This was an airline firing on all cylinders. It was an airline with leadership under President Bob Crandall (who also became CEO in 1985) that was unbeaten. Not everything worked, but that was ok. It moved fast, it made bold changes, and it came out transformed as one of the largest and most important airlines in the world by the time 1990 arrived.

The ’80s were a time of chaos. Deregulation had just gone into effect in 1978, and so it was all settling out in the 1980s. The industry that existed in 1980 was far more fragmented and messy than what was there in 1990. But through it all, American was the rock star. Sure, United had its moments, USAir came into its own, and Delta got bigger, but there was no airline that moved quite the way American did to secure positions and carve out domains during that decade. Today, thanks to Claude helping me with the visualizations, I want to take a journey through the evolution of American’s main stations in that era.

The charts you’ll see in the next two days are all laid out the same. The lines show the number of departures by airline while the dots are sized depending upon the number of destinations served by that airline from that location. Now, let’s do this.

Long, long ago… American was primarily a northeast to southwest airline. Its historical positions in both New York and Los Angeles are well-known, so why don’t we start there? In both these legacy hubs, American made moves, but these aren’t places where American needed to have a laser-like focus. It just needed to find ways to maintain and bolster its positions.

New York City (JFK + LaGuardia) by Airline (1980-1990)

^{OAG schedule data via SkyGo}

Yes, this leaves out the PeoplExpress phenomenon over at Newark, but it can be (and has been) argued that these aren’t exactly the same markets. American’s focus was on this side of the Hudson.

Going into 1980, American had an enviable position that was behind only Eastern, but as the 1980s went on and American’s gaze strayed, it fell off. The competition was from the old guard with Eastern and TWA along with the newly-christened USAir. Pan Am made big moves, especially after acquiring National. And of course there was little New York Air which added some capacity at the bottom. But by the middle of the decade, American was done playing nice.

The airline bulked up. Eastern — deep in the death throes by the back half of the decade — fell off dramatically. USAir also made a run at the end of the decade, and it kept that position until the slot swap with Delta for Washington/National flying many years later. By 1990, American had regained its position, but it was now second only to Pan Am, an airline which would fail soon after. Of course, Delta picked that up and ran with it, but in 1990, American was well-positioned in New York.

LAX by Airline (1980-1990)

^{OAG schedule data via SkyGo}

We’ve talked about LAX a lot lately, but in 1980, American was small compared to United, Western, and PSA. (And yes, Golden Gate West had a lot of departures but on tiny airplanes.) American was still very relevant and important because of its position in the high dollar markets like New York, but it let its overall position sag until the middle of the decade.

This market had a significant number of regional flights on independent airlines, but those airlines by the middle of the decade began to line up with bigger airlines to use their codes. And that is when we see a real realignment. For American, that meant bringing Wings West into the fold while Western (and then Delta) had SkyWest.

This was also a time for big mergers. Delta bought Western, USAir took out PSA, and American acquired AirCal. By the end of the decade, American was bigger and in the mix for the top spot. Delta was in the lead after that Western acquisition, but American and United were neck and neck for a close second place, much better than in 1980.

NYC and LAX were very busy markets that saw things shake out rapidly. American did not lose ground in the end, but these two markets were already falling behind American’s new and surging mid-continent hubs. Chicago/O’Hare and Dallas/Fort Worth were American’s #1 and #2 respectively. Let’s look at those.

Chicago/O’Hare by Airline (1980-1990)

^{OAG schedule data via SkyGo}

Chicago may have been American’s biggest market, but United was still Chicago’s biggest airline in 1980. Many, many others were still relevant in the market, including Northwest, Republic, Delta, and TWA.

Early in the 1980s, United grew fast, and American tried to keep up but it fell behind. Meanwhile, everyone else abandoned the effort, realizing it was not worth it. Even a combined Northwest and Republic had less than even one of those airlines had on its own by the end of the decade. Delta dropped off, TWA went low, and only Continental made a brief rise when it was merged with PeopleExpress, New York Air, and Frontier in the late 1980s. That was short-lived.

By the end of the decade, American decided it needed to put the pedal to the metal. With a growing fleet of MD-80s, it had the right airplane to challenge United, and the airlines were in a virtual dead heat by the time 1990 rolled around.

Dallas/Fort Worth by Airline (1980-1990)

^{OAG schedule data via SkyGo}

Today we think of DFW as American’s fortress, but it was far from that in 1980. In fact, American was smaller than Braniff, and Braniff was growing like a weed after deregulation. Of course, it was that chaotic growth that led to Braniff’s failure in 1982. It tried to come back to life as Braniff II, but it was never the same and just petered out, no longer a real threat.

Instead, when Braniff failed, it was Delta that saw the opportunity, and so it tried to match American’s torrid growth. Texas International had a similar-sized presence to Delta, but it quickly walked away, something that accelerated when it was merged into Continental in 1982.

By 1990, Delta had a real hub, but it was a far cry from what American had built. We all know in the end that Delta gave up, but at the time, American took this threat seriously and never hesitated.

These four markets made up four of American’s nine most important in 1990, but the other five were created almost out of thin air. I’ll talk about those next time.

Spirit, Port Authority Spar over LGA Slots

Spirit’s planned sale of its slots at New York/LGA to raise capital and pay off some creditors has hit a roadblock as the Port Authority of NY and NJ told a U.S. bankruptcy court that “slots themselves are not ‘fungible and transferable’ without its explicit permission and consent.” The Port has a point — generally when slots have been traded or sold, it has been done with the approval of the government body, and it wants a say in where these slots — and the cash — go.

But it was the airline — or at least the ghost of it — that won in bankruptcy court on Wednesday, garnering the route to sell the slots along with its loyalty program. This follows the precedent from when ATA went out of business and it was able to sell off its slots to send to creditors over the Port Authority’s objection.

If and when a sale goes through, Frontier is considered the leader in the clubhouse, as the Port Authority has shared its desire for another LCC to take over for Spirit, and Skybus just wasn’t an option. Of course, selling to the government’s preferred airline could go a long way to smoothing things over and avoiding an appeal that could keep the deal tied up in court for months or longer.

Western Sydney Airport Sets Opening Day

Eastern Perth Western Sydney Airport (WSI) will begin scheduled passenger ops on October 25, just in time for the start of Australia’s busy summer travel season giving customers seeking palatable Vegemite another airport to travel the world in their search. The airport will open two months earlier on July 26 for cargo ops with the first commercial flight coming two months later.

Jetstar will be the launch carrier for the airport, with the first flight being scheduled as JQ362 to Gold Coast at 11 a.m. Passengers taking the inaugural flight are being advised to arrive at the airport no later than next week to give airport officials time to work the kinks out and ensure no one misses the inaugural. The flight will be operated by an A320. Upon launch, Jetstar will operate 2x daily to Melbourne, 4x weekly to Gold Coast, and 3x weekly to Brisbane.

Qantas will join the party on March 28 of next year with 4x weekly service to both Melbourne and Brisbane. A third airline for the airport hasn’t been announced but we’re holding out hope that Mokulele will go for that long-anticipated Molokai – WSI route.

Other carriers to fly to WSI include Air New Zealand which will begin Auckland service on October 26 and Singapore to, well, Singapore, beginning November 23.

Frontier Goes Back to the (East) Bay

Who says you can’t go home again? Because Frontier is doing just that. Three years after leaving Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport, the carrier announced its return later this summer, with routes from OAK to both Boise and Las Vegas.

The LAS flight will operate 11x weekly for Frontier, while Boise will fly 4x weekly connecting potato lovers throughout the Bay Area with Idaho with just one little stop in Vegas.

In keeping with the current theme across the industry, both flights will replace former Spirit routes as the green airline seeks to replace the yellow airline in the hearts, minds, and wallets of Bay Area budget travelers. With its return to OAK, Frontier will rejoin the club that operates from all three Bay Area airports with heavy reporting that Tico The Two-Toed Sloth is a heavy wine drinker and is pushing for service to Santa Rosa soon as well.

Air Canada’s Pilot who Wasn’t

Police in the Toronto suburb of Peel are investigating a pilot for Air Canada that flew hundreds of flights without a proper license. Geoffrey Wall who we assume is a lover of ice hockey, maple syrup, and poutine was fully-trained with a commercial pilotʻs license, but allegedly did not have an airline transport license which is required both under Canadian law and common sense.

Air Canada said the pilot is no longer employed at the airline and that safety was not compromised which is exactly what an airline might say if safety was compromised by allowing an improperly-licensed pilot to take the controls of an aircraft. The airline also says an audit of its pilots showed no one else was in non-compliance. Ok, that’s great, but it feels like a fool me once…situation.

AC declined further comment on the matter but did confirm to Cranky just prior to press time that represenatives from Pakistan International Airlines reached out and inquired about Wall’s contact information.

American’s FAs Want Time Back

As part of their annual training, FAs are required to spend two days at headquarters in Fort Worth where they receive training and run through actions and responses for in-flight emergencies such as how to open exit doors, evacuate the airplane, knock some sense into passengers who try to bring their carry-ons during an emergency, and what to do with Basic Economy passengers during an emergency (spoiler: $39 charge for using the slide).

But they also have to do one day of online module training at home as well. This training is supposed to take eight hours, and per the union contract, FAs are paid $150 for completion. But the union — The Association of Professional Flight Attendants — say it takes much longer than eight hours and that it’s an outdated and unrealistic process. The union is putting its money where its mouth is, moving the inquiry to formal arbitration. APFA wants the pay bumped for the time it truly takes to complete the module and it wants it simplified and brought up with modern times — no more questions about what to do during an emergency of an on-time flight, for instance, because we all know AA doesn’t run any of those.

How long does the module take? AA knows but it isn’t telling. Why won’t it tell? Stay tuned to this space for an update once arbitration begins.

• ABRA signed an MoU expanding its partnership with Air Canada to loyalty programs and cargo ops.
• Air Canada‘s first A321XLR entered service.
• Air France-KLM is interested in easyJet.
• American is adding service to both Maracaibo and Cap-Haïtien from Miami.
• BA says its prices are going to increase.
• Biman Bangladesh is looking for consultants.
• Cambodia Airlines took delivery of its first ATR72-600 last Friday.
• Delta returned to Hong Kong.
• El Al is wet leasing two A320-200s that will now go through the conversion process to use only kosher jet fuel.
• Emirates is seeking permission to operate daily to both Berlin and Stuttgart.
• Etihad is growing its codeshare with Condor.
• Finnair is returning flights to both Turku and Tampere in October, after replacing flights with buses on both routes since 2022.
• flydubai will begin nonstop service between Dubai and Pokhara.
• ITA felt like ANA and Lufthansa’s JV was going too well.
• Mexicana ran out of time on its World Cup dreams.
• Norse Atlantic named Frans “don’t call me Bjørn” Leenaars as its new CCO.
• Philippine Airlines is considering a widebody order. And if you clicked this link, then technically you are too. It also became the 16th member of oneworld.
• Riyadh Air flew its first commercial flight with actual passengers.
• SATA Air Azores might sell some airplanes.
• Southwest is beginning an interline agreement with Singapore. Sometimes the jokes come too easily.
• Uganda Airlines is adding 10 Boeing aircraft.
• WestJet joined Icelandair in a codeshare partnership. Parka required.
• Wizz Air is joining the Starlink family.

