AirBaltic has been a darling of Europe for many years. It’s based in Riga, Latvia, and it was one of the early operators of the A220. With this new fleet, it had big growth plans and thought it would get up to 100 A220s some day. This idea would have been miraculous considering the size of its home market and its past as an airline that flew a lot of different aircraft in a lot of different ways.

Let’s start off by taking a look at the aircraft changes over the years.

airBaltic Block Minutes by Aircraft Type

^{Data via Cirium}

You donʻt have to go too far back to find an airline with a jumbled mess of a fleet. The backbone was the B737 Classic with -300s and -500s, but it also had a sizable turboprop operation with Fokker 50s that eventually were replaced by Q400s. On top of that, it had a couple Boeing 757s hanging around just for fun.

But in 2017, the transition began to an all-A220 fleet. This was achieved during COVID when everything else was retired, but there was a brief backtracking when the Pratt GTF issues grounded enough airplanes that airBaltic had to bring in capacity from elsewhere. That was mostly temporary, and the airline has been a growing A220 operator ever since.

The problem for airBaltic has been that its homebase in Riga is… not large. So if airBaltic really wanted to grow, it had to expand beyond its natural borders. With a whole bunch of A220s, it figured it could slot those into a lot of airlines who wanted that type of capacity and didnʻt have it on their own. Remember, itʻs a whole lot easier for European airlines to outsource capacity than in the US, so this wasnʻt necessarily a bad plan in theory. The end result was a massive expansion across the Continent.

airBaltic Block Minutes by Base

^{Data via Cirium}

Just look at this. Twenty years ago, airBaltic was trying to be the national airline of the Baltics. It was the primary airline for its home country of Latvia and for Lithuania via Vilnius. It also had a presence in Tallin, Estonia, but it wasnʻt until Estonian Air failed in 2015 and then Nordica tanked in 2019 that airBaltic really ramped up its presence.

Starting in 2016, you can see the beginnings of a strategy to expand elsewhere. This was clearly turbocharged post-pandemic. I probably donʻt need to show you this based on the destinations shown, but letʻs just do it anyway.

airBaltic Block Minutes by Marketing Carrier

^{Data via Cirium}

Before the pandemic, it had dipped its toes into wet leasing with some Thomas Cook/Condor work, and then right before COVID-19, it started flying for Lufthansa Group. SAS was briefly in the mix just after the pandemic, but lately itʻs been a little bit of Air Serbia and a whole lot of Lufthansa Group.

Itʻs gotten so big that this summer, airBalticʻs own flying only accounted for about 55 percent of the airlineʻs total block hours. Most of the rest were for Lufthansa Group.

But hereʻs the thing.

See those big ups and downs in all those charts? Thatʻs because Lufthansa Group wants a whole lot of help in summer, and a whole lot less in winter. For example, this May, airBaltic was scheduled to fly more than 7,300 block hours for Lufthansa. This coming November? Itʻs down to just over 1,000.

Itʻs really hard to run an airline that is supposed to be huge in summer and then tiny in winter. Weʻve seen some novel partnerships formed to try and solve this problem in the past. Smartwings in Czech Republic used to send airplanes to Canada in winter while Sunwing would send them to Europe in summer.

This works in some limited circumstances, but if youʻre airBaltic, youʻre not going to find a place to send half of your growing fleet in winter.

Of course, thatʻs not what airBaltic says is the issue. It lays the blame on both geopolitics and everybodyʻs favorite whipping boy, the enginemaker.

Demand and revenue growth have moderated, geopolitical developments in Ukraine and the Middle East have increased uncertainty and operating costs, and prolonged Pratt & Whitney engine availability constraints have affected the airline’s ability to deploy its full fleet.

I assume the focus on these issues is simply so it can blame things that have changed as ruining an otherwise perfect plan, even if it’s not the whole story. Either way, this is why the 100-airplane airline is off the table. In fact, even todayʻs 54-airplane airline isnʻt going to work. It will shrink to 36 airplanes by the end of the year and gradually climb back to 40 by 2031 which is obviously many years away to add just four airplanes.

Now, the airline is going to turn its focus to its home base of Riga. It will still have “selected point-to-point services,” but it will also scale back the work it does for other airlines. It says it will have contracts that will put capacity out there “in a more balanced way during both the summer and winter seasons supports.” And that makes a lot of sense.

But what about Riga? Letʻs take a look at how capacity share has changed there over time.

Riga Seat Capacity Share by Airline

^{Data via Cirium}

It looks like airBaltic has held surprisingly steady for the last decade with some small gains. But look at what has happened with the other airlines. Wizz came in big and then disappeared. Letʻs not forget the Russian airlines which have not flown there since the pandemic thanks to that impacts of the Ukraine war.

Ryanair is the airline that has really taken advantage of that situation. It is the clear number two with nobody really aiming at that position, even if Norwegian is in third place. But so far, Ryanair and airBaltic haven’t really been huge competitors. And Ryanair has shrunk in Riga every year since 2022, largely because it hates Latvia’s high fees and taxes.

Looking at Cirium schedules for full-year 2026, only 12.7 percent of airBaltic seats from Riga operate on routes also flown by Ryanair. That is a little deceiving, however. Once you include secondary airports as one, like Charleroi and Brussels or Torp and Oslo, that climbs to 23.3 percent. But you never want to turn your back on Ryanair for a even a minute. This is by far airBaltic’s most important market, so it makes sense that it would finally turn a focus back to it.

This change in plans shifts the airline from one that cares most about growth to one that cares most about being a financial success. It’s the right strategy, but it does mean being a smaller airline.

I was solo on the podcast again this week, but instead of a guest host, I interviewed Southwest COO Andrew Watterson. Yes, he was on the show earlier this year, but a lot has happened since then. Tune in to hear about how the airline is going to fix its on-time problem, what the plans are with the MAX 7, and a little talk about Andrew’s recent change in responsibilities.

Listen on Spotify   |   Listen on Apple Podcasts

Delta and Aeromexico Win in Court

Delta and its joint venture partner Aeromexico scored a big win in court Thursday when the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowing the two carriers to continue their JV — rather than close up shop. This ruling comes more than two years after the DOT ordered the two airlines to end collaborating on scheduling, capacity, pricing, and how many tons of Mexican avocados can be used in guacamole in the United States annually.

In its ruling, the court said the DOT “did not reasonably explain why it conducted a far more limited market analysis in this case ​than it has always done in the past or why it imposed a requirement for approval of the joint venture that it did not require of similar joint ventures it approved in Japan.” The resounding victory for Delta in federal court came in — we’ll give you one guess — Atlanta, and the carrier said that the ruling would allow for the JV to continue to “provide(d) greater choice, more seamless travel, and increased connectivity for consumers while supporting U.S. jobs and economic growth.”

The government isn’t done, however. The DOT said it will consider all legal options available at its disposal to prove illegal cooperation, including seizing the contents of Delta’s secret (though not to us) Biscoff Tunnel in the Atlanta airport which rumors suggest is also holding vats of Jarritos.

Oh Say Can You See on the Back of the Seat In Front of You?

American Airlines is bringing back seatback screens on the majority of its narrowbody fleet, which, coupled with Starlink Wi-Fi , means American is getting closer to replicating the living room setup at 30,000 feet.

The screens will have what AA calls “industry-leading screen sizes,” along with 4K technology, expanded content and partnership, USB-C charging ports, and bluetooth connectivity. So in other words, American will join Delta and United in 2022. If you’ve already booked your travel on AA, don’t hold your breath. Installation will begin in 2028 on newly delivered narrowbody aircraft. The entire fleet including a retrofit of the current aircraft in the fleet isn’t expected until next decade.

Now, AA’s 140 widebody aircraft already feature seatback screens as do its A321XLRs. The narrowbody reversal comes 12 years after the airline doubled-down on the idea that the screens aren’t worth the cost during the post-US Airways merger period. We’ll see what AA’s move is 12 years now — perhaps it’ll be to remove those screens… again.

For more on this, visit this week’s post on Cranky Flier.

Alaska Adds Athens and Paris

Alaska Airlines continues to mold its image into that of a global carrier, as it announced two new European destinations from its Seattle home. This May, Alaska will begin flying to both Athens and Paris/CDG from SEA, operating 5x weekly to Paris and 3x weekly to Athens. Both flights will be operated on Hawaiian’s Alaska’s B787-9 Dreamliners.

Prior to last year, the Hawaiian islands were as far as Alaska had strayed from North America, but that has changed in a big way. These two flights will join London/LHR, Reykjavik, and Rome/FCO as European destinations on the carrier, along with Tokyo/Narita and Seoul/Incheon in Asia. In its release, Alaska said that both Athens and Paris were among the most requested by Atmos members. Well, yeah, you could put Paris with Newark or Tucson, and all of a sudden people would want to go to all three. Paris always does the heavy lifting.

This comes as part of Alaska’s goal of having 14 long-haul destinations by 2030. Alaska will compete head-to-head with Delta on SEA-CDG, while it will not face non-stop competition on SEA-ATH as its the sole carrier flying there not only from Seattle, but from the entire west coast.

American Grows Premium Offerings

It’s not just seatbacks changing on American. The carrier is also growing its onboard premium seating options as it expands both first class and its extra legroom options on its narrowbody fleet.

At this time, American says about 25% of the seats on its narrow body fleet are premium, but after this project is complete, the figure will be closer to 40%. This includes new MAX 10s being delivered with 24 first class seats and a retrofit for its A321neos with more as well. The AAirline will also expand the number of Main Cabin Extra seats, which, when combined with the additional seats in first class will only go to bring greater shame to those still stuck in Main Cabin.

It also plans to refresh the interiors of its single-aisle aircraft, to include adding storage (to encourage more carry-ons and force the boarding process to take even longer), redesigned seats (to increase the chance you won’t find gum on the bottom of your seat), and enhanced lighting (so you can better see the passengers still relegated to Main Cabin despite the dramatic increase in premium seat counts).

Google Wins Bid for Spirit’s Data

Google won an auction with a price of $10 million giving it access to Spirit’s abandoned data, software code, and operations records. Google says it wants the bundle to improve its AI processes but we think they’re doing all this to reverse engineer the feeling of euphoria that came from cracking open a BuzzBall in seat 37C when flying from Fort Lauderdale to Latrobe, PA. The purchase does not include personal data (allegedly) including the 50 million members of Free Spirit, the 97 million who flew on the airline, or internal personal records.

Supposedly what’s included is data from marketing campaigns, HR, strategy, and project management. We understand that to be primarily a comprehensive record of Spirit’s cache of yellow paint cans.

It also includes pricing from billions of flights, pricing curve data, and billions of passenger transaction records. Lastly, it has 30 million lines of codes, metadata, software models, and algorithms along with redacted employee records. At this point, the relevant question isn’t to ask what Google will really do with all this — but to ask how it’s possible they didn’t already have all of it already?

It’s not a done deal yet, however, as Spirit’s flight attendant union is objecting to the sale.

• Air India‘s flights to and from Visakhapatnam will operate from the new Alluri Sitarama Raju International Airport, at Bhogapuram. But good news, folks, the airline code isn’t changing, it’s still VTZ, so it should be simple.
• AirAsia is returning 25 aircraft to their lessors.
• Akasa Air agreed to a sale-and-leaseback for seven B737-8s.
• Azul is entering a transition year.
• Brussels Airlines is adding three destinations you’ll likely want to avoid during winter.
• Cathay Pacific says it’ll add 15 airplanes in the next 10 years.
• Fly2Galicia plans to launch operations this December with eight routes from Santiago de Compostela.
• flybondi seems to have booked its appearance in Cranky Flier’s year-end Airlines We Lost post.
• Israir has October 19 as its target date to begin flying to New York.
• Korean Air will begin 3x weekly seasonal service from Seoul to Melbourne beginning December 18.
• Lufthansa City expects its first A220 in November.
• National Airlines received DOT authority for U.S. – Venezuela service. We expect it to open a hub at DCA soon.
• Oman Air named Nasser Al Sharji as its new CEO.
• SAA‘s acting CEO is no longer acting as CEO.
• Somali Airlines is hoping to resume operations later this year.
• SpiceJet was reprimanded in an Indian court.
• Southwest is scooping up $2 billion in credit from Chase and Citi.
• STARLUX is going to grow its training complex in Taipei.
• WestJet completed the de-LCCification of its cabins.

What starts with E, ends with E, and has only 1 letter in it?

Envelope

We were booked to fly from LAX to Honolulu on the 7am departure and then connect to Hilo for a few days, exploring the windward side of the Big Island. We had the morning flight booked with a 1.5 hour connection, which seemed ideal. Then there was a schedule change a couple months before travel, and our connection was canceled. We were looking at a long 2.5 hour connection. We could leave LA on the 10am, have an hour and a quarter in Honolulu, and get into Hilo only an hour later, so we made the switch — after yet another pained conversation with a Hawaiian agent. That was a mistake.

Fast forward to the day of travel. I had woken up leisurely around 6:30am for that nice and late 10am flight when I saw a notification on my phone. Boarding had been delayed until… 5:15pm? I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn’t missing something, but sure enough, we had been delayed eight hours to 6pm. Great.

First thing I did was hop online to get the lay of the land. With this delay arriving into Honolulu so late, there were no connections on to Hilo. Even worse, there were no flights from Honolulu to Hilo with four seats the next day either. Naturally, I started scanning for Kona options as I called up Hawaiian, deciding a 2+ hour drive would be better than delaying yet another day.

As usual, I was sent to that awful call center in the Philippines. I don’t understand why that still exists considering it’s the same reservation system as Alaska. The person on the phone said she could look at other options for me, but every 30 seconds she kept saying she had to go ask her colleague for help.

I had found a flight at 1:30pm on American to Kona that had decent availability, so I asked her to move us to that. After talking to her “colleague,” she said they wouldn’t put me on another airline. This made no sense, because it was showing as a maintenance delay. (I actually looked it up, and the flight out the night before turned back to LAX, so they stole our airplane for the 7am flight we were originally on, and the 10am got stuck with the broken plane.)

The agent then asked if I could fly out of a co-terminal. I said yes, but there weren’t any flights that I could get to in time that had availability. (Long Beach was pushing it, but it was full anyway.) She would not stop asking about co-terminals and asked if I could fly out of Seattle or San Francisco. At one point she asked if Sacramento or Oakland would be possible.

At this point, I’ll admit that it got heated. I told her those were nowhere near us, and I needed real solutions before seats disappear. She just kept saying I could get a refund. That was all she was willing to do.

I should have hung up and tried someone else. Actually, I should have hung up and called Alaska to talk to someone in Boise, but the available seats were dwindling. I told her to just refund our outbound, and then I bought tickets on American for a little over $300 each.

It took her a long time, and we were on the phone for more than an hour before she finally got it done. Or she said she got it done, but then I looked online at the reservation and saw she had only done one. Eventually, she got it done.

With our new American flight confirmed and time to kill, I did call Alaska directly and asked them to look at the reservation to make sure our return looked ok. I did not want this mistake to screw us. The Boise-based agent said it was good. (It wasn’t, but that wasn’t apparent until the next part of our trip, so stay tuned for that.)

Just when I thought I could relax, American delayed our new flight by 3 hours. It was an aircraft swap, and our new airplane was in Philadelphia — but it hadn’t even left.

This was not great. I had quickly switched the rental car to Kona, but we still had a more than two-hour drive to where we were staying. We would arrive at 7:30pm which meant stores would be closed, and we’d be driving on a very dark saddle road that climbs above 6,000 feet across the island. If we were lucky, we’d get to our Airbnb at 11pm. On top of this, I didn’t believe the posted departure time since it would require everything to go right in Philly and still only be a 35 minute turn. Yeah, right.

So it was back to the drawing board, and that meant flying the next day. Sure enough, Southwest had a weekend-only 7am flight from LAX to Kona, and we could book basic economy for $282 each, only about $70 more per person than what we originally paid including the checked bags. We’d land at 9:30am and then be on the Hilo side for lunch. Done deal.

And I’m glad we did. That American flight? It showed the inbound arriving at 4:54pm for a long time… with a 4:45pm departure to Kona. Typical American. It was eventually pushed and didn’t leave until 6:15pm. It would have been a very late night… but not as late as if we’d stuck with Hawaiian. Our original flight ended up delaying 14 hours, leaving after midnight for a westbound redeye.

I checked us in on Southwest right away. Since it was basic economy, we were placed in 27EF and 29AB, just in front of the last row. This seemed perfectly fine to me, so I didn’t bother paying for seats further forward. After an early night, we woke up before 5am, got our stuff together, hopped in a Lyft, and made our way to LAX.

The traffic was fine, but the line to drop a checked bag? It was long.

We printed our own tags and got in line, but it took 20 minutes before we reached someone to give our bags. And when we were done? The line had gotten much longer. Yikes.

We went through security about an hour before departure, and then we headed to the gate. Our airplane was there, and they said we’d start boarding soon. I relaxed as the kids went to get snacks. Then, I tensed up. The gate agent said they were still waiting for one more flight attendant, so boarding would be a delayed a bit. But to pass the time, she said that people probably noticed she had an accent. She gave her name, and then said the first person to guess where she was from would get a $50 gift card on Southwest.

I was shocked that it didn’t take long for someone to guess Lithuania correctly. Impressive. But by the time that was done, the last crewmember had arrived, and we were boarding. Well played.

As boarding began, they called my name. Uh oh. Turns out, they said we could do priority boarding. Something smelled fishy. I had been talking to a friend at Southwest as I went through the mess the day before, and he knew I ended up booking Southwest in the end. Apparently, he said something and this got me a little bit of special treatment. You know I never want that, but after this long saga, I didn’t mind as much as I normally would.

Walking down the jet bridge, someone from the station gave me a bottle of Korbel, saying thanks for writing about the airport’s people mover saga. Ok, well… that was nice. Thanks for reading.