What’s the difference between a bird flu and swine flu?

One requires tweetment while the other an oinkment.

As the data showed in my last post, Delta has significantly improved its position since the pandemic hit. In 2019, Delta had about 19 percent of domestic local traffic at LAX, but that has since climbed to 23 percent in 2025. It has seen its percentage of departing seats climb by a similar amount.

The building blocks for this actually went into place in May 2017 when Delta moved from its constrained Terminal 5/6 home at LAX to Terminals 2/3. It was going to be a long and painful journey to rebuild Terminal 3, fix Terminal 2, and connect them with the Bradley Terminal where it had some flights (as do partners), but in the end it would mean more gates for Delta.

Here’s a lay of the land so you can follow along as we go.

During the pandemic, Delta decided to shoot the moon. It saw traffic was down significantly, but it knew that created an opportunity. So, Delta accelerated its plans and knocked down/rebuilt Terminal 3 much faster than expected. It began to open in 2022 and was completely open — along with the behind-security connector to Bradley — in 2023. Delta now has 27 gates split between Terminals 2 and 3 (which will soon just be called Terminal 2).

Not only that, but it is now connected behind security to Bradley (which will become the new Terminal 3) where most of its joint venture partners operate. There, it also has its international arrivals — currently 7 or 8 per day — operate along with the flights that turn around to wherever those airplanes are going. It provides a nice overflow valve for the airline.

And that’s that. Delta is never quite fully done, but it has a new, modern terminal that works. It is now adding a new Delta One lounge in Terminal 2, and it will continue to invest. But its total summer operations of up to about 160 daily departures means that Delta can turn about six airplanes per day per gate (which doesn’t even include Bradley gates). There is room to grow in the existing footprint.

So, Delta has been making big gains, but meanwhile the other airlines are hampered from doing the same. First, let’s talk about United.

At this point, United is stuck in a corner at LAX, literally. In 2014, the previous management team at Continental United gave up four gates in Terminal 6, the old Continental gates, to consolidate in Terminals 7 and 8. This was a bad idea.

United has only 20 gates available in Terminals 7 and 8 (soon to all be called Terminal 7). It doesn’t use any gates in the Bradley Terminal, though all of its partners are there, far away from United. It did, however, start using a little space in Terminal 6 again, usually gate 68B for the widebodies. But that is a minor concession to the airline that has expressed interest in growing LAX under this management team. At the recent media day, we were reminded that United wants to be number one in LA. I’m not sure how that happens without more gates.

There was a plan to build a Terminal 9 which would not only allow United’s partners to leave Bradley but also give United more gates itself. That has been shelved indefinitely since the airport can’t justify the project based on current traffic predictions. United is stuck at 20 or 21, and it is not going to get more gates.

The only possible hope is for Alaska to relinquish some of its gates in Terminal 6. That seems unlikely, but then again, there is always a chance it could spill into Terminal 5 gates which are currently common-use. But we’ll talk about that more in a minute.

This brings us to American, which is in the throes of a massive and painful construction project which has left its operation scattered. Terminal 4 is being demolished and rebuilt in phases. So far, only the far end has been reopened with seven gates. There are also two gates in the base of the old terminal that remain in operation while the middle is being rebuilt.

There is also the remote Eagle’s Nest terminal which sits a lengthy bus ride to the east of the main terminal complex. This terminal has nine gate holdrooms that can only accomodate regional aircraft. I’m not sure American is even using all nine, but at least seven or eight are in operation.

As if that’s not enough, American had been operating four or five gates in Terminal 5 as well, but Terminal 5 has now been shuttered. It was demolished and will be rebuilt with 15 gates by 2028, of which American should have 10. In the meantime, American has been using gates in the Bradley terminal, but it is a challenging experience for travelers.

If we add up what American had been using before, it was at 15 (give or take) in Terminal 4, five in Terminal 5, and nine in the Eagle’s Nest for a total of 29. When the new terminals open, American will have 15 in Terminal 4, 10 in Terminal 5, and then presumably it will still use some gates in Bradley. The Eagle’s Nest will go away.

In the end, this doesn’t allow American to be any bigger than Delta. It also doesn’t increase the number of gates American has, though the airline will have more gates capable of supporting bigger airplanes. It will allow American to consolidate its operation in one place that just so happens to be right next to its partner Alaska. This kind of proximity will improve the passenger experience, of course, but it will also improve the ability to offer connections. If American wants to make a run at LAX — not that there has been any serious suggestion of that being the case — it is probably a couple years away.

Previously, Terminal 5 was also the home to JetBlue and Spirit. Spirit is gone, and JetBlue is currently operating in Terminal 1. It may not need to come back. So that means there is probably opportunity in Terminal 5. Could Alaska split its operation, which would allow United to get gates in T6 with its partner Air Canada? Or would United consider using T5 gates with a busing operation?

All we know is that American may have interest in growing LAX, United has a stated interest, and neither can do anything about it right now. You can be sure Delta knows that. There aren’t slots at LAX to constrain competition; that’s what gates do there. And for the next couple of years, Delta has a real advantage which it is going to put to good use. It’s not going to own LAX. Nobody will. But if it can add a few more points to its share then it should be pretty happy.

Before I dive into this, I want to be very clear about the scope. I am talking about dominating one airport, LAX. If you include the entire LA Basin, then that is a whole different discussion. Southwest dominates every airport other than LAX, and so you can argue it is the airline that provides the most utility to the region as a whole, at least domestically. But all of those airports are regionally-focused. LAX is and has for decades been the one airport in the region that acts as a global hub.

I’ve recently started playing with a tool called SkyGo that has OAG schedule data back to 1980. So I was able to really go back in time here and watch the evolution of this airport. Back then, United was the biggest airline at LAX. If we exclude commuters, Western was next with PSA close behind. American was a step further, and Delta was basically nothing.

^{1980 LAX Route Maps OAG data via SkyGo, generated by the Great Circle Mapper® – copyright © Karl L. Swartz.}

Back then, the airlines were still coming out of deregulation and trying to figure out their positioning. Historically, American flew people from LAX to the east/northeast while Delta took (very few of) them to the east/southeast. But United not only did east-west, it also flew a lot of north-south. Western did intrawest flying as well from its home at LAX, and PSA was the young buck who went almost entirely north-south. This remained the status quo until 1984 when Air Cal started challenging PSA at LAX, having more departures than American after that year.

Up until the mid-1980s, however, it was United, Western, and PSA who led the pack and then the mergers started. In 1987, Western schedules were absorbed by Delta, AirCal went into American, and PSA was folded into USAir in 1988. United picked up Pan Am’s Pacific routes shortly before that as well.

By the end of the decade, Delta had become the largest airline at LAX thanks to its acquisition of Western, followed by American with AirCal, and then United. Those three would maintain their hold on the top three spots from then on.

Starting in 1990, I can look at T-100 data via Cirium which then gives us a more accurate look at seats and seat share. But I went deeper than that. I looked at seats for Alaska, American, Delta, Southwest, and United including regional partners departing LAX. This also includes joint venture partners but only in the years when they were part of the joint venture. Here’s what you get.

LAX Departing Seats by Airline Group

^{T-100 Data via Cirium}

This chart tells us quite the story. What we see is that in the early 1990s, Delta was retrenching a bit, pulling down frequencies in some markets while standing pat in others. But United, well, United started growing fast. I believe it was 1997 when SkyWest moved its Delta flying to United instead, further cementing United’s historical position. American also made a run in the late 1990s through acquisitions, so as they both grew, Delta lost seat share. That lasted for 15+ years until Delta bought Northwest and began to focus on LAX.

American, meanwhile, didn’t really grow much on its own. It was all about acquisitions. It took Reno Air in 1999, TWA soon after, and then US Airways in 2015. That final merger brought the strategic decision to open a Transpacific hub at LAX which was when American first made a real run at LAX through organic growth. All of this pushed American into the top spot right up until the pandemic. That’s when things changed dramatically.

What we see during the pandemic is that American pulled back a lot. It did get rid of its Transpacific hub idea, but it wasn’t just about those long-haul flights. Meanwhile, after years of decline, United realized it wanted to get back into the game. So it did, and it has increased share ever since. Delta has just continued to grow into the number one position.

We haven’t even talked about Alaska and Southwest yet. Alaska was up in the 5 percent range until it took over Virgin America. It gave much of that back during the pandemic. Southwest, meanwhile, had been slowly declining for a decade before the pandemic hit. That trend hasn’t changed. The only reason those two airlines matter is to show that not all of Delta’s and United’s gains have been at the expense of American.

But let’s look at this a different way. We’ve been talking about seats up until now, but that doesn’t really tell us how well the airline is doing at capturing the local market. Instead for that, we’ll look at DB1B/C data through the end of 2025, though keep in mind this is only for domestic travel.

LAX Local Domestic Passengers by Airline

^{DB1B/C OD Data via Cirium}

This looks at itineraries, so it takes away those who are connecting at LAX to find those who are starting or ending their trips there. There are some things that look very different here.

First of all, American’s fall looks much more precipitous from this angle during the pandemic. Keep in mind that getting rid of all those international flights won’t even show up here. But when American backed off, it lost a lot of ground domestically as well. This is the “s-curve” at work; when American reduced its utility, people moved in greater numbers to other airlines that had more utility in the overall market.

Unlike in terms of seats, however, American is still ahead of United, though barely. United’s gain in local traffic is much less than its gain in seats. It has to fight Delta for those local travelers, and Delta just keeps going up.

It’s also fairly remarkable to see that Southwest was the largest in the domestic market from LAX for many years. It is now a distant number four, and it probably isn’t planning on trying to compete for that title again.

In the end, other than a brief blip around the turn of the century, nobody has been above 25 percent share in the domestic market, and that’s the point. LAX doesn’t want one airline to dominate. Airlines have tried to make runs, but they never seem to last. Inevitably they all jockey for position and then end up somewhere in the pack. There has been no winning in this market, but… could that change?

In my next post, I’m going to look at why this might be a good time for Delta to try.

SAS was formed in 1946 by bringing together airlines that were operating in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. This was formalized in 1948 with six different owners nested under three companies. SAS Sverige had 42.8 percent of the airline with SAS Danmark and SAS Norge each having 28.6 percent. Each of those companies were half owned by their respective governments with the other half owned by the private sector. This is all ancient history, but the point is to show that complexity was built into this airline from day one.

Flying around Scandinavia made SAS very proficient at all types of challenging flying, and it was an adventurous group, just like their ancestors the Vikings long before. SAS was the first airline to fly the trans-polar route in 1954 from Copenhagen to LA — a commemorative plaque sits outside the Flight Path Museum at LAX to this day — and in 1957 it was the first to fly around the world over the north pole.