Southwest 2637
August 2, 2026

From Los Angeles
➤ Scheduled Departure: 7a
➤ Actual Departure: 659a
➤ From Gate: 13
➤ Wheels Up: 711a
➤ From Runway: 24L

To Kona
➤ Wheels Down: 922a
➤ On Runway: 17
➤ Scheduled Arrival: 935a
➤ Actual Arrival: 926a
➤ At Gate: 6

Aircraft
➤ Type: Boeing 737-8 MAX
➤ Delivered: June 15, 2019
➤ Registered: N8739L, msn 60231
➤ Livery: Hot Dog on a Stick colors

Flight
➤ Cabin: Coach in Seat 29A
➤ Load: ~99% Full
➤ Flight Time: 5h23m

Stepping onboard, I was greeted by a very nice and new-looking cabin with those big bins (which I didn’t need since I checked my bag). These MAXs are really like flying a different airline than those old -700s. We trudged toward the back and took our seats. Randy was working in the back, and he had help from Steve who was a flight attendant commuting back home. Randy took my champagne and said he could keep it cold for me.

This airplane had the older seats which have the fast USB charging port but don’t have the device holders.

They boarded pretty quickly, and we pushed back a minute early. Then, as always, it was a quick taxi to the runway. The captain had jokes, and told us all it would be a short 5 hour and 5 minute flight to Buffalo. But he wasn’t joking when he said we’d have a mostly nice ride to Kona after our climbout.

We had Anuvu wifi on this flight, which meant I didn’t plan on having wifi. But I logged on with my phone and it actually worked ok for limited uses. I ended up watching a movie anyway, The Devil Wears Prada 2, because, well, can’t imagine there’s any other time I’d ever watch that movie.

At altitude, the flight attendants got up and came through with drinks. They had a jumbo snack box with multiple options and told everyone to take as much as we all wanted.

I raided those snacks like I was preparing for a nuclear winter. Then I got the whole can of water, and I sat back and watched my movie.

Along the way, we passed by Hurricane Genevieve which I think was only a Tropical Storm by that point. We skirted to the north and had just enough bumps for the seatbelt sign to flip on.

I went back to use the lav, and that’s when I chatted with flight attendants Randy, Steve, and Carissa. Randy and Steve had been with Southwest for more than 30 years. Carissa was pushing four. We talked shop for a little while.

While I was back there, they did a second pass for drinks in the cabin. Carissa said she could whip up something for my kids, so she did something that she said was like a creamsicle and another that was a strawberry refresher.

My kids weren’t interested, but I was. That strawberry refresher was good.

Around an hour before landing, they came through with the third service which included drinks and a package of Oreos. I just kept writing until it was time to descend, so we could finally, properly start our vacation.

Once Mauna Kea came into view, I knew we were almost there. Flying into Kona from the north, we had great views the whole way. And the flight was apparently so pleasant for our pilots that they decided to do a go-around, which I caught on a time lapse video.

After we climbed back up and pointed north, the captain told us that approach control kept him too high for too long. I think he just liked the view. After a quick circle, we touched down and rolled out toward the end of the runway where a Boeing 777X was sitting, wings folded, apparently doing some testing.

After we blocked in, the best news for us sitting in the next to last row was that they would be using both the front and back doors. We were off quickly, and then, to cap off the special treatment, some of the local Southwest rampers met us and gave us leis and some swag bags with water bottles, a coozie, and maybe a couple other trinkets.

Again, I never like special treatment, but I haven’t been lei’d upon arrival in Hawaiʻi in so many years — and I was so exhausted after that epic 24 hours — that I was very happy to accept and kick off our trip right.

We rented a Bronco and spent a compressed 2.5 instead of 3.5 days going everywhere from the southern tip and the green sand beach of Papakōlea…

… to the top of Maunakea.

It was exhausting to cram that into three days, but we did it. Then it was off to Maui.

This is the second time Southwest helped save a Hawaiian vacation for me. The first was when my Hawaiian A321neo from Kahului to Long Beach was canceled at the last minute due to the engine fiasco in 2023, and I bought a last minute ticket to LAX. Maybe I should just be buying tickets on Southwest in the first place.

This move to put screens in each seat is symbolically very important, even if the timing is rather odd. After all, the airline is just now getting around to removing the screens from its final pre-merger A319s, the last narrowbodies that had them. US Airways had no screens, but American did, and as we all know, the new American adopted the US Airways strategy.

American had stuck to that plan to be a lower-cost, lower-frills network carrier for years. As financial results continued to sag, it finally changed its tune, suddenly deciding it wanted to be a premium network airline like Delta and United. It has already made some moves in that regard, pouring money into lounges, improving coffee and liquor, and refitting some narrowbodies with more premium seats. But nothing is going to be as visible as adding back in-seat video.

I’ve talked about this over the years, and originally, I didn’t see a need for seatback screens on domestic flights. But over time, I waffled, and to this day, I still waffle. But increasingly I see the value. It is a much more premium look and feel for travelers. Boarding an American aircraft is a stark reminder that sitting in coach on that airline feels more like flying Frontier than it does flying United, Delta, or JetBlue. Screens have become the most visible sign that you are flying on a full-service airline.

Obviously the goal is to justify the screens by gaining share, personalizing the experience, and improving revenue… all that good stuff. But there is a monetization angle as well that Delta and United have pursued. Free wifi gets the airline your data, and then there’s a screen right in front of you which the airlines can use to advertise whatever they want. This hasn’t been wildly successful yet, but we are just scratching the surface. United has set up Kinective to do that work. American will soon learn, if it hasn’t already, that adding seatback screens is now a whole lot more than just putting a screen on a seat.

But listen, I want to temper your excitement. Don’t expect to see this on your airplane tomorrow. The release says that new deliveries won’t even see seatback screens until 2028. Retrofits were somewhat less clear, but I get the feeling 2028 is the timeline on those as well. And when will it be done? “Early next decade” is what American says about the entire mainline narrowbody fleet. That is very far away. What I don’t know is how that will be phased in.

For example, the A320 fleet is down to only 48 aircraft, and 44 of those are more than 20 years old. (The newest of the other four is 16.) With such a long timeline for installation, I think it’s safe to bet this fleet won’t get the screens before it retires. So is it possible most of the fleet will be done quickly, but there will just be some quirky outliers until retirements are done in the early 2030s? Maybe, but I did not hear back from American with an answer.

Beyond adding back screens, American is also going to add more premium seats onboard. What that means isn’t entirely clear. We do know that American says about 25 percent of its narrowbody seats today are premium (meaning extra legroom coach or better), and that number will climb to 40 percent.

Some of this comes in the form of already-announced retrofits to existing aircraft like the A319s and A320s. We will also see what I expect to be an extra row of First Class added to the A321neo fleet, raising it from 20 to 24. The airline has also now confirmed that the B737-10 MAX will have 24 First Class seats when that airplane shows up.

American is also going to fix a long-standing problem by adding more Main Cabin Extra seating to its fleet. The details weren’t given at all, but the release did say the airline would be “retrofitting the majority of the narrowbody fleet to expand the number of MCE seats.”

This has been a problem for ages. Look at the A321neos. Everyone has 20 in First Class, but American has only 35 in Main Cabin Extra while United has 57 in Economy Plus and Delta puts 60 in Delta Comfort. Or look at the B737-800 where everybody has 16 in First Class. In Main Cabin Extra, American has 24 while Delta has 36 in Delta Comfort and most of United’s fleet has 54 in Economy Plus.

So yes, American is again playing catch-up to the other airlines it wants to emulate. This requires spending a fair bit of cash on putting all-new seats onboard, and there will presumably be fewer seats overall thanks to these expanding premium cabins. That is a big change in strategy.

But for now, American is still just paying the price of admission. It’s necessary and helpful, but I’m really waiting for the eventual timeframe when American starts innovating on its own instead of just copying everyone else.

Having reviewed both a letter from Chief Executive Officer Robert Isom to his officers and one from Chief Operating Officer David Seymour to his leadership, this is what I believe to be happening:

• Chief Communications Officer Ron DeFeo is out after 11 years with his fiefdom being divided into three different areas:
  • SVP Comms and Chief Marketing Officer Caroline Clayton takes over comms and now reports to Robert
  • Caroline loses marketing to the commercial group which now goes with brand, advertising, and partnership to someone who will be hired under Chief Commercial Officer Nat Pieper
  • Director Team Member Engagement Beril McManus will now report to Chief People Officer Cole Brown
• EVP American Eagle, Corporate Real Estate, and Government Affairs Nate Gatten is leaving for Apple, and his work is being divvied up three ways as well:
  • Steve Neuman, Senior Vice President, Global Head of Government Affairs, will be in charge of government affairs and will now report to Robert
  • VP Corporate Real Estate Amanda Zhang will now report to Chief Financial Officer Devon May
  • SVP Regionals and Business Transformation Brandon Kahle will now report to David in ops
• SVP Technical Operations Kevin Brickner is leaving and will be replaced by John “Bendo” Bendoraitis who was COO at Spirit until, well, you know
• SVP Airport Operations Julie Rath and SVP Operations Planning, Analytics, and Product Management Anne Moroni will now both report to SVP Flight Ops and IOC JC Gulbranson instead of directly to David
• Chief Customer Officer Heather Garboden will stop reporting to both David and Nat and will now only report to Nat… she also gains reservations, contact centers, service recovery, and catering with VP Global Contact Centers and Service Recovery Kim Cisek moving to her group from ops where she reported to Julie Rath before

That was tough to keep straight, but on the surface, it makes sense. What is being stripped out of the communications group absolutely should not have been there in the first place. And why would regionals be combined with corporate real estate and government affairs? These are all just quirks of a structure that was put in place to fit with the people who held the leadership roles at the time (or to keep them away from people who held other leadership roles where the groups belonged). So, fine. But let’s go under the surface here to analyze this further.