This was the airline that bought into Continental (originally through Texas Air Corp in 1988), tried to merge with Austrian, KLM, and Swissair in the early 1990s, and was one of the founding members of the Star Alliance in 1997.

Did all of those work? Absolutely not. But this was an airline that liked to try new things and push its limits. At least, that was the case until this century. For too long, it’s just been a mess of an airline mired in labor issues and cost troubles with no clear direction.

In the early 2000s, like every airline, SAS was in trouble and need to restructure. In 2003, there were 39 unions on the property and each needed to negotiate changes. There were four pilot unions alone. There have been many restructurings since that point with shifting ownership percentages.

Operationally, SAS just kept trying to find ways to be like Norwegian… and by that, I mean adding complexity and offering fares that were way too low. It created SAS Ireland to fly out of Heathrow and Málaga, because costs were lower there. That eventually became SAS Connect and another SAS Link subsidiary was established. You’d think that with this constant changing of subsidiaries, Lufthansa Group would have been proud to buy into the airline. But that didn’t happen.Just take a look at this topsy-turvy operating airline structure over time.

SAS Marketing Carrier Departures by Operating Airline

Data via Cirium

The problem at SAS was that it had sunk from one of the leading airlines in Europe to a smaller airline that was not part of any of the big Transatlantic joint ventures. That has proven to be a dead end for many an airline. So, after filing for bankruptcy protection in a post-COVID haze, SAS came out in a good place. It was owned 19.9 percent by Air France-KLM with 26.4 percent owned by Denmark and the rest owned by a Danish investor and private equity. Air France-KLM is planning to grow that stake to 60.5 percent by buying out other investors later this year.

With all of this ownership drama out of the way, SAS could get a makeover to fit as a new third hub in the Air France-KLM network. Copenhagen would take center stage, where it should have been the whole time anyway. To prepare for this, it exited Star Alliance to join SkyTeam, added codesharing with new partners, and prepared to eventually join the Air France-KLM joint venture with Delta and Virgin Atlantic.

I wrote about some of the network changes back in 2024, but things have continued to progress. This may come as a shock, but I don’t want to get into the network stuff today. What I want to show is how SAS is ready for good things to happen.

I already talked about the issue of having so many operating airlines flying for the airline. It has now made things cleaner. Sort of. Here’s where things stand:

• Braathens Regional flies 15 ATR-72s out of both Copenhagen and Stockholm. These are short hops under 500 miles that feed the hubs.
• CityJet flies 16 CRJ-900s primarily out of Copenhagen but also from Stockholm. All flights are under 1,100 miles and feed the hubs.
• SAS Link flies 16 Embraer 195s (with orders for 45 E195-E2s) almost entirely from both Copenhagen and Oslo. Flights can go up to 1,500 miles, but those are long, thin routes.
• Jettime does wet-lease work for SAS when it needs to flex in summer, almost entirely from Copenhagen to the Mediterranean using its B737-800s.
• SAS Connect flies its 33 A320neos from all three hubs plus Göteborg throughout Europe. The Málaga base was closed, so now you can think of this like Iberia Express which looks no different to customers than SAS but flies with a lower cost structure, mostly — but not exclusively — on leisure routes down to the Mediterranean.
• SAS flies four A319ceos, three A320ceos, and 48 A320neos all throughout Europe. It is also the only airline that flies long-haul with three A321LRs, eight A330-300s, and six A350-900s.

Is this still complex? Yes, but there is at least some sort of rationale for having each of these operating airlines. It is a very European structure with the lower-cost mainline operation, the subsidiary to operate larger-than-regional aircraft, and the wet lease partner all being impossible in the US but par for the course in Europe.

But it’s also not just about operating airline. It’s about the fleet mix, which you can see has greatly simplified from where it had been in the past.

SAS Marketing Carrier Narrowbody Departures by Aircraft Type

Data via Cirium

Look at this mess. The MD-80s are long gone, and so are the Boeing narrowbodies (though, fun fact, there is still one B737-700 operating as an air ambulance). There are no Fokkers nor Saabs, BAe 146s/Avros, or Q400s around. Even the Airbus ceos are almost out of the fleet. This is a fleet plan that actually makes some sense. The Embraer 195s will be replaced by E2s, and then you’ll have a fleet built for the future.

All of this is to say that SAS is where Air France-KLM needs it to be. Once it gains majority ownership later this year and gets SAS into the joint venture, then you’ll have an airline that’s ready to finally show what it can do. It will never been the most simplified airline flying, but it is now manageable. It is just about time for SAS to show that it is worthy of continuing to exist.

Alaska, Korean Team Up While Delta Looks on

It’s rare that a simple codeshare agreement feels like a significant story, but this one does. Korean Air, Delta’s longtime JV partner, SkyTeam stalwart, and an airline that’s closing in on the integration of its main rival filed a request to launch a codeshare with Alaska. Yes, that Alaska — Delta’s former BFF turned rival. The two have been fighting to the death over Seattle for more than a decade now, to the point where Alaska ran deeper into the arms of American and oneworld after its breakup with Delta.

Airlines make strange bedfellows — always have, and always will, and this is another example of that. The two are exploring a codeshare that would put Alaska’s AS code on Korean flights from Seoul/ICN to Bangkok, Busan., Delhi, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Singapore. This would complement Alaska’s new service from Seattle to Seoul giving its customers options beyond ICN on one ticket.

This potential tie-up comes despite both Delta and Korean also flying SEA-ICN as part of a JV, directly competing with Alaska. What’s next? An AF/KL codeshare with United? Stay tuned.

Remember Spirit’s March Loss? April Looks Similar

We now know that Spirit did not go quietly into the night as April turned into May, with the carrier posting more stunning losses going into its final hours of operation.

The carrier had a net loss of $327 million for peak April, with actually operating an airline counting for a mere $89 million of that loss. In April, Spirit spent $112 million on fuel meaning that, unlike in March, it actually would have eked out a small operating profit if gas had been completely free. At the end of April the airline had just $72 million left in cash and cash equivalents, which means it didn’t even have the cash on hand to sign a decent starting pitcher for more than three years.

Its second highest expense was salaries, clocking in at $86 million, followed by “General and administrative” at $40 million — we think that’s where it codes its yellow paint purchases.

At the end of the day, what we learned from Spirit’s March and April financial statements is that $500 million from the government would not have saved the airline. It would have kept it operating for weeks — or days — longer, but this was the inevitable outcome. All the cash would have done was make JetBlue and Spirit weaker, especially in FLL for JetBlue — and given everyone a bigger mess to clean up.

Delta’s Latest Plan for LAX is World Domination

We’re starting to think Delta made a deal with the IOC in the ’80s or ’90s that any future U.S. based Olympics must be in a Delta hub. We’ve seen Olympics in Atlanta, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. What’s going to be next? Detroit? MSP?

With the Olympics coming to LA in two years, Delta, as the official airline of Team USA, is planning a growth spurt at LAX, as it reportedly sees a chance to grow a stronger foothold in the always-competitive market. As it sits today, AA has reduced its presence at LAX, Southwest has lost interest, JetBlue has cut its presence by half, United has constrained facilities at LAX and a major hub just up PCH in San Francisco, and Spirit, well, you know.

Rumors abound that beyond a new HKG and MNL flights, Delta will grow flights to Shanghai to be daily, extend Auckland to be year-round, and begin flying to Seoul/ICN. Korean currently operates that flight up to 3x daily, so it remains to be seen if Delta’s eventual flight to ICN replaces on of KE’s frequencies or is in addition to it.

Lastly, LAX will be the site of its newest Delta One lounge. You might be thinking to yourself “Self, doesn’t LAX already have a Delta One lounge?” You’d be right. Before other Delta hubs (read: Atlanta) get one Delta One lounge, LAX is going to get a second one. This one will complement the OG Delta One lounge at LAX which opened in 2024 in between Terminals 2 and 3. This one will be open later this year as a temporary setup in Terminal 2 before being renovated into a full D1 lounge in-time for the Olympic Games.

BermudAir Asserts Fifth Freedom Rights

Three years after its launch, BermudAir is unveiling a broad expansion as it both grows its presence from both Bermuda and Anguilla to the U.S. and Canada, but will establish fifth freedom flights between Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos, Belize City, and Guatemala City to U.S. and Canadian destinations.

These new flights will operate weekly through the winter season and will position BermudAir as a sort of Allegiant copycat, but instead of flying from Minot and Sioux Falls, it’ll be Belize City and Providenciales.

So what’s new on BermudAir? We thought you’d never ask.

• From Anguilla: St. Petersburg/Clearwater
• From Belize City: Boston (2x weekly), Fort Lauderdale (3x weekly), Orlando/Sanford (2x weekly), Raleigh-Durham (2x weekly), St Petersburg/Clearwater (2x weekly)
• From Guatemala City: Boston (2x weekly)*
• From Turks and Caicos (PLS): Baltimore (1x weekly), Boston (1x weekly), Fort Lauderdale (2x weekly), Newark (2x weekly), Raleigh-Durham (2x weekly), St Petersburg/Clearwater (2x weekly)

*GUA-BOS is a direct flight, stopping in Belize with no plane change.

In addition to these, the carrier is adding through service to Grand Cayman on its Bermuda – Providenciales flight operating 2x weekly, and it added a far less exciting Bermuda – Orlando/Sanford route that is more traditional for the carrier. For more on BermudAir’s expansion, please visit Thursday’s post on crankyflier.com.

Newark is Great — Just ask United!

Good Leads the Way, says United, and apparently that includes Newark. Newark leads all major northeast airports in on-time performance, shouts UA’s release. Those two qualifiers — Major and Northeast — are doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. What does that include? The three NYC airports and Boston? Does PHL count? Nobody knows, but perhaps that’s the idea.

United says Newark achieved its best-ever on-time right in April and May with nearly 6 million passengers passing through the airport (some by choice, some not). The release goes on to credit Sean Duffy for the improvement, so it was able to check that box off, thankfully.

Scott Kirby, the humble, introverted CEO of United left his cushy Chicago office to venture into the concrete jungle that is Newark to give a special shoutout to Secretary Duffy, presumably for slashing flights at the airport which makes it a whole lot easier to run things on-time, and then added a footnote that his nearly 15,000 local employees might deserve a tiny sliver of credit too. He called the Newark the “crown jewel” of UA’s international network, marking the first time the airport has ever been named the crown jewel of anything.

• Air Botswana is cleaning up its balance sheet.
• Allegiant want to strengthen its credit card and loyalty programs. As of press time we have not gotten confirmation that its future plans are to only allow people to use their Allegiant branded credit card 2x per week.
• Arkia‘s potential future buyer wants it to stop flying on the Sabbath.
• Condor broke ground on its new maintenance facility in Frankfurt.
• Contour is connecting both Parkersburg (WV) and Altoona (PA) with Myrtle Beach.
• China Southern is injecting $665 million into Chongqing Airlines.
• Norse Atlantic seems to fancy AI a little too much.
• Norwegian Air Shuttle is adding a B737-800.
• Philippines Airlines is going to begin flying its A350-1000 on its flight to Toronto beginning today.
• Pyramids Airlines scheme to launch commercial ops is underway.
• Qantas hasn’t decided on where its going purchase its upcoming 20-airplane order.
• Qatar is returning to Philly.
• Riyadh Air is taking delivery of real life airplanes.
• Tailwind Airlines is facing headwinds to operate in Russia.
• TAP is selling its catering arm.
• WestJet president Diederik Pen penciled in his retirement for the first quarter of next year at the latest.

I’m opening a new restaurant and named it ‘Karma.” We won’t have menus. Everyone will get what they deserve.

As I said in the title, the plan is to go with a more Allegiant-style operation while also taking full advantage of regulatory tailwinds that it gets from being a Bermudian carrier with British benefits. This also includes some “direct” flying, meaning not nonstop but no plane change, which has long been Southwest’s hallmark.

I’m assuming we have none other than John Pepper, the airline’s new Chief Commercial Officer, for this shift. John spent a decade at Allegiant, most recently as VP of Corporate Development and Government Affairs. If this doesn’t have his fingerprints on it, I don’t know what does.

Let’s start with a look at the route map, which I’ve color-coded by Caribbean base.

^{BermudAir Route Map generated by the Great Circle Mapper® – copyright © Karl L. Swartz.}

Bermuda was always there as the main base of operations, and then the airline expanded under the AnguillAir name to Anguilla this past winter. This new flying is all BermudAir, no cutesy renaming required. Bermuda has grown in this schedule, primarily in Florida, but that’s the most minor part of the change.

Florida is worth calling out in its own right. This is where the Allegiant-style model really shows up. The airline is moving flights from Orlando’s main airport to Sanford (SFB), an airport currently almost entirely served only by Allegiant. It will also enter St Pete (PIE) and not Tampa. Why? SFB and PIE are cheaper and easier to use. But unlike for Allegiant, there is another benefit. Unlike most flying in Orlando and Tampa Bay, this is focused on the origin traveler, some of whom might find the new airport more attractive. It will also go back into Fort Lauderdale, but that just happens to be the best option that exists for South Florida.

As is typical for an Allegiant-style model, nearly all of these markets lack direct head-to-head competition. I think the only competition is:

• Bermuda: Boston (JetBlue), Newark (United)
• Turks: Boston (American/Delta/JetBlue), Newark (United)

In true Allegiant style, these routes all fly very infrequently. Nothing will operate more than 4x weekly with most at 1 or 2x weekly. That is actually lower than what Allegiant would normally do, so that’s where the Southwest emulation makes some sense commercially. The airline is going to try to scoop up additional traffic using direct flights where you stop but don’t change planes.

In some cases, this is meant to increase service levels. For example, you want to fly from Newark to Anguilla in January? There’s a nonstop on Mondays and Fridays, but there is also a flight on Saturday that stops in Turks before continuing on. You have to stop to get from New York to Anguilla on any other airline anyway, so this is still competitive. Hell, there’s even a two-stop option on Thursdays with a wild Newark – BWI – Turks – Anguilla run. I assume that is more about getting people from BWI to Turks, but, well, if you really need it, the option exists.

I think that example above shows how some direct options are good while others seem downright strange, but there is likely more than one reason. That Newark – BWI run could be an aircraft routing issue. It looks like BermudAir will park an airplane overnight in Newark every night of the week, and one will sit there all day on Tuesday (in the January schedule). Nothing stays overnight at BWI, so this helps get the airplane in the right place at night. It also opens up an opportunity to give people in Newark more frequency while creating the possibility of getting some BWI-based traffic to help fill that airplane in a way Newark may not be able to do alone.

There are two routes that seem the oddest of all. There is a 2x weekly flight from Bermuda to Turks that goes on to Grand Cayman along with 2x weekly Bermuda – Boston – Belize – Guatemala City run. Those are the only flights the airline has to Grand Cayman and Guatemala City.

Nobody flies Boston to Guatemala City, so maybe there’s the real opportunity there. And could there be some high-dollar financial shuttle between Bermuda and the Caymans? Maybe. But by serving those airports through another city, it should enable connections from multiple flights. I still don’t love it, but it’s so minor in scope and impact that it may be worth a shot.

You’re probably waiting for me to get to the regulatory part which is the most interesting of all. Bermuda is British. It has its own aviation authority, but it has access to certain British markets that might not be as easily attainable for others. That’s where Anguilla comes in, and the same goes for Turks. Both are British overseas territories. The Caymans are British too, and Belize was British. It’s now independent.

This little footnote explains how Belize will work:

Service to Belize will be operated under fifth freedom operations with flights originating in Bermuda or Turks and Caicos.

So, BermudAir doesn’t have the right to fly between the US and Belize independently, but it does have fifth freedom rights. That means if its service starts in its home British territories, it can then fly to Belize and on to the US, selling tickets in the local market on all legs.

Think about it this way. There are 2x weekly Bermuda – Boston – Belize and 1-2x weekly Bermuda – Orlando/Sanford – Belize flights. There are also 3x weekly Turks – Fort Lauderdale – Belize, 2x weekly Turks – Raleigh/Durham – Belize, and 2x weekly Turks – St Pete – Belize. Nobody is flying from Turks to Belize, but a lot of people are flying from RDU to both Turks and Belize. Fifth freedom makes this all possible.

To summarize, this is a very complex operation that can take advantage of its home and regulation in Bermuda to serve unique markets that may have enough demand to fill an Embraer 190. On the other hand, maybe not. But it is clever enough that I actually like the idea and want to see how it plays out.

I still think that the real key for BermudAir to work is to get some interline deals and frequent flier partnerships with other airlines. Maybe someone should give Allegiant a call.

That’s right, February 25. We’re going back to our regular week after a slight diversion earlier in 2026. In fact, we’re doing a lot of things like we did back in 2025, and for good reason.

We will be returning to the Hyatt Regency you’ll remember from 2025, primarily because we were told most of you did not appreciate having water dripping on your beds last year. Even more surprising, the fire alarm at night was not considered a welcome addition. We’re going to try to avoid that this year.

We’re also going to be back at the same afterparty venue from 2025. We got feedback this year that while the new venue was cool, you liked having an outdoor space. And so it shall be. See, when you fill out those feedback surveys, we actually pay attention.

The Cranky Confab will be back in 2027 with two new topics — yes, we heard your feedback on shaking that up a bit as well — to be discussed on the afternoon of February 25. For the first time, we are opening it up to a presenting sponsor this year, so if your company is interested, email cna-sponsor@crankyflier.com or let me know and I can connect you.

Not everything is changing from this year. Both the Confab and the Awards will be back at On Jackson while Courtney Miller’s crowd-favorite Forecast Breakfast on the morning of February 26 will as always be presented by our friends at Tampa International Airport in the hotel.

This event remains invite-only, though invitations will come much later. You likely know if you’ll be on the invite list, so mark your calendars now. If you have any questions, just email us at cna@crankyflier.com. Or if you’d like to discuss a sponsorship, we’re at cna-sponsor@crankyflier.com.

Over the years, Hawaiian scaled back its meals to what can best be described as a hot pocket on most flights. Even during the depths of COVID, those hot pockets solidered on. Here’s a photo from an October 2020 flight I took.

I have a weird love of generic, institutional foods, so this barbecue one actually hit the spot for me. Most people, however, didn’t have the same level of appreciation. So it wasn’t a big surprise when Tara Shimooka, spokesperson for Hawaiian who has been there since before the merger, told me that the top two complaints were that people wanted more variety and higher quality. That could happen, of course, but it couldn’t be free, so a great debate followed.

Tara told me that they had talked about this for years, even before the merger. But the switch to Alaska’s reservation system at the end of April was the big catalyst which enabled this change to be done far more easily.

To be clear, Hawaiian is being quite thoughtful about this. It is not just a cut-and-paste of the Alaska menu. They’ve hired Hilo-born Chef Sheldon Simeon to develop the menu, and it definitely has a local twist with things like corned beef hash + eggs and banana pancakes in the morning. Afternoons bring a teriyaki burger or cheeseburger mac and cheese, among others. You can see the whole list, and you’ll probably agree it looks good.

I have no doubt this will taste better. Yes, it costs the traveler extra, but it is a clear improvement for the price. So why am I conflicted about this at all, even when most of these flights are only five to six hours?

Before the merger, Hawaiian used to say how important it was to take care of its guests just like they were part of their ʻohana (family). When you invite someone into your home in the islands, you take care of them. Thatʻs why when you hear some say e komo mai to welcome you, itʻs not just a welcome. Itʻs an invitation to join, and it conveys a sense of belonging. It is more heartfelt and full of aloha than just saying “welcome.”

Youʻll also hear a lot of talk about hoʻokipa (hospitality) being integral to Hawaiian culture. Even in the press release announcing this change, Hawaiian says that this “remains central to the inflight experience.” But itʻs hard to get that same feeling when someone charges you to eat something. And itʻs especially hard when that has to be pre-ordered before the flight.

I know some people didnʻt like the hot pocket, but they still felt that warm surprise at being offered something at all. It fit with Hawaiianʻs overall idea that your vacation and immersion into Hawaiʻi began when you stepped on the airplane.

The new Hawaiian/Alaska clearly did not take this responsibility lightly, and they considered it at great length. I mean, just look at the length of that press release to see just how much effort they put into this. And, Tara reminded me, there are other pieces to hoʻokipa that still remain to create a different kind of experience for travelers.

In coach, Hawaiian will continue to offer free Koloa rum punch as a welcome drink. It will also give a free snack… which is not Biscoff. It looks like itʻll be Diamond Bakery mac nut shortbread cookies in the morning and Maui onion kettle chips in the afternoon. And there will still be those chocolate-covered mac nuts handed out as a “sweet treat” before arrival.

Those AlohaMacs have always carried conflicing emotions. When you get them flying into the islands, it is a thrilling reminder that youʻre almost there. But when you get them flying home, it is the sad last gasp of a memorable trip that is coming to a close.

With all of those elements remaining, and the new menu having a strong Hawaiian theme, I suppose Iʻm ok with this change. Plus, I’m told they served employees over 1,000 meals in testing and the mac salad was called out as being great. If you can put a good mac salad on the airplane, it’ll be hard to hate this change. I do have some flights this summer which will allow me to try it out. All that being said, the airline’s important link to Hawaiian culture means there will also be just a small something missing from that overall experience now that a free meal is no longer part of the package.

This cryptic statement full of nonsensical corporate speak was published on Southwest’s SWAmedia website late last week, but it wasn’t widely distributed. In it, Southwest said three things would change in the airline’s upper ranks:

• Andrew Watterson, Chief Operating Officer who has also been in charge of the airline’s commercial functions again since 2024, will now just be in charge of the operation as COO
• Justin Jones, EVP Operations who was reporting to Andrew, is now being moved to the other side of the house as Chief Commercial Officer and will report directly to Bob
• Tony Roach, Chief Customer and Brand Officer who was reporting to Andrew, is now being given the HR (“People”) department in addition to his current roles and will report directly to Bob

The stated rationale for these changes makes no sense at all. This is the top-line quote from Bob:

These changes position us to move forward with greater clarity, stronger execution, and deeper connection across our Company

Except that the changes muddle clarity and create less connection across the company.