Robert’s note acts like this is a tidal wave of change at a unique time. Specifically, the note starts off with this:

American Airlines is entering a defining moment.

In our centennial year, we have a rare opportunity: to build on the progress we’ve made, address the gaps that remain and position this airline for long-term success. We reflected on the importance of this moment at Journey earlier this year – and previewed a bold strategy to carry us forward into our next 100 years.

What are we even talking about here? The defining moment was more like a defining last decade when American defined itself as an underperforming, cost-focused network carrier. Maybe this is a re-defining moment, but this move isn’t a bold one that redefines the airline.

But according to Robert’s letter, it’s not just a defining moment. This is a “rare opportunity.” How so?

American has had the same opportunity for years, but it has been slow to act, or even to re-act. Maybe it’s rare because it’s Robert’s last chance before the board actually does something more dramatic? This all just sounds like worthless fluff to me. But that’s just the tone of the letter. It doesn’t mean there isn’t any substance.

The big winner here is Heather Garboden, and that is the most promising part of these moves. She was given the hardest job in the company, having to serve two masters in both ops and commercial, while representing the customer that American didn’t really care much about before. Now, she is firmly part of the commercial team, and she is controlling more of the pieces that should fall under the customer group. On top of that, she is now joining the senior leadership team which means *gasp* the person advocating for the customer actually has a seat at the table. Finally.

While Heather’s gain is also a gain for the traveler, the three other lesser winners are wins mostly for their own benefit. JC Gulbranson (who takes over a bigger chunk of the ops world under his fiefdom), Caroline Clayton (who takes comms over but loses marketing), and Steve Neuman (who moves up the ladder) also all join the senior leadership team.

That winners list should also include Bendo who obviously gains since he went from unemployed at Spirit to being gainfully employed. He joins Matt Klein who according to his LinkedIn profile has very quietly moved down from his Chief Commercial Officer job at Spirit to VP of Pricing at Southwest. But while I am very wary about putting anyone who was in charge of Spirit’s failed commercial strategy into another important commercial role, I don’t feel the same way about Bendo who by all accounts can run an operation.

So why aren’t these ops moves also big winners in my book? It’s because the people at the top of the operation are still there. Robert and David own American’s operation and have for years. You can move people around under them, but without change at the top, well, it’s incomplete. Then again, being incomplete inexplicably appears to be by design.

American never seems done acting like it’s trying to reinvent itself, but the airline doesn’t usually telegraph the fluidity of its organization as clearly as it did in Robert’s memo:

The changes I’ve outlined here are important, but they are just the first step in a series of actions designed to strengthen our team, foster greater alignment and act with greater urgency across the enterprise.

You would think that death by a million cuts wouldn’t be ideal here, but well, that’s how I read this.

So maybe David Seymour’s time is running short, and his retirement is coming. In this move, we see him lose his partial control over the customer group which has also taken reservations away from him. Further, two of his direct reports are now under JC Gulbranson, and there’s a new former airline COO to run tech ops. It sounds like JC and Bendo will be competing to succeed David at some point.

If that happens, I’ll have to think about this differently, but for now, this group remains under David’s control, and finance remains under Devon May. Devon’s organization was barely touched in this move, but he has been one of the strongest champions of cost control which would seem to go against the direction Robert wants this airline to go. You have to spend money to improve revenue.

All of this meaty change, however, is speculation. What has been announced just feels like another reorg. A spokesperson tried to make it clear to me that all of these people leaving the company are doing so on their own. I know that’s how things work in a company when you’re at a certain level, but it makes it seem like these moves are just Robert reacting to decisions the people under him are making to flee the company.

If Robert was serious about sending a message that things are going to be different, he should have made it clear that he is driving this change, and some other heads should have rolled. Then again, that should have happened years ago. He should have made all the big changes at once, and then he should have put serious effort into calming the frayed nerves of the long-suffering employee groups. We didn’t see any of that. Instead, we’ll just have to sit and wait to see what’ the next move at the airline will be’s next.

Today, that little blog has grown into Cranky Flier LLC which not only puts out the blog but also publishes Cranky Network Weekly, produces The Air Show podcast, organizes Cranky Dorkfest, and puts on the Cranky Network Awards. This doesn’t even mention the 20+ hard-working people who do travel planning at Cranky Concierge. I could never have guessed back then that this is what it would turn into.

I can wax poetic about all this, but that’s boring. Let’s bring some data into this to spice things up.

Since I started writing this blog, I’ve personally written more than 4.3 million words here, which is apparently about the same as writing the entire Harry Potter series four times over. And I’ve loved writing every one of them…. but really… some more than others. I mean, there’s nothing better than those Alitalia posts back in the day.

Here are some more fun stats for you:

• More than 5,300 posts written
• American has been the subject of the most posts at 573, followed by Delta at 545, United at 518, and Southwest at 439
• Most importantly, Alitalia has been the subject of 72 posts, not nearly enough if you ask me
• I have written up 300 trip reports
• The Cranky Jackass has been awarded 34 times, making it truly an elite award that is not bestowed lightly

Of course, this is about more than just what I write, it’s also about the comments. There have been more than 120,000 comments published since this site started, made up for more than 9.3 million words. Sure, I’m responsible for 13,500 of those comments myself, but that means more than 100,000 have been written by you, and I’d say I probably enjoyed at least half of those.

The most frequent commenters are names you might recognize. Nick Barnard is first with more than 3,000 followed by Tim Dunn (2,700+), Bill from DC (2,400+), SEAN (2,200+), and Kilroy (2,100+).

Here’s another way to slice that. Want to guess who has written the most words in their comments? I’ll give you three guesses, but the first two don’t count. Tim Dunn has penned more than 647,000 words, presumably all of them praising Delta. That is roughly the same length as War and Peace and Moby Dick combined.

The number of weekly posts has declined since those early days when I used to write multiple times a day and then eventually once per day Monday through Friday. But the number of comments has held up well, and so far this year we have the most average comments per post ever. Keep it up. (Most of you.)

Cranky Flier Stats by Year

What were your favorite posts to comment on? Old-timers will definitely know the first one. But here are the top five.

• Family Airlines Gets Smacked by the DOT (317)
• Don’t Blame Overbooking for This United Mess (261)
• Blaming United’s Problems on Continental (or Vice Versa) is Exactly the Problem (240)
• How Southwest Determines Your Boarding Card Number, and How You Can Now Jump the Line for $40 (222)
• Feds Announce Massive, Haphazard Cuts in Air Service Starting Tomorrow, and We Should All Be Angry (189)

Of course I appreciate my family helping make this go, especially my wife Kirsten who has read countless blog posts and unwillingly sparred with me on a variety of topics. That always made the posts better. I will also always be grateful to my good friends Chris and Heather who were the ones who pushed me to start writing. This wouldn’t have happened without them, and heck, even the name is their doing.

I want to say “here’s to another 20 years,” but do I really want to still be doing this when I’m pushing 70? I might not have time for it when I’m running all those bingo games in the retirement home. I guess there’s only one way to find out. Just keep reading and participating in the comments, and we shall see where the runway takes us.

Air Canada goes Private Equity

Air Canada is selling a 25% stake in its Aeroplan loyalty program to a group of well-intentioned and customer-loving individuals from Blackstone and Canadian pension fund La Caisse for a cool $2 billion. This puts the valuation of the program(me) at $8 billion, which its awfully high when compared to what the carrier currently holds in poutine futures.

Air Canada says it will retain control of the program (for now…we assume) and it will use the funds to reduce debt and buy a new maple syrup vat for its Dreamliner fleet. The irony here, of course, is that this is part of a cycle for Air Canada and Aeroplan. The carrier spun it off in 2003, and it would then try to give it a go at its own new loyalty scheme before buying Aeroplan back in 2019. It’s expected that this will not create any waves in the near future, but rarely do these firms invest literal billions in something and just sit on the sideline and cross their fingers.

It seems this might be the result of Air Canada playing the long game brilliantly. It bought Aeroplan back from Aimia for just US$323 million and seven years later flipped 25% of it for $2 billion. That’s a return rate so high, we can’t even handle the math. So while AC takes a victory lap on the transaction, the rest of us will hold our breath to hope that Aeroplan doesn’t one day create the Canadian version of Delta SkyMiles, and charge 400,000 points for a coach redemption from Kitchener to Saskatoon.

Delta Connects Austin with the Austin of France

Delta Air Lines continues its ramp up in Austin as the airline will begin daily service next summer from its burgeoning focus city in Texas’s capital to Paris. One daily A330-900neo service begins in March and will operate for the IATA summer, wrapping up in October. The aircraft will feature 29 Delta One seats for those with Texas-sized wallets (or SkyMiles balances), and 28 in Premium Select recliners with the remaining 224 behind the curtain.

When the flight begins, it’ll be the fourth transatlantic route for Austin, and the first to be operated by a U.S. carrier. The three others are evenly spread with one per alliance: BA to London/Heathrow, KLM to Amsterdam, and Lufthansa to Frankfurt.

In addition to Paris, the carrier will also begin new nonstop service to San Diego on April 12. It will go head-to-head with both Alaska and Southwest on the route. It also plans to expand its winter-only service from AUS to Cancún to operate year-round and to add a second daily nonstop on Austin – San Jose (CA) — before the first daily nonstop begins operating this October.

Air Canada Posts C$215 Million Q2 Loss

A loss of about US$155 million doesn’t hurt so bad when you announce you sold a quarter of your loyalty program for $2 billion, so perhaps its not all pessimisme et désespoir in Saint-Laurent as Air Canada released its Q2 earnings this week. Just like its counterparts south of the border, Air Canada set records both for Q2 gross revenue and expenses, with C$6.2 billion in revenue offset by C$6.4 billion in expenses.

This does mark a major drop from Q2 last year in which the airline posted a C$418 million profit. Capacity increased by a whopping 0.3%. The carrier internally had hopes for a larger capacity increase but when no Canadian teams reached June’s Stanley Cup Final — as usual — it knew that dream was dead. Fuel costs jumped 50% to C$1.7 billion compared with last year, and it managed to recover about half that amount in fares.

AC finished the quarter with about C$7.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents, or roughly the amount of funds it takes to heat one home on the Canadian prarie through a harsh winter.

American Shifts the Deck Chairs

With American settled into a solid third place amongst the big-3 U.S. carriers, CEO Robert Isom’s current solution to challenge Delta and American is to…shake up the org chart.

Former Spirit COO John Bendoraitis will come on to run the carrier’s technical operations, Nat Pieper will see his role expand from CCO to include marketing, branding, advertising, and partnerships, while Chief Customer Officer Heather Garboden will take over reservations and service recovery (good luck) and JC Gulbranson will add airports and planning to his portfolio.

Current Chief Communications Officer Ron DeFeo communicated that he will be stepping down from his current role, along with Kevin Brickner (Senior VP for Technical Ops) who will retire and Nate Gatten (EVP for American Eagle and Governmental Affairs) will also be leAAving. Brickner had been with the carrier since joining US Airways in 1996. Caroline Clayton will take over communications and Steve Neuman will oversee Government Affairs and Sustainability. Garboden, Gulbranson, Clayton, and Neuman will join AA’s senior leadership team which means they’ll have another few hours of meetings on their already-full calendars each week.

The AAirline expects to break-even in 2026, which compares poorly to its two main rivals which are having to find new places to store all the cash that keeps rolling in. These changes will surely do the trick.

Is airBaltic on the Ropes?

Latvian flag carrier airBaltic has been hit especially hard by the closure of Russian airspace for commercial flights, and when that is added to a stew that includes sky-high fuel pricing and its precarious cash situation, the carrier is not in tip-top health as we head towards fall.

The carrier unveiled a radical new business plan to help stave off the inevitable. First off is a reduction in fleet size from 54 A220-300s to just 36 by the end of the year. While that in of itself may not seem drastic, it replaces the airline’s original plan of expanding that fleet to 100. Riga would remain the carrier’s main hub while it uses secondary bases and focus cities to provide “selected point-to-point services.”

Despite the reduction in fleet, it believes it can maintain its current capacity by reducing its extensive wet-leasing program for other carriers, including for Lufthansa Group. airBaltic CEO Erno Hildén is going hat-in-hand to acquire EUR225 million in interim financing to keep the doors open. Much of airBaltic’s A220 fleet flies wet-leases, but in the summer months only. The lack of year-round contracts dramatically reduces the profitability of those airplanes.

• Air Canada plans to begin service to Lagos next year.
• Air Montenegro added an E-195 on lease. Plan accordingly.
• Airlink‘s first long-haul destination will be Doha through a Qatar codeshare.
• Allegiant was buoyed by last night’s preseason opener at Allegiant Stadium, so it added five new routes.
• Belavia is scooping up three B737-800s.
• Cabo Verde Airlines received $4.7 million in funding to keep the doors open.
• Delta Concierge is a thing that really isn’t a thing but Delta is trying to make it a thing.
• Etihad is adding 4x weekly winter-only service to Göthenburg.
• GOL‘s new CEO is André Fehlauer. He will assume the role next month, replacing Ceslo Ferrer,
• Israir is closer to operating into the United States.
• ITA claims it turned a profit. Sorta.
• Lufthansa claims to be seeking labor peace. “Claims” is doing a lot of work here.
• Riyadh Air will begin 3x weekly service to Bangkok next month.
• Royal Brunei is finally expanding its codeshare with Turkish. Breathe easy, folks.
• Ryanair is saying goodbye to Niš, Serbia later this year. Cranky can confirm as of press time that Niš is a real place.
• S7 is struggling to stay on runways.
• Southwest added two CEOs to its board.
• t’way plans a h’ybrid model with T’rinity Airways.
• Wizz Air is opening a new base in Brasov, Romania.

I’m excited for the next Fibonacci convention…

It’s going to be as big as the last two combined

Allegiant’s Revenue and Profit Was Up

Allegiant finally announced its Q2 earnings, and the carrier posted $158 million in EBITDA in its first earnings since the close of its merger with Sun Country on May 13.

The two carriers combined for $943.5 million in operating revenue, including $776 million for Allegiant alone, a record for G4 and 16% higher than last year despite capacity being down nearly 7%. The carrier says air-related ancillary revenue stayed flat, and its increase in revenue (and profit) came from higher fares, increased bundle sales, and upsells to Allegiant Extra. It also saw credit card and other third-party-product revenue increase 32% to $44.5 million. Its average fare was $76.90, 47% higher than last year’s $52.20.

Costs rose for the airline travel company airline as they did for everyone else. CASM jumped 28% to nearly $0.14, thanks in-part to a 71% increase in fuel costs. It ended the year’s first half with $1.3B in liquidity, most it which it plans to spend at next month’s company picnic in Lodi, Colorado which is located halfway between Minneapolis/St Paul and Las Vegas. We assume this gateway to 29,000-person Morgan County will become the airline’s newest base.

737-7 MAX Finally Receives FAA Certification

Nearly 10 years after it was first delayed for safety reviews, the Federal Aviation Authority finally signed off on the airworthiness of the Boeing 737-7 MAX. Despite being smallest of the 737 MAX family, some say it’s the mightiest of the bunch. (And by some, we mean one airline….)

Southwest has been, and will be the launch customer for the type and is certainly eager to get its hands on the first deliveries. Before they can be delivered to WN, they’ll be retrofitted with the airline’s new extra legroom seats and a sprinkling of LUV. The airline is expecting to put the MAX 7 fleet into service next year. Boeing has built 30 MAX 7s and nine MAX 10s to this point, with the MAX 10s accounting for about 30% of its outstanding orders.

As part of the certification process, Boeing was required to redesign the engine’s anti-ice system, the flight control and crew alerting systems, and for WN specifically: the tap to pay in the restroom which charges customers $0.25 for the first two minutes, $0.10 for every 30 seconds thereafter, and $0.49 per toilet paper square used.

American Makes Complimentary Upgrades Tougher

American Airlines AAnounced Thursday that it would no longer permit complimentary upgrades from Main Cabin to First/Business on domestic flights sold with three cabins. Passengers with elite status seated in the back will be permitted to upgrade one class to Premium Economy but can say goodbye to the fancy seats in the front.

This means on nine AA routes, the ability to skip Premium Economy on a complimentary upgrade is no more — but those who purchase Premium to begin with will be able to upgrade to Business. Other than the obvious Boston to Rochester (NY) route, the nine domestic routes AA currently flies with three cabins are:

• Boston: Los Angeles
• Chicago/ORD: Honolulu, Kahului
• Dallas/Fort Worth: Honolulu, Kahului, Kona
• New York/JFK: Los Angeles, San Francisco
• Phoenix: Honolulu

So we’re talking about three of the most premium coast-to-coast routes and a bunch to Hawai’i.

It doesn’t matter how you get to Premium Economy — purchasing it outright, using miles to upgrade, or a systemwide upgrade certificate — you are still eligible for the bump to Business. This new policy is expected to go live on August 25 or as soon as AA’s IT team can figure out how to implement it without shutting down the entire airline on accident.

Good News/Bad News for Pilots at Allegiant

Allegiant’s 1,300 pilots ratified a new two-year collective bargaining agreement to maintain labor peace in the cockpit at the recently-merged carrier. The agreement comes after typically feisty negotiations that included picketing by pilots at nearly two dozen airports late last year.

Highlights of the deal include a 40% raise off the bat, 54% in increased wages by January, and other gains in retirement benefits and workplace policies. Ninety nine percent of eligible pilots voted, with it passing at an 80-20 clip. So all is well with Allegiant pilots, but unfortunately we can’t say the same about the other half of the Allegiant – Sun Country merger as that airline is concerned it’s losing its skygods to its MSP rival Delta.

CEO Greg Anderson said this week that elevated attrition amongst the pilot ranks of Sun Country is mostly from the MSP area. Anderson says those pilots are moving to the “largest full-service carrier in MSP” and we can assure you he’s not talking about Mesaba. Sun Country removed nearly 350 September departures from its schedule to account for the loss of so many pilots, while the Las Vegas-based carrier hopes to use the savings from cutting flights and paying less pilots to grow its deicing capacity up from its current level of “it doesn’t get cold in Vegas.”