See, before this, Andrew was in charge of the operational and commercial groups. They made a point of connecting the dots very closely between the two sides after having so many operational failures leading up to the biggest failure of them all, Winter Storm Elliott.

Just before the storm hit, the airline had turned over control of the operation to Andrew when Mike Van de Ven was pushed out, and the storm was quite a goodbye gift from Mike. It showed the vulnerability of an operation that hadn’t kept up with the times or with Southwest’s growth. There was a lot of work to do.

One of the early changes before the entire commercial team moved back over to Andrew was uniting the network team and the operation under former network boss Adam Decaire. He was named SVP Network Planning and Network Operation Control, cementing the link between the schedule and the operation to make things run more smoothly. And you know what? It worked. Southwest’s operation has been dramatically improving since that time.

The airline’s revenue performance has skyrocketed as well. In its presentation at the JP Morgan Industrials conference in March, Southwest said its revenue initiatives had been so successful that its 2026 forecast was for an increase in contribution of those initiatives from $2.6 billion to $4.3 billion. Let’s not forget that these were massive initiatives ranging from basic economy to assigned seating, extra legroom, and bag fees. All were done on-time and have overdelivered.

On top of all this, Southwest was one of the clear winners in Q1 2026, as I wrote less than a month ago. And its Q2 guidance says unit revenue performance will be up 16.5 to 18.5 percent vs the year before. With things going well on all fronts, the airline’s shares started moving up in December 2025 for the first time in three years, and the share price is now about 20 percent above where it was at this time last year. It would be higher — and in fact, it was higher — if not for the Iran War-induced high fuel prices.

The signs remained positive even as recently as a week ago when Bob spoke at the Bernstein conference. He said that demand trends continue to see no sign of weakening, and “I’m becoming increasingly bullish that we will be able to cover these fuel increases with revenue increases.” That means revenue performance is likely even better than guidance, if I’m reading the tea leaves right. It sounds like sunshine and rainbows.

But in recent weeks, Bob has been dismantling the organization that got Southwest to this point. Adam Decaire, the man who united operations and network to help produce these results, has quietly “retired” from the company. I’ve heard that he wasn’t the only one. Now we have a further dismantling of Andrew’s team and reduction of his responsibilities.

Before activist investor Elliott showed up, Andrew looked to be on track to succeed Bob as CEO. But then, the board turned over and things became murky. Southwest brought in CFO Tom Doxey who was largely seen as a potential successor as well. But in this announcement, it looks like neither will be getting that job.

This is not to say that Justin and Tony don’t deserve promotions, though it is a headscratcher to see Justin taken away from the operation he has done such a great job with and thrust into the commercial side.

The natural progression should be for someone to rise into the President role as Bob thinks about his future retirement. Andrew was already largely doing that role before, so if they had confidence in him, he would have been given the title while Tony and Justin continued to grow their responsibilities and titles and report to him. That didn’t happen. And if Tom was ready to step into that role, you’d think he would have been given more responsibility, but his name was nowhere to be found in this reorg anywhere. Instead, Bob has just given himself more power and broken up the group that had already been doing such solid work.

I say Bob gave himself more power, but it likely isn’t just coming from him. Choosing his successor isn’t directly his job anyway. That’s the board’s job. So it’s safe to assume they had a hand in this plan in some way. The question is… how much of a hand did they have?

Remember, the two most active airline management board members that came in from Elliott have already stepped down — Gregg Saretsky and David Cush — and it’s likely someone with airline experience that would be guiding Bob, if anyone is doing it. In fact, there are now only two board members who have airline management experience both added just before Elliott. That’s Bob Fornaro and the notoriously-difficult Rakesh Gangwal. If I had to pick between those two, my money would be on Rakesh trying to tinker and mess things up. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Bob is spearheading this on his own. Either way, it seems very short-sighted.

We now have an airline firing on all cylinders, finally done with its big transition work… but there isn’t stable management to guide what’s next. How strange.

Interested in LGA Slots? Now’s Your Time to Shine

As Spirit continues to liquidate on its way out the door, the shuttered carrier plans to put its 22 slots at LGA — with their street value of almost $87 million — up for bid in July. While we haven’t received confirmation as of press time, rumors abound that the sale will take place on eBay and will be open to anyone with the cash…and a dream. (We’re looking at you, Avatar Airlines.)

The auction will take place on July 9 and is expected to draw interest from across the industry. FAA Administrator Brian Bedford prefers that another low-cost operator gain the slots, with the threat that if the slots are won by a legacy carrier it might retire the slots instead, effectively taking their ball and going home. While this seems a little petty, it would solve some of the air congestion problem both at LGA and in the New York airspace, making it not the worst idea ever… but still a pretty bad one.

American, Frontier, JetBlue, and Southwest seem to be the early favorites with a dark horse candidate looming in Porter Airlines. As the dominant carrier at the airport already, Delta is not considered to be a major contender for the slots.

United Isn’t Buying JetBlue, and if You Disagree, That’s a You Problem

United isn’t buying JetBlue, never was going to buy JetBlue, and doesn’t intend to do so in the future. Any if you don’t agree, well, Scott Kirby doesn’t seem to care. Speaking at the Bernstein investor conference, Kirby said it was “idiotic” to suggest that his efforts to merge with AA were a ruse or a head fake designed to make a JetBlue merger seem more palatable to the DOJ.

Kirby went on to take another jab at the Long Island-based carrier saying “the last thing I’m gonna do is buy a route network that loses money.” JetBlue’s earnings haven’t been great, that’s a fact. The airline has posted net losses for seven years in a row and its debt grows every day. So the question that needs to be asked is if Kirby is genuine here, or if it is an attempt to play 4D chess and outmaneuver everyone while driving the stock price down.

For those of you keeping score, Kirby is being nothing but straightforward with us, the traveling public. The potential merger with AA was genuine, and his lack of interest in JetBlue is also genuine. Until it’s not.

He also believes United can achieve 10% and higher pre-tax margins in 2027 provided oil prices retreat. If that comes true, then United doesn’t need JetBlue — until it does.

JetBlue’s Continues to Grow FLL

JetBlue Airways seems determined to make itself the primary carrier out of Fort Lauderdale. To take another step towards that goal, the carrier will begin serving Caracas from FLL, marking JetBlue’s first-ever foray into Venezuela. The new route makes a lot of sense for JetBlue as its Mosaic program and its points are one of the few airline programs valued better than local Venezuelan bolivar.

The airline plans to begin the service before the end of the year, but it’s still securing the proper government approval and the process to fly in Venezuela. The flight is expected to be operated by B6’s fleet of A320 aircraft which feature complimentary Wi-Fi, JetBlue’s suite of snacks (blue chips not included), and a State Department travel advisory. The U.S. embassy in Caracas said it would always be available for any U.S. citizen in Venezuela, with the exception of those that book Basic Economy.

JetBlue will join both AA and United in flying to Caracas. American resumed CCS service from its Miami hub on April 30. United plans to follow with flights from Houston/IAH beginning on August 11.

Air Canada’s FAs Seeing Red over Rouge Ops

The Canadian Union of Public Employees — the labour group representing Air Canada’s flight attendants — filed a grievance claiming the carrier is out of compliance in its contract with the union which states that Air Canada Rouge may operate a maxiumum of 50 aircraft, and that it takes the union’s consent for AC to exceed that figure. Earlier this month, Air Canada announced 52 of its current mainline aircraft would be “transitioning to Rouge.”

The carrier is claiming the transition is temporary, but the union says that clever workaround is not valid and is still violating the scope clause in the contract. This comes as the union and airline are currently in the midst of another Rouge-related grievance, in which CUPE claims that current upgrades to the Rouge project makes it too similar to mainline Air Canada. The union says Rouge was supposed to have “clear and defined differences in service, configuration, and branding,” but that current upgrades to include free beverages including beer and wine, seatback screens, and extra legroom offerings “blur the lines” between the two products.

The two sides are expected to gather tonight at a Montréal-area bar to enjoy a Molson and watch the NHL playoffs while settling their differences.

American Goes with Starlink

The Wi-Fi revolution at 30,000 feet continues to be dominated by SpaceX’s Starlink, as American Airlines becomes the latest major carrier to ink a deal to provide high-speed internet at high-flying altitudes for its customers, at least some of them.

American was weighing choices between Starlink and Amazon to outfit its more than 500 Airbus narrowbodies (sorry, Boeing) with connectivity. The installation process will begin early next year, and if it goes anything like most American flights, it’ll be delayed, canceled, and have several aircraft swaps along the way.

Most U.S. carriers have sided with Starlink with American joining Alaska (and its Hawaiian subsidiary), Southwest, and United to in the SpaceX family. Delta and JetBlue have gone against the grain, partnering with Amazon’s LEO to provide in-flight connectivity. Starlink famously provides gate-to-gate coverage, especially important for American customers to wait out their delays on the ground by streaming their favorite YouTube creator, while also allowing savvy passengers to track their precise location in realtime on FlightRadar24 to see how much longer until a gate opens up upon arrival in Chicago.

• Air China is growing its current cargo order with Airbus up to 10 A350F aircraft.
• Air India is making capacity cuts.
• Avianca is adding two new routes to FLL, replacing Spirit on both.
• Azores Airlines is prepping for a sale.
• Azul is expected to be listed on the NYSE American marketplace Monday.
• Cebu Pacific is having money problems.
• China Airlines is adding two more B777Fs.
• Jazeera Airways is adding service between Kuwait City and London/LTN.
• Jeju Air is resuming service between Jeju Island and Seoul/ICN.
• Philippine Airlines is offering new redemption options for Qantas customers.
• Qantas has again delayed the launch of its nonstop flight from Sydney to London/LHR.
• Ryanair made a major payment to cut down its debt.
• Singapore is increasing its service levels to Amsterdam.
• Southwest says everything is fine.
• TAAG plans to return to China.
• TAROM is being told by the Romanian gocvernment to rein in its spending.
• United is adding three: Newark to St. Croix (1x weekly) and Washington/Dulles to both Los Cabos (4x weekly) and Orange County (1x daily)

Anyone who’s struggling to meet new people should take up skiing.

Today was my first day on the slopes and I met two cool guys my age who were both paramedics. I also met three lovely nurses, an orthopedic surgeon, and I very nearly met Jesus too.

The first real terminal at SJC was built in 1965 at a bend in the airport road. It was made for ground-level boarding, and it wasn’t very large. But in later years it expanded to the northwest with more gate space. This would eventually become what in the end was known as Terminal C.

Unlike American’s Nashville and Raleigh/Durham hubs which were conjured from scratch, the San Jose hub came after buying AirCal in 1986. American liked what it saw in San Jose, and a new terminal A was planned to support this with 16 gates.

Terminal A was not connected to the existing terminal building, but American didn’t really care about that anyway. It just need to be able to connect to itself.