End of the Road at Chicago/ORD

American Airlines partnership with Landline in Chicago will end later this year as the carrier elects to eliminate one route entirely, and switch the other to (gasp) being operated by an airplane.

AA will completely exit the market in Rockford (IL) at the “Chicago” Rockford International Airport. AA’s departure from the airport located about three hours west of Chicago/ORD will leave Allegiant as its lone carrier. The other Landline route for AA in Chicago was to wake up the echoes in South Bend. Despite the ending of the bus route, American will continue serving ORD-SBN, flying 3x daily beginning October 5. Both Landline routes began last October and will not survive to see a second birthday.

These reductions do not apply to AA and Landline’s relationship in Philadelphia, where it’ll continue to offer connecting “flights” to five destinations. ORD exiting the Landline family will leave it with four current hub airports for “connecting service” including: Minneapolis/St Paul, Montréal, Philadelphia, and Toronto. It operates its own shuttle services to-and-from the airports in Boston and Denver.

• Air India appointed former Ethiopian Airlines CEO Tewolde Gebremariam to the same position.
• Aircalin is making moves.
• Azul‘s received approval from the Brazilian government for American’s $100 million investment.
• Brussels is putting a freeze on long-haul expansion fleet.
• Delta is once again expanding its service into and out of LAS for CES in January. It’ also adding 1x daily Seattle – Tokyo/Narita next year on an A330neo.
• Frontier has another GoWild! pass sale for those who have a macabre sense of humor.
• Jetstar will begin charging customers for a carry-on bag beginning in February.
• JSX intends to grow the size of its fleet.
• Korean delayed the buyback of its catering until to later this fall.
• LATAM‘s Q2 earnings were strong.
• Qantas is selling its stake in Jetstar Japan back to the carrier for $52 million.
• Southwest added a heap of flights for this fall coinciding with college football games across the country.
• Spirit sold its hangar in Detroit for $18 million.
• SWISS posted a Q2 profit of $200 million, making it the shining star amongst its Lufthansa Group brethren.
• Sun Country moved from T3 to T1 to join up with Allegiant in Las Vegas.
• United is adding both Cincinnati (1x daily) and West Palm Beach (1x weekly) from San Francisco this fall.
• Vietnam Airlines expects to have as many as 30 widebodies in its fleet by 2035.
• Volaris is adding three to the U.S. Guadalajara to both Atlanta and Washington/Dulles and Puebla to Chicago/ORD.
• Wizz Air is in the red for Q2.

A man walks into a bar carrying a large piece of asphalt.

He says to the bartender,
“A beer for me… and one for the road.”

In the meantime, if you’re looking for something to read… well, today’s book review might point you in the right direction. I’ll be back soon!

I don’t often do book reviews, but occasionally I read something that grabs me in a way that I just can’t help but share with all of you. That’s how I feel about Flying Crooked by Steve Borgess, an unbelievable read that is actually, surprisingly, based in reality.

To be clear, this is very clearly highlighted as a novel. It is a work of fiction, but Steve — who is now a retired American captain — based this on his experience trying to get on as a pilot with the majors back in the late 1970s. I reached out to Steve to learn just how much of this was real, and it’s more than you would probably guess after reading the book.

The noveled is centered around Jack, a young but skilled pilot who we meet hauling freight on DC-3s out of Philadelphia. It turns out, this closely mirrored Steve’s life flying for Summit Airlines.

In the book, Jack heads down to Florida to try to get on with a big-time cargo carrier, but he ends up getting connected with an airline that has several names that just picked up three used DC-8s to fly the Hajj, connecting Indonesian travelers to Jeddah via Colombo. What ensues is a tale that seems too wild to believe, but in a sense, Steve really just sanitized what actually happened to him while connecting some unrelated dots — like the actual accident of Loftleiðir Flight 001 — into his tale.

You’ll have to read Flying Crooked to see how this story comes together, but be warned. It can get a little technical in a way that will appeal to the pilots out there. Those of you who don’t fly and may not care about exactly how, for example, LORAN works may want to skim some parts. And don’t get too attached to the female interests in the book, because they aren’t fully developed. Other than that, this is just a fun read about what kind of absolutely insane flying happened in the late 1970s at the dawn of US deregulation.

In Steve’s case, he did actually fly the Hajj, though the situation was somewhat different than what played out in the book. He had originally gone down to fly for a friend of his dad’s, both of whom had flown for Pan Am. After three days at the Holiday Inn, there was a knock at the door, and he was told to leave. The whole thing fell apart, and there wasn’t any money left to pay the hotel. But, something else popped up from the ashes.

He ended up flying for an “airline” that had picked up three domestic United DC-8-21s — that had only domestic avionics onboard, with an HF radio thrown in so they could operate — to fly from Indonesia to Jeddah with that stop in the Colombo base each way.

I put “airline” in quotes, because the way Steve told it to me, this company was just some Indonesian guys looking to make a quick buck. The airline had a Hong Kong address, but it didn’t even have a name. They called it NaTomBi for the first names of three of the guys involved in the operation. Most were retired pilots from airlines like Pan Am and Braniff who were just looking to extend their careers after retirement age. That was mixed with young copilots trying to build hours and inexperienced flight engineers looking to become experienced.

This airline was technically flying for Merpati, an Indonesian airline that is long gone. Unlike in the book, Merpati provided the flight attendants, and they slapped a sticker on the airplane. But beyond that, Merpati had no involvement. Steve sent me a photo he took of one of the planes in Colombo.

^{Photo via Steve Borgess}

Overall, it sounds like Steve’s experience mirrored Jack’s in the book in that both operations sat in the gray area, using questionable legal rationale to operate. They both ran into significant problems along the way. The air conditioning incident in the book? That actually happened. Oh and the Syrian airspace thing? There was really an issue, though it was not nearly as dramatic as depicted.

In the end, Steve said he barely flew in the operation, because the planes kept breaking down. Around three months in, he just left and went home, eventually getting on with American and having a long, successful career until mandatory retirement age kicked in.

But this isn’t the story of some grizzled veteran. This is the story of a young, dumb kid who had no fear and would do anything to get jet time so he could keep moving forward in his career. It’s just far more real than kids coming up today in the US airline system could probably imagine. And that’s why it’s such a fun read.

You can find Flying Crooked on Amazon

If you want to see pretty pictures of what this might look like, go to any other media source that covered this. I’m not going to bother showing you any of that, because it’s never going to look like this. Just know that the plan as announced includes $22.5 billion for:

• the largest parking garage in the world with 32,000 spots (the current number one is West Edmonton Mall at 20,000)
• a massive new headhouse to sit behind the Saarinen structure which will have security, customs, and gates that will now expand above ground to a rebuilt Concourse A/B
• the old Temporary Midfield Concourse C/D will be rebuilt without any train stops, presumably as a narrow regional concourse but it’s not entirely clear
• The new Concourse E will be fully built out to go the entire width of the current terminal area
• Another new concourse will be built even further south, going the full width as well
• The AeroTrain will be finished, going in a circle all the way past the farthest concourse

I know, you might be having trouble visualizing this, so let me help.

Does this look like Atlanta’s original design? Yes, except for that first concourse being connected above ground. Oh, and the train will be twice as expensive since it goes in a circle instead of a spine. And oh yeah, Atlanta carried 105 million passengers in 2025 while Dulles had a mere 29 million.

There is this sense of grandeur that does not fit the needs of this airport, and probably never will. This is being built for enormous passenger growth beyond anything realistically needed in the forseeable future. Don’t even get me started on the absurdity of a 32,000 space garage. SeaTac, by the way, is currently the largest in the US with 13,000 spaces. This seems to follow President Trump’s belief that bigger is always better.

The problem with bigger is that it costs a lot of money to build. So airports usually put together their master plans and then phase these projects in over many, many years. In the press conference, President Trump said that the original plan was to build this over 60 years. That isn’t the plan. President Trump explained:

…we’re doing it all at one time; it’ll all be completed and it’ll be beautiful and it’ll be something very special.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said they will start construction in the spring, and they are going to “move at the speed of President Trump.” I’m going to assume they don’t mean clocking his best mile time and that he means fast.

The press release does say this will be done in phases, which I suppose fits with the proclamation that this won’t impact any flights. But there may not be any flights left anyway if they actually build this thing.

I know you’re probably thinking. Maybe he’ll just raise money from somewhere else for this, right? That is not the plan. Jack Potter, CEO of Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) that runs Dulles said:

So, this is not requiring federal dollars; this is going to be airport generated dollars, airline contributions, which is phenomenal. It means that we’re off to a fast start here.

Despite United CEO Scott Kirby trying not to look too disturbed in the background, there is no world where he wants to pay to operate at this kind of palace. I’m sure he’s using this as a way to get some of the work done that he thinks is most important, and then he figures when a new president is in place, the rest can be shelved.

Without Congress deciding to pour a bunch of money in, airports in the US have a funding problem. Passenger Facility Charges are capped at $4.50 and have been for years, so that means airports need to raise most of their funding for massive projects either through bonds or, increasingly, public-private partnerships (P3). Either way, the money has to eventually hit the airline rate base, so expensive projects can make it expensive for airlines… and that’s not good for air service.

In 2024, Dulles had a cost per enplanement (CPE) of $12.88 which is actually a couple dollars less because there is money from both Dulles and Washington/National that goes into a pot which can be used at either airport. That is its own issue, but now let’s think about how this is going to be funded.

The idea that this will only cost $22.5 billion is silly. Let’s just make it $30 billion to round up and assume massive overruns, not an unfair assumption in any way, especially for a project that will take a very long time. They will use municipal bonds, they say, which does have lower rates than private financing, but I don’t care what you use. When you’re financing $30 billion and you only have 14 million enplanements, this is going to be expensive.

Gary at View From the Wing says that an airline briefing in May put the CPE at $90.64. (Correction: That was first reported by Ned Russell in his Airport Architecture Substack that you should all check out.) That would undoubtedly be low since that has to assume we’re “only” talking about $22 billion here instead of what will inevitably be a much higher number.

They say you don’t build the church for Easter Sunday, but in this case it seems like they’re going one step further and building the church for Easter Sunday in the Vatican. As a master plan, this isn’t a problem, but trying to accelerate the plan to get built in a short period of time makes no sense and could end up hurting the airport’s ability to attract flights with sky high costs.

That being said, Dulles has a real problem, and so I decided that I would write about it. In fact, I’m going to write two posts about it. Today, I’ll start with a little history and the state of affairs as it stands today. Then tomorrow, I’ll get into why this plan is nuts.

Let’s start by setting the stage. Here is how Dulles looks today:

At the top is the iconic Saarinen-designed terminal with the swooping roof. You know what it looks like, but it’s just such a beautiful building, I’m going to give you a photo to swoon at anyway.

^{Postcard via Boston Public Library}

It was first built in 1962, and it looked like the above photo. But it wasn’t completed to the original specs until 1996 when it was doubled in size. Even that doubling in size happened before the changes to airport security after 9/11, so that process could use some help.

There are a handful of gates that are attached to the main terminal — the Z gates — but nearly all gates require going to another concourse. And that’s one of the big problems with this airport. It’s not that it has other concourse, but rather it’s how you get to them.

You can see in the photo what looks like one of the original mobile lounges. These would transport people from the terminal to the gates. Planemates would actually take travelers right to the airplane itself, jacking up the vehicle on a built-in scissor lift. I actually took one of those in 1992 to get to a Lufthansa DC-10.

These were supposed to be the wave of the future, but of course, that future never arrived. People hate waiting for a vehicle and would rather walk or take something more reliable, like a train that doesn’t have to wait for aircraft traffic to pass by.

In the mid-1980s, the C/D concourse was built as a so-called Temporary Midfield Concourse. This was for United which opened its hub at the airport at that time. It is still there 40 years later, being “temporary” and generally falling apart. Mobile lounges brought passengers between the concourse and the terminal.

It wasn’t until 1998 that Terminal B was opened, and then Terminal A followed in 1999. Terminal A was built for a different time in a different world. That was made for turboprops and 50-seaters with ground boarding and no actual notable waiting space. Terminal B is functional, and has been expanded more than once, but overall, that is about the only thing that works.

Progress has happened, but it’s been slow. For years, people had to take mobile lounges that drove across the ground to each concourse as the only way to get to them. In 2004, an underground walkway opened between the main terminal and the A/B concourse. Then in 2010, the AeroTrain opened to connect… some of the other concourses.

The designers of the AeroTrain made the same mistake everyone else made… thinking that the Temporary Midfield Concourse was actually temporary. They built the station to hit a non-existent terminal further to the south where a terminal was eventually supposed to be built. So, travelers could take the train to the this random stop and then walk back to C, which is inconvenient at best. For those going to D? Forget it, the mobile lounges still roam the airfield connecting D both to the A gates where regional flying is and the main terminal.

The only other really significant change at Dulles lately has been the extension of the DC Metro to the airport. The Silver Line station there opened in 2022.

Since then, the focus has been on building a new, actual concourse for the first time in ages. This is Concourse E, or it will be when it opens later this year:

When this is done, it’s supposed to allow United Express to relocate away from the A gates. Those can then be rebuilt down the road for a more functional purpose, though I don’t think that’s officially been announced.

Regardless, what you see is a new E, a mostly-functional B, and a whole lot of other stuff that needs to be replaced. Throw on top that half-finished AeroTrain and there is work to be done. And there was a plan, but it was going to be expensive and take a long time to complete.

But then President Trump stepped in. He loves to leave his stamp on things, and Dulles was a target ripe for the picking. Nobody loves the experience at Dulles, so he could step in and try to look like a hero.

The plan is ambitious, and that’s being modest. It’s not going to happen the way it’s being pitched, but that’s a discussion for tomorrow.

JetBlue Reports Decent Earnings

JetBlue stock (side note: people at JetBlue can’t like the fact they got beat to the ‘BLUE’ ticker symbol) soared Tuesday as it released its Q2 earnings which exceeded Wall Street estimates and saw an 11% jump in unit revenue for the airline on airfare increases of 9%.

Operating revenue of $2.69 billion was a 14.5% leap from ’25 and was just a smidge higher than the $2.68 billion which was expected. (Every buy-up counts!) Despite the grand rise in revenue, it couldn’t outrun the CASM monster (unit costs increased 17%, and were still up 2.4% ex-fuel) which led to a loss of $247 million. That comes out to a loss of $0.66 per share, but that’s better than the loss of $0.71 predicted by Wall Street.

JetBlue’s forecast expects operating margin to increase by about 3.5% for the back-half of 2026. It recaptured almost half of its higher fuel costs from Q2, far exceeding analyst expectations of 30-40%. It ended the quarter with $1.6 billion in cash with most of it allocated to the cost of fumigating the Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia…

JetBlue Introduces Domestic First Class

JetBlue is ready to dive into the domestic first class game. The carrier, which has operated its minty-fresh long-haul business class for many years now (and on select domestic routes) is diving headfirst into growing its premium offerings throughout its fleet.

The name of this product will be BlueFirst — and we can only imagine how much time it took to come up with that. Rollout will begin this fall and is expected to be finished by late 2027. The cabin will eventually go on every non-mint aircraft in the fleet. For you seat sickos, JetBlue is going with the Collins Aerospace MiQ seat which is the same seat we use at Cranky World HQ. The product is expected to have most of the standard FC accoutrements including upgraded dining, priority during check-in, boarding, and baggage handling, and most of all, the explicit permission from the carrier to laugh and point as people trudge past you to the main cabin.

The first class rollout comes amidst an entire fare reset. It’s very complicated and will likely require extensive analysis from us as there are four experiences: Main, EvenMore, BlueFirst, and Mint. How will we ever sort it out? Then, there’s three fare types for each: Basic, Standard, and Flex. So you know, what everyone else has done. And we believe JetBlue is the only domestic airline that could possibly roll out a new domestic first class product this week, right? Right?

Allegiant Introduces Domestic First Class

Wrong. The hot new trend of the summer: domestic first class. Allegiant Air will be adding domestic first class next year marking a significant diversion from its previous business model. The carrier will begin introducing first class seating and amenities on select aircraft as soon as spring 2027. The new cabin will consist of two rows in 2-2 seating format, for a total of eight seats up front. The cleverly-named Allegiant First product is expected to go on sale in mid-August.

As a bonus for all Allegiant fliers, some new perks are expanding to the entire aircraft, not just first class. Beginning Saturday, the airline will no longer charge for most non-alcoholic drinks. Booze will still come with a price tag, but soft drinks, juice, and water will be complimentary, creating all sorts of arbitrage opportunities for Allegiant fliers who purchasd their ticket weeks or months ago but are flying in the near future.

As we reported earlier this week, “select aircraft” means new deliveries starting in 2027 with 23 aircraft in the current plan. These airplanes will start out in Punta Gorda. Allegiant’s route map provides no hints as to what might be a premium market for the carrier, which creates a guessing game that Delta and DraftKings couldn’t even come up with if they tried. But let’s all agree on this — if Punta Gorda to Niagara Falls doesn’t receive a first class cabin, we riot.

Delta Has a New Idea? You Can Bet on That

We learned last year that Delta was cooking something up with DraftKings that was destined to skirt laws against gambling in the sky, and as details emerged this week we learned that yes, in fact, this is a terrible idea.

Delta, along with DraftKings will introduce SkyPicks, which will allow SkyMiles members 21 and over the ability to use their personal devices to bet make predictions on games and matches 30,000 feet below. The entire contest is free, and is only an entertainment experience only, they swear. The real miss here is leaving it only to sports — imagine if you could be on things happening on your flight? Now that’s entertainment. Will the man in 38C choose Biscoffs (-200 odds), Cheez-Its (even money) or the Sun Chips (+110). Over/under on the amount of time the lady from 7C will spend in the lav: 77.5 seconds. Over/under on times the pilot puts the seatbelt sign back on during flight: 3.5. The possiblities really are endless.

To use the actual service, you must be logged into the in-flight WiFi on your personal device. It’s live now with MLB games and is expected to add the NFL in the fall. This definitely feels like some sort of gateway drug to getting actual betting on-board. It’s currently illegal regardless of where the flight begins or ends (even if its between two states or even fully within one state that permits online gambling). Just know your next Delta flight is a lock to have over 243.5 Biscoffs served. You can take it to the bank.