This hub stuck around until 1993 when American walked away. As often happens, another airline saw the vacuum left by American and decided to set up shop. In this case, it was Reno Air that stepped in. Reno Air started in 1992 from its, well, it’s Reno hub. But in 1993 it jumped at the chance to turn San Jose into a hub as well.

I had the chance to see this up close when I flew the airline down to LAX in 1997, but it wouldn’t last for long. American ended up buying Reno Air in 1999, and so once again, American found itself with a San Jose hub.

In 1999, of course, the economic climate was very different. Silicon Valley was in the heat of the .com boom, and American decided not only to keep the reacquired hub but grow it further with nonstops to places like Paris and Taipei. That required building new international arrival facilities just to the southeast of the existing gates in Terminal A, highlighted in red below.

But then, the bubble burst, 9/11 happened, and American walked away from the hub yet again. What an uncomfortably familiar place to be.

San Jose was left with an underutilized Terminal A and an old Terminal C in desperate need of modernization. I say that, but this is the time when I moved up to the area for grad school, and man did I love how easy it was to fly through Terminal C. I have many happy memories on America West going in and out over the years.

But, the airport went to work. The original plan was to build a giant, brand new terminal to replace everything, but that was scaled back to keep and expand the landside of Terminal A to better deal with local traveler demand. It would also create a big, new, Terminal B to replace Terminal C.

The northern part of Terminal C was shut down to make room for the Terminal B build. Terminal B was opened in 2010, and that’s when Terminal C was shut down for good. With Terminal C demolished, demand slowly increased to the point where the airport built eight extra gates at the southeastern end in an interim terminal extension between 2017 and 2019.

That’s where the airport is today, having 36 gates in total. All airlines are in Terminal A except for the airport’s largest tenant Southwest, Alaska/Hawaiian, and Zipair in Terminal B. So, what comes next?

San Jose has a plan to basically create a mirror image of the existing Terminal B and paste it further to the southeast. The eight gates in the interim terminal will be demolished and replaced. There will then be an additional six gates built for a total of 42 at the airport.

That’s what the Environmental Assessment proposes, and it has been shown to have no impact. I don’t think timing has been set for this project, nor has funding been completed. But it will be necessary eventually. And since this is a largely local market where connections are minimal, it must not be overly concerning to SJC that they just keep building in a straight line along the runways.

To understand how different this is, we have to first understand Allegiant’s business. So, I dug into Cirium schedule data for 2026 to pull out some information that would help illustrate this more clearly. First, Allegiant hates competition.

Allegiant Routes Shown by Number of Competitors

^{FY 2026 Schedule Data via Cirium}

This shows that 85 percent of all of Allegiant’s routes have no direct competition, though that may be because Allegiant uses Sanford while other airlines choose Orlando’s main airport. Still, that is a differentiator, and I’ll talk about that more later.

You’re probably wondering about those markets with significant competition though, right? Well, that one market with 4 competitors is Fort Lauderdale to Indianapolis. This was flown by Southwest and Spirit. Now, JetBlue is entering and Frontier added some peak season service when it saw Spirit dying. This is a similar dynamic to several of the other more competitive markets. In most cases, Allegiant is skimming off the top while others fight it out. But the point is, this doesn’t happen often.

One reason for this is because the markets tend to be pretty small. See what I mean:

Allegiant Routes Shown by Total PDEW

^{FY 2025 DOT OD Data via Cirium}

More than 80 percent of Allegiant’s markets have less than 100 passengers flying daily each way (PDEW). There are very few big markets, with only Nashville – Fort Lauderdale and Austin – Las Vegas having more than 500 PDEW.

To be clear, I’m looking specifically at airport-to-airport here. So St Pete to… wherever… doesn’t include Tampa demand. That’s by design since St Pete can feel like a different market. Same with places like Punta Gorda or, to a lesser extent, Sanford in Orlando. Allegiant isn’t afraid of flying in broader markets against competition, but it doesn’t like going head-to-head at an airport. And it doesn’t like big markets.

So it may be a surprise to see that Allegiant has decided to add four relatively large markets from Fort Lauderdale:

• Boston 3x weekly (1,192 PDEW) against Delta and JetBlue
• Kansas City 2x weekly (231 PDEW) against Southwest
• Omaha 2x weekly (62 PDEW) against Southwest in Jan-Apr only
• Pittsburgh 3x weekly (407 PDEW) against JetBlue and Southwest

Now, Fort Lauderdale has always looked a little different since Allegiant has its base there at a primary airport that others serve as well. But even with that, in 2026, out of the 43 markets served, 27 had no competition and 29 had fewer than 100 PDEW.

So what exactly is Allegiant thinking here? Boston looks like a pure spill-carrier model. This is Spirit and Frontier all over again. It’s a huge market with a lot of flights, but for those who are really cheap, Allegiant will throw in 3x weekly to make it cheaper… if you can fly on those days they fly at those times. This is not Allegiant’s wheelhouse.

The Pittsburgh flight is also a strange one since JetBlue has just recently started it. Spirit was there and it flew to Latrobe nearby as well until late 2025. So maybe there’s this idea that so much low-cost service came out of the region that it can make it work.

Kansas City is a market that Spirit did serve, and JetBlue has not moved in. That one I can understand a little more, since Allegiant will probably be able to undercut Southwest pretty easily on its few flights. And Omaha, well, that’s just a much smaller market than I would have guessed. Spirit was never in there, and it probably is not high on JetBlue’s list either.

I suppose this is just Allegiant trying to stake its claim in FLL, but I just have trouble seeing this as the best way to do it. Maybe Boston is just a test to see if this kind of market can work. But if I were Allegiant, I wouldn’t want to be getting deeper into the spill model that has already taken one airline and put another on the ropes.

Spirit’s March was Bad, Like Really, Really Bad

The airline may not be flying anymore, but the bankruptcy continues on. Spirit filed its Monthly Operational Report for March to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court this week and some of the results are legitimately eye-popping. For the month of March, traditionally a strong spring break month for Spirit, the carrier earned $256 million in gross revenue. While might seem a little low on its own, it’s when you put it next to the operating expenses almost $413 million. We’ll wait while you do the math. Or if you’d rather: That’s a loss of $156 million in one mouth. Yowza.

Spirit spent $99.6 million on fuel in March. Remember, its operating loss was $156 million, meaning if Spirit received free fuel for the entire month — didn’t spend a penny on it — it still would have lost $57 million dollars. Despite what some may say, high fuel prices were not Spirit’s issue. That’s a -61% operating margin overall, and -22% if it managed to procure a free fuel card. On March 31, the carrier was down to about $118 million in unrestricted cash, and it was blowing through about $5 million per day. With figures like that, it’s shocking Spirit lasted as long as it did.

What does this mean? Spiking oil prices might have been the nail in the coffin, but this was well on its way long before the war skirmish incursion in Iran. That $500 million from the government was never going to save Spirit. It might have delayed the inevitable for a few weeks at a significant cost to the taxpayer, but that’s a best-case scenario, believe it or not.

Spirit may be gone, but the fight for Fort Lauderdale is heating up. Come join us on The Air Show this week as we dive into the situation at FLL, especially since we are taking next week off. In addition to Allegiant as shown below, some blue carrier is trying to do a thing….

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Allegiant Adds Eight

This week it was Allegiant’s turn to try and fill the yellow-plane sized void in the Florida air travel market, as it stepped in to backfill what it could. Some of these routes are very Allegiant-like, but one stands out as a particularly odd choice for the carrier.

Allegiant plans to begin service between Fort Lauderdale and Boston — a route dominated by Delta and JetBlue, and one that goes against Allegiant’s usual strategy of picking its spots strategically and avoiding entanglements with major carriers. Delta currently flies the route 2x daily, while JetBlue flies it 4x daily, but it goes much higher in winter. It makes you wonder how Allegiant plans to make money flying the route just 3x weekly.

The other seven new routes for Allegiant are:

From FLL:

• Kansas City (2x weekly)*
• Omaha (2x weekly)
• Pittsburgh (3x weekly)*

From Orlando/Sanford:

• Trenton (2x weekly)

From Punta Gorda:

• La Crosse (2x weekly)

From St. Petersburg/Clearwater:

• Columbia (MO) (3x weekly)
• Philadelphia (2x weekly)

*former Spirit routes along with FLL-BOS.

Each route begins Oct. 1 or 2 with the exception of PIE-COU which will start November 19th.

Landline Teams up with Massport

You probably know Landline as the regional carrier that could. It operates buses in lieu of airplanes on short regional routes for several airlines including American from Philadelphia and Chicago, Air Canada from Toronto, United from Denver (well, used to do this one), and Sun Country Allegiant from Minneapolis/St Paul. But it’s adding a new option, debuting in Boston on June 1.

Landline will work with Massport, the owner and operator of Boston’s Logan Airport, to create a remote terminal in Framingham, a suburb located west of Boston about halfway to Worcester. Delta and JetBlue are the two biggest carriers at BOS, and they’ll be the launch airlines for the program. Passengers can drive (and park for way less than the airport), or be dropped off at the remote terminal in Farmingham where they can check-in, check bags, and clear TSA in much less time than it would take at the airport.

The Landline bus will then take passengers to the airport and will arrive airside, behind security at Logan, allowing a quick connection in the terminal. Delta passengers will be dropped at Gate A18 and JetBlue passengers at Gate C8. Meanwhile passengers on other airlines who snuck on the bus will be forced to wear a Lakers jersey and will then be dumped in the middle of a Celtics game.

The advantages of this — if it works — are large. In addition to saving time for passemgers who use the service, each person who does means one less person in the check-in area at the airport, one less person at the TSA checkpoint, and one less car adding to traffic.

For more on Landline’s new offerings in Boston, please visit Thursday’s post on crankyflier.com.

WestJet Called Out for Alleged Tomfoolery

WestJet passengers are alleging to the Canadian government that the carrier has been canceling flights citing “unscheduled maintenance” which, by Canadian ,law doesn’t require it to pay out compensation claims to customers. But passengers claim the carrier swaps aircraft to flights its wants to cancel, subbing in airplanes already under maintenance, and giving it cover to claim it was work on the plane — and not a controllable issue — that led to the cancellation.

Canada’s Air Passenger Protection Regulation requires a payment of C$1000 or two vats of maple syrup (customer’s choice) when a flight is canceled or delayed more than nine hours and the reason is within the airline’s control and not for safety reasons. Unscheduled maintenance falls under the safety reasons exception.

This comes four years after WestJet was ruled to have done this exact same thing, so we can only assume this is somehow tied to the World Cup. If it turns out this is a regular thing, be sure and check back in with us in 2030 to see if WestJet got caught doing it again on its Spain flights.

Garfield Hates Monday? Well Avelo Hates Tuesday

Avelo Airlines turned five this week and as a parting gift from its birthday celebration, it’s giving all of its front-line employees Tuesday off. How are they doing it? Simple…don’t fly on Tuesday.

In an effort to reign in costs, the little airline that could will not fly on Tuesday for the duration of the summer. One has to wonder if this some sort of reverse psychology trick, like how everyone craves Chick-Fil-A on Sundays, knowing it’s going to be closed. Maybe a similar effect will have the flying public particularly interested in fly Avelo on Tuesdays starting this fall after being denied Tuesday flight for an entire summer.

We’ll have to see if this lasts beyond the summer and if Avelo permanently stays as a six-day-a-week airline. But for now, the airline’s fleet of 15 B737 aircraft will all get a breather one day per week, which the airline hopes will save it enough money to avoid tough decisions to stay flying well into the future.

• Aeromexico plans to resume flying to Caracas in October.
• Air France, along with Airbus was found guilty of corporate manslaughter over AF447 which crashed in 2009 and killed all 228 on-board.
• Air Tanzania is beginning London/Gatwick service next summer.
• AirAsiaX added its first A321LR.
• British Airways wanted a $13.4 million payment from London Heathrow as compensation for errors with the airport’s baggage handling system. Airlines asking airports for lost baggage compensation — see, airlines — they’re just like us.
• Cabo Verde Airlines is wet leasing a B737-8 MAX.
• Copa had a strong start to 2026.
• Etihad is expanding its Paris service to 3x daily with two of the three on A380s.
• Eurowings is growing in Berlin.
• Korean Air pilots are suing Asiana’s union. The merger seems to be going well.
• Norse Atlantic is considering a sale.
• Philippine Airlines is placing its PR code on QR flights from Manila, Cebu, and Clark.
• Qantas is adding capacity to New Zealand.
• Qatar is adding to its African network.
• Riyadh Air is finally selling tickets.
• Singapore turned a tidy profit.
• Starlux is raising cash via a sale-and-leaseback on three A330s.
• SWISS is adding service to Bengaluru.
• United is bringing back Las Vegas and Miami service to Cleveland in an attempt to break the record for one way traffic on a singular route compared to the return.
• Zinc. Please let it happen.
• ZIPAIR is returning to Orlando for three more charter flights.

 Why did the hot dog and hamburger leave the Memorial Day cookout?

They were tired of being grilled about their relationship.

You probably know Landline from its primary model of acting as a regional airline flying for a network carrier under that network carrier’s brand… but using buses instead of airplanes. It started with Sun Country, but it has good-sized and growing operations with both Air Canada and American. It was flying for United, but that disappeared. It now does the Fort Collins – Denver run on its own.

The American integration is the ideal way of doing this. Let’s say you’re flying from Atlantic City to Chicago. You show up at ACY and go through security. Then you board the bus and get dropped off at a gate in Philly behind security, ready for a connection without any additional screening. That kind of model works great, but it is a longer-distance bus model. You buy a ticket from an airport that is not the hub.

The latest offering is more of a regional bus service to help people who would normally just drive or get a ride to the largest airport in their metro area. In this case, it’s Massport which has partnered with Landline to try to make the Logan Express bus service something way better.

That’s not to say Logan Express isn’t useful today. It has frequent service from Logan to Back Bay, Braintree, Danvers, Framingham, and Woburn. I’m told all of those places are real. The buses run constantly and make it much easier for travelers than sitting on traffic-choked roads. The new plan, however, is even easier than that. It starts in Framingham on June 1. Say hello to the Logan Airport Remote Terminal.

^{Photo via Landline}

When you arrive at the terminal in Framingham, you’ll see a very modest-looking ticket counter.

To start, this service is only for Delta and JetBlue customers as the tent cards suggest, but those are the two largest airlines at the airport anyway. These counters will be staffed by Landline employees who have the ability to check your bags. (I’m told they will be able to assist with reservation issues soon enough, but the primary focus is checking bags.)

After the bags are checked, you’ll go through a TSA-staffed secure checkpoint into a modest waiting room. For now, buses leave once per hour from 4am to 11am. They will drop you off either at gate A18 for Delta or C8 for JetBlue, and then you just walk right off and into the secure concourse while your bags get sent to the sorting area for your connection.

On the return, there is no special service. Travelers just claim bags and then head to the Logan Express bus which runs every 20 to 30 minutes from 6:20am to 1:15am. And of course, there are the regular Logan Express buses going from Framingham as well if you need to travel later in the day in that direction. Over time, this service will expand, but at least there are options until it does. This is really just a proof of concept that should spread elsewhere.

The cost? It’s just $9 one way, fully refundable. So if you buy a ticket and then your flight is delayed 5 hours? You can just refund and get a new one at the new time you need. This is exactly the kind of service that eVTOLs promised to provide but at a fraction of the cost. To me, this is the eVTOL killer.

Bookings are not done through the airline. You just go to loganremote.com and punch in your flight info. Then it gives you options. For example, if I have a Delta flight at 10:55am to LA, it gives me this:

Is this as seamless as buying a ticket from Atlantic City on American? No. This is not like an actual connection on a single airline ticket. This is still a separate service which I fully expect Delta and JetBlue to sell on their own at some point. But it’s not part of the ticket, so it would just be an after-purchase add-on.

For that price, it’s hard to imagine a good reason not to take this service. Not that Boston has had terrible security lines, but this just feels so much easier and more predictable. Probably the best reason I can think of for not taking it is… you live nowhere near Framingham.

Framingham, for those who don’t know is west of Boston just inside 495. I’ve actually been there since it is the hometown of my college roommate. There is a lot of population out there, though Massport already knows that since it has regular Logan Express service today.

I can’t imagine a world where this service makes money, not at those prices. But for Massport, it’s probably a whole lot easier and cheaper to build a little box of a terminal in Framingham than to build out more space at the airport. Sure, Framingham isn’t that big by itself, but if you imagine this network of buses from all over the area where people can go through security remotely, it becomes powerful.

Here’s a great example. Remember that in my post about Raleigh/Durham, I noted how they had to knock down American’s hub Terminal C to rebuild one that wasn’t much different… it just had more headhouse space for ticket counters, security, and baggage. Now imagine if they could instead have built remote terminals in Raleigh, Durham, Cary, whatever. You might not have needed to do that.

I realize it’s not that simple, but you can see the point. It’s a great option for travelers that has benefits for an airport. I’m looking at you, LAX FlyAway service. Put security in Van Nuys and you would have a lot of happy campers. Then put it in Long Beach. And you know what? I don’t even need a remote terminal. Let me go through security at the Long Beach Airport and take the bus up. Alright, they might not like that idea, but there are a lot of potential uses for something like this.

Congrats to Landline and Massport for getting something like this together. It had to have been a challenge to wrangle all of these different authorities, though I understand TSA was very eager to expand into something like this. They’ve now created something pretty great that needs to expand all over.

Take a look at the four big North American long-haul airlines and how they’ve used their widebody fleets since the pandemic.

Widebody Block Hours by Airline by Month

^{Data via Cirium}

The utilization spikes in summer as demand to Europe reaches a fever pitch. But then, in winter, it’s a struggle. Yes, the airlines defer maintenance when possible to the off-peak months, so that is helpful in reducing the number of hours available to fly in winter, but it’s not enough. Put this a different way. This past summer, United approached 50,000 block hours to and from Europe in July. That drops to about 30,000 block hours in January. So, where do you put the airplanes?

I’ll stick with United to make my point since it has the most capacity to move, and it has been the most creative. Here’s a look at all the non-Europe markets where widebodies fly for United:

United Widebody Block Hours by Region (excludes Europe)

^{Data via Cirium}

You can see that East Asia is pretty steady year-round, though it has grown overall. The biggest winter bump comes in Australia/New Zealand/South Pacific. The Middle East/India looks like it has a big difference, but that’s just because all service has been suspended since the Iran War started.

The rest of the increase comes from Hawaiʻi, South America, and Africa, but those are relatively small numbers. Overall, this recovers about 10,000 block hours versus the 20,000 that are lost in Europe.

Maybe this isn’t bad since, as mentioned, they do hold back maintenance work for winter, but United has another 3 million-or-so widebodies on order, give or take. It knows where to put them in summer, but winter is tougher. And that’s why opening up new markets is so important. It’s what enables growth throughout the year.

That’s where Sapporo comes in. Air Canada and United will each fly 3x weekly in the market this coming winter from Vancouver and San Francisco respectively. This is a market that’s a stretch, but it’s a calculated stretch.

According to ARC/BSP data via Cirium, this market is not big, but there is something attractive about it.

Continental US/Canada – Sapporo Daily Passengers Each Way by Origin

^{ARC/BSP Data via Cirium}

Origin passengers from Sapporo don’t vary nearly as much, but they do peak in summer and fall. But look at just how much this market has grown from the US/Canada over the last couple years. And when does it peak? It’s winter.

This is a ski market. I’m not a skier, but from what I understand, this is a world-class ski area that attracts people from all over the world. For people to come from the US and Canada, however, they have to have money to burn. This is the perfect kind of market for a K-shaped economy where you’re serving the rich people at the top end of the K.

For United to make this work, it needs to fill those 48 flat beds at the front with high-dollar fares. Air Canada only has 20 seats up front, so it may be a higher hill to climb. But even though they don’t have a joint venture over the Pacific, they have conveniently decided to operate on differing days. Air Canada goes westbound on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday while United goes Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. So there are options every day but Tuesday for travelers to get more flexibility.

I don’t want to overstate this. This is a relatively small opportunity with 3x weekly flights, but that’ll put one airplane to good use during the cold, dark winter. This is the kind of thinking and experimenting that airlines need to be doing if they want to expand their global fleet.

Since it first started flying, JetBlue has never had much interest in connections. Oh sure, there are pockets of connecting benefits — like on European flying, for example — but that has always been a tiny part of the airline’s network. Don’t believe me? Look at this:

% of Domestic Passengers Flying Nonstop on JetBlue by Year

^{US DOT OD Survey data via Cirium}

I know what you’re thinking… maybe international changes this. I can’t publish international data, but I can tell you that it lowers this percentage only very, very slightly. JetBlue does not like to connect people… or it didn’t before now.

The airline has quietly been building a four-bank hub in Fort Lauderdale for this summer. The bank structure looks to have just started flying recently, so it has been hiding in plain sight. It’s just that I only stumbled upon it recently when looking at data for a presentation I’m doing on JetBlue for an investment bank.

Let’s start by looking at last summer to see what JetBlue looked like then in Fort Lauderdale.

JetBlue FLL Departures by Hour – July 14, 2025

^{Schedule date via Cirium}

This is not a hub. As you can see, there’s no hour with more than 10 departures or arrivals. Sure, there are waves of morning and evening departures but that is built for the local market. Now take a look at this year:

JetBlue FLL Departures by Hour – July 13, 2026

^{Schedule date via Cirium}

Look! Banks! There is now an early morning arrival bank that connects to a mid-morning outbound. As soon as that’s gone, another bank comes in and departs on a big mid-day bank. Then we have the mid-afternoon arrivals that turn to early evening departures and finally the evening arrival bank that turns to a late evening bank.

I struggled with the right way to show this, so I turned to my good friend/AI overlord Claude to help. And Claude suggested looking at this as a function of how many airplanes are on the ground at any one time. It’s not perfect since there’s no guarantee that a plane turns on itself, but it shows pretty clearly what’s happening here.

JetBlue FLL Aircraft on the Ground by Time

^{Schedule date via Cirium}

Cool way to look at it, right? Thanks, Claude. You can see the very clear bank structure with this illustration… and the complete lack of one last summer.

The point is FLL is a great hub for reaching into Latin America. Spirit knew it, and JetBlue certainly did too. But with Spirit in the market, it wasn’t going to be as easy to make this work. Now that Spirit is gone, JetBlue can come in with fares that might actually make the airline a profit.

To do this, of course, it has to turbocharge the hub by adding destinations and frequencies. It has most certainly done that. Look at this July vs last.

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

JetBlue hasn’t waited for Spirit to go away, but it waited until it was pretty clear that Spirit was going to actually go away. The build-up since last fall has been significant. There are a lot more cities with flights to Fort Lauderdale, especially from the Midwest, the South, and the Caribbean. And then there’s been more frequency added to existing routes.

Note that this doesn’t even include the already-announced fall growth which includes new service to Baranquilla and Cali in Colombia alongside Columbus and Indianapolis. That alone shows the nice balance of cities that can be added when hub economics start flowing.

If I’m JetBlue, this is by far the most exciting thing I have going. And yes, it does mean having to pull down flying elsewhere. Just this weekend, JetBlue pulled some capacity out of Newark, exited Manchester, and trimmed some Orlando and San Juan. There is going to have to be more coming, but these look like the right place to start.

JetBlue is doing everything right as it tries to build this market. It took long enough, but JetBlue is finally on the cusp of having a dominant position in a hub that it can defend.

Allegiant and Sun Country: ‘Til Death do They Part

Allegiant’s acquisition of Sun Country officially closed on Wednesday, attaching the two at the hip forever…or until the next industry consolidation.

For the front-facing consumer, nothing is changing yet. Sun Country customers going to or from Minneapolis/St. Paul will book their travel as usual, while Allegiant fans who want to travel between two random cities once or twice a week can continue to do so as much as they’d like. The two loyalty programs will remain as is for now, but rest assured that some consultants somewhere are working together to strip the best parts of each away to leave a watered-down version of both programs that no one really likes.

The biggest loser here will be Amazon customers. As Allegiant takes over Sun Country’s Prime Air cargo ops, delivery is expected to take longer now that orders will connect through Allentown, Flint, or St. Petersburg/Clearwater, and flights operate only once or twice a week.

All frontline employees are safe for now, while some corporate staff might see their roles reduced or eliminated as the two airlines synergize. With the airline combined, MSP becomes Allegiant’s largest operating base both by flights and seats, but to welcome Minnesotans into the fold, residents who will make the drive to Minot, ND to fly to Phoenix/Mesa or Las Vegas are entitled to one complimentary 8-ounce tube of 45 SPF sunblock upon arrival.

Want to hear more about Allegiant? We talked abotu the airline at length on this week’s episode of The Air Show.

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United’s Flight Attendants Ratify New Contract

Good goes around, or leads the way, or, well both. And United’s flight attendants are cashing in on the airlines fiscal success giving themselves a raise for the first time since the pandemic.

United’s FAs voted down the last attempt at a new contract, but they ratified this one which includes raises that average out to 31% and more importantly, helpful work rule changes. The deal received an overwhelming 82% approval from the 90% of FAs that voted. The agreement comes with a 7-8% increase in compensation right away, $741 million in back pay, restrictions on red-eyes, and “sit pay” for waits of more than 2 1/2 hours. They didn’t get everything though — a request to not have to work any flights to Newark was denied, as was a request to move all required training courses to the airline’s hub on Guam.

The contract takes effect on May 31. One-time bonus payments will be paid out this fall. Average checks will be in the neighborhood of $50,000, with the amount reaching into six-figures for some long-time FAs. Boarding pay will be 50% of their usual rate, paid during boarding, re-boarding, and boarding for flights that are eventually canceled. No boarding pay is offered for ferry flights, deadheading, or or any flight where management can plausibly argue “the boarding process built character instead.”

Lufthansa Grows Stake in ITA

Apparently seeing how the sausage is made at ITA wasn’t enough to scare Lufthansa away as the carrier is electing to exercise its option to increase its stake in the Italian carrier from 41% to 90%. The sale will go through next month and will cost Lufthansa $382 million and some dignity to take full control of ITA. The full transaction is expected to be completed early next year after approval from both the EU and U.S.

Lufthansa says ITA is already firmly integrated as the fifth network airline in Lufthansa Group — which is kind of like being called the fifth Beatle — and that Rome will be a key hub for its routes to South America. If anyone knows about direct routes to from Europe to South America, it’s definitely the Germans and Italians.

Lufthansa has held a 41% stake in the carrier since last January, and perhaps not coincidentally ITA earned its first net profit since claiming it wasn’t Alitalia, finishing FY2025 €209 million in the black. The Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance will retain 10% ownership of the carrier, but Lufthansa will have the option to take that final bit as soon as 2028 after enduring passionate strikes and protests from all employee groups.

United Announces Sapporo

Several months after Star Alliance partner Air Canada announced it would begin flying to Sapporo, United announced the same this week, adding to its industry-leading service to Asia from the U.S.

This winter, United will fly 3x weekly service from San Francisco to Sapporo (CTS) operating between December 11 and March 26. It’ll fly the route with a B787-9 Dreamliner with 267 seats. It can fit 48 up front in Polaris, 21 in premium economy, and 188 roughing it in the back. This compares to Air Canada’s CTS service from Vancouver which will also be 3x weekly, also be operated by a Dreamliner, and have seasonality that will be about the same.

Sapporo, of course, is the top ski destination in Japan and the home to the Japanese Snow Festival every February. The UA flight will be the only non-stop to the U.S. from CTS and the second to North America joining Air Canada’s flight from Vancouver. The route is not United’s only growth into Japan as the carrier will also add new service from its Chicago hub to Tokyo/Narita on October 24 for those willing to brave a trip past Godzilla’s home, joining its current option from ORD to Tokyo/Haneda.

Korean Prepares to Finally Swallow Asiana

Six years after Korean and Asiana announced their intention to merge, the combined carrier is finally expected to debut on December 17. The boards of both standalone carriers approved the merger agreement on Wednesday, and it was formally executed on Thursday.

Korean’s acquisition of a nearly-64% stake in its former rival, comes with a merger ratio set at one share of KE to every 0.2736432 shares of OZ, which came out to $559 million to acquire 131 million shares. Korean will take over all of Asiana’s assets, liabilities, personnel, and operations. Meanwhile, Asiana staff will need to figure out the new Wi-Fi password for break rooms in Seoul, get the employee discount code for duty free shopping, and learn Korean employees’ secret handshake.

Asiana Club members will be allowed to continue to redeem their miles using 2024’s reward chart for up to 10 more years. They also have an option to move their miles into KE’s program at a 1:1 ratio. Meanwhile, Asiana will depart Star Alliance and the combined carrier with remain in SkyTeam, strengthening Delta and Air France-KLM’s alliance to Korea and beyond in east Asia. Asiana’s brand, livery, and marks will begin to become a memory once the combined airline merges this December.

• Alaska has dreamy new food options.
• Air Antilles is being liquidated.
• Air India is considering furloughs.
• Air Transat operated London/Gatwick’s first ever flight to Ottawa this morning.
• American has nearly 750,000 flights planned this summer and some of them don’t fly to or from Chicago/ORD.
• BRA is no longer going to be able to support unpaid emission charges.
• Breeze has a very nice new menu.
• Ethiopian is in the new market for new airplanes both big and small.
• Fiji Airways is the newest codeshare partner for WestJet reminding us that opposites can attract.
• LOT has begun retiring lots of its E175s.
• Lufthansa and Friends will return to Tel Aviv this year.
• Norse has a new plan called Project Falcon presumably created by someone named Bjørn.
• PAL is Alaska’s newest pal and everyone seems good with it.
• Qatar will begin flying to Bogotá and Caracas this July.
• TAP is tapping out on its ground handling unit.
• United, in a role reversal, is actually following American’s lead on something; this time on returning service to Venezuela.
• Uzbekistan Airlines is the benefit of a $604 million state-funded IPO.
• WestJet is adding former Delta president Glen Hauenstein to its board to help ensure he doesn’t get bored in retirement.
• Wizz Air expects to break even in ’26.
• ZIPAIR is the first Asian carrier to install Starlink.

My wife’s debit card was stolen last weekend.

So far the thief is spending less than she does, so I’m not saying anything.

In 1955, what became Terminal B was built. That was the airport’s only terminal until it was expanded into a brand new Terminal A in 1982. At least, I think it was expanded into A from the beginning and not connected later, which makes it seem really strange that this wasn’t all just Terminal A… but I digress.

And then in 1985, American decided RDU would become a hub, so it built its own, fancy Terminal C on the other side of the central terminal roadway. It opened in 1987. Here’s what it looked like at its peak in the 1990s, including the southern extension of Terminal A.

But then, 1995 hit, and just as was the case in Nashville, American closed its RDU hub. The building was going to be empty until Midway Airlines was reincarnated and tried to create a profitable hub of its own. It succeeded in making a hub, but profitable? That’s a big ask. Midway limped through 9/11 and eventually went away. Then, the airport had to figure out what it was going to do.

RDU had problems. On one side, it had Terminals A and B which were built in pieces between 1955 and the 1990s. It was a small, mess of a facility. On the other side, it had a fairly-new Terminal C which had one glaring problem… it was built for a hub. That means it had plenty of gate space (though outdated and small) alongside a very undersized headhouse. With the hub gone, Terminal C would need to rely on local traffic, so something had to change to make it functional. Apparently, the end decision was that EVERYTHING had to change.

RDU decided it would scrap the AA hub building completely. In its place, it would build a nearly-identical-sized structure that would be built to function better for local traffic. The new terminal was built in phases with the first half opened in 2008 and the second in 2011. Done with the letter-naming convention, that new building became Terminal 2 while the A and B became a combined Terminal 1 as it always should have been.

With that facility open, the pressure was off Terminal 1. In the mid-2010s, a plan was put into place to shrink the footprint over there and update what was left. The new renovated Terminal 1 was opened in 2014. Within the next few years, both the southern gate extension and the original 1955-built Terminal B were gone.

Today, Terminal 1 has become the Southwest + ULCC terminal with Avelo, Breeze, and Sun Country all using it. (Oh, and Alaska too.) But as several airlines try to ratchet up their service at RDU, most notably Breeze, the airport is planning for what comes next.

In the near-term, there is a project to expand security and international arrival facilties. But in Vision 2040, the airport’s master plan expects to significantly increase the size of Terminal 2 with additional concourses. It will also rebuild a new southern extension on to Terminal 1.

It seems wild that Terminal 1 continues to play a role into the distant future, but that probably makes it easier to spread traffic between the two runways. But anyway, this plan is pretty far off at this point. When the time for growth comes, however, this is how the airport is going to make it happen… unless something changes between now and then.

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.

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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.