Spirit’s Loss Grows Frontier’s Revenue

A strong Q2 for Frontier produced record revenue for the carrier with a gross figure of $1.28 billion which it says was driven by strong travel demand and “favorable competitive capacity” which is earnings-speak for “our yellow-painted pain in the ass competitor finally bit the dust.”

Despite Spirit’s demise, Frontier still lost $90 million dollars in net income for the quarter, a 29% drop from Q2 last year. That figure looks a little better when put next to its fuel bill which jumped to $4.17 per gallon, 77% more than last year. The total fuel bill nearly doubled to $436 million. Frontier delivered 79% earnings per share and saw RASM jump 28% to $0.1. Its forward-looking guidance shows Q3 RASM growth above 20%, which would mark a third straight quarter of double-digit growth.

Frontier closes the midpoint of the year with $1.16 in liquidity and a pile of yellow seats it picked up on the cheap.

• Air Asia X delayed its service launch to both Bahrain and London to early next year.
• Air Canada joined the Basic Business revolution.
• Air France-KLM earned €484 million in Q2.
• Air Montenegro is considering picking up its first E2 from Embraer.
• Air Premia is seeking $75 million.
• ANA received permission for an interim JV with Singapore in Australia.
• beOnd is adding five destinations from Red Sea International in Saudi Arabia.
• China Southern will begin flying to Ethiopia later this year.
• Emirates will begin accepting crypto as payment for flights from UAE residents only.
• Finnair appointed Jussi Siitonen its new CFO.
• LOT will begin flying to Hanoi in the spring.
• IAG profit dropped 16% as it reduced its future capacity.
• Ryanair received a nearly $5 million refund from the Italian government.
• Singapore posted its first loss in a quarter since 2022.
• Southern Airways Express is looking at just over $300k in fines from the FAA.
• ValueJet (not the one you’re thinking of) secured its first B737-800.
• WestJet FAs are moving closer to a strike.
• Wizz Air is opening a base in Pristina later this year.

I asked the librarian if they had any books that could help me manage my paranoia.

“They’re right behind you,” she said.

There are two notable changes going into place at the airline in the form of free drinks and First Class. You might think First Class is the bigger deal, but I’m far more interested in the free drinks. Let’s talk about both.

Free Drinks For All

Allegiant has now announced that it will be adopting Sun Country’s current service program which includes free water, soda, and juices for all starting this Saturday, August 1. Previously, Allegiant used the true ultra low-cost carrier (ULCC) model that charged for everything.

Sun Country may have switched to a ULCC model back when Jude Bricker came over as CEO, but it had gone “Minnesota Nice” by keeping free drinks. Allegiant was more hard-nosed on the idea… until now. I asked the airline for comment on why this change was being made, and I was told this:

The decision to introduce complimentary beverages was based on what we have heard from passengers. While the integration process provides us with an opportunity to evaluate best practices across both airlines, this decision ultimately reflects Allegiant’s commitment to the customer experience.

This is a far cry from the Allegiant of old, but it is smart. Maybe the decision comes thanks to learnings from Sun Country, or maybe it’s an adaptation to the changing market that Allegiant is serving (read: the Twin Cities). Either way, this is why I find this more interesting, because it shows Allegiant’s willingness to change as this merger keeps going ahead.

Oddly enough, this is a decrease in benefits for Allegiant credit cardholders… which is kind of funny. See, they get one drink for free when they fly, and it can be anything that’s under $16. (Here’s the Allegiant beverage page.) That excludes the two $22 bottles of wine and the $17 Don Julio tequila, but it certainly included sodas, water, and juices. Now everyone gets those for free.

Allegiant is trying to play up the importance of the card, however, by noting that it still has all these “elevated” beverages that are only free for cardholders. That includes, “coffees, protein shakes, sports drinks or alcohol and a mixer,” excluding the expensive liquor, of course. I don’t think the beverage menu has changed, but Allegiant is really trying to play up this benefit.

A First Class Test is Coming

Allegiant is joining the revolution that… well, every other airline has joined lately. It will be offering a first class cabin called Allegiant First.

This is a small cabin with only two rows of two-by-two across recliners. It looks like this:

My initial thought was… did they just get a cheap deal on buying all of Spirit’s Big Front Seats? But no, these are different.

This is actually pretty minor, at least for now. Allegiant confirmed to me that they will only be installed on new B737 MAX deliveries that arrive from the start of 2027. Right now the plan is to put this on only 23 aircraft. It sounds more like a test to me with seats going on sale from mid-August.

The airline’s page talking about the product says that it will initially be available from Punta Gorda (PGD). Why Punta Gorda? Is it all those rich people up north that have been clamoring for a First Class product? No, it’s logistics.

Up until now, Allegiant’s B737-8 MAXs have been focused on Fort Lauderdale, Orlando/Sanford, and St Pete. Punta Gorda, however, has been almost all Airbus. According to Cirium schedule data, that starts to change significantly in December. By January, the MAX is 44 percent of Punta Gorda departures, and I assume it will keep growing when the schedule is extended.

We now know this will only go on new deliveries. Looking at Cirium fleet data, it shows three MAX 8-200s being built between mid-December and mid-March next year. But even more interesting, there are three MAX 7s that should be built for Allegiant in the first three months of next year. The certification of that airplane seems imminent, so perhaps this will starts out on the -7. Or maybe it’ll be the -8. Either way, those airplanes are heading to PGD.

First Class is not something Sun Country currently has. It got rid of that during its ULCC transition a decade ago. This is presumably more about following all the other lemmings off the cliff in adding premium, but it does also make me wonder if there is something else we just don’t know yet. Maybe the -7’s monuments (galleys, lavs, etc) and exit doors don’t lend themselves well to squeezing an extra row in at Allegiant’s seat pitch. So it’s possible that Allegiant doesn’t lose a row by putting these in but rather just loses two seats in each row, a worthy trade-off.

We may not know yet, but what we do know is that Allegiant has shown the first sign that it isn’t just turning Sun Country into the Allegiant that existed before the merger. I hope we continue to see what I can only assume are well-calculated changes as the merger moves ahead.

All these details will be posted on the main Cranky Dorkfest page.

YOU MUST RSVP by the end of the day on Thursday, September 10

Morning LAX Ramp Visit

Once again, LAX is going all out and will be inviting 500 of us to come hang out right next to Taxiway A and watch airplanes outside the Flight Path Museum. This is going to look a lot like last year with the event running from 8am to noon, but there are a couple of notable changes:

1. There won’t be remote parking this year. There is another lot that we will be able to use within walking distance of the event, but this has limited parking. So, we need to know if you’re driving and how many people will be in your car in your RSVP so we can dole out parking passes when it gets closer.
2. Instead of using buses for remote parking this year, LAX will be using them to give airfield tours. Stay tuned for more info on that.

Let’s talk details:

• What: LAX Ramp Visit
• When: Saturday, September 19, 2026 from 8am to 12pm (but the main event starts at 11am, so… use your time wisely)
• Where: The ramp outside the Flight Path Museum

I’ve had more than one airline talk about bringing in something special to look at and tour this year. Let’s see if anyone can top American’s Astrojet last year. I think they might. There will be water and restrooms available.

There are only 500 spots available, so RSVP NOW to save your spot.

The Cranky Dorkfest Main Event

As always, the main event will be held at the park right across the street from the In-N-Out just off the north end of LAX. If you’ve been before, you know how this goes. Show up, go buy a burger, watch airplanes, and talk shop with your fellow avgeeks. This year, we’ll hope LAX doesn’t decide to close 24R for maintenance like last year… not that I’m bitter. Parking can be tricky here too, but again, rideshare and transit will work as will walking from some areas if you’re willing to stretch your legs.

• What: Cranky Dorkfest Main Event
• When: Saturday, September 19, 2026 from 11am to 1pm
• Where: The park across from the In-N-Out

We will have giveaways from any airlines that participate as always, but like last year, we aren’t going to hand out raffle tickets the day of the event. You have to register in advance. It’s free, but you have to do it.

RSVP if you want to be entered in the giveaways. You can, of course, show up at the park and hang out, but if you have not RSVP‘d, you aren’t going to have a chance at the giveaways.

Get Your Official 2026 Cranky Dorkfest T-Shirt

Again, we are partnering with Plane Apparel Co to create an official 2026 shirt. Like what you see? You can buy it here.

Can’t click a link to RSVP, no problem. Here’s the embedded form below. See you there!

First, how do you even define aircraft innovation? Sure, there are new composite materials that made the B787 a marvel, and there are winglets and other aerodynamic features as well as avionics. But in the end, I think it’s really the engines that drive a step change. And because of that, I decided to break aircraft down into seven categories. I only categorized jets flown by the big US airlines, and I skipped the no-bypass early jets since none of those were still flying at the airlines I looked at once SkyGo’s 1980 OAG schedule data started.

So, here’s how I’ve categorized them:

It is unquestionably imperfect, so I’ll give you a minute to decide what bothers you the most….

Ok, we good now? I think the categorizations are pretty self-explanatory. Category 5 is a very crowded place, and I thought about splitting even further, but this is where I settled based on the aircraft being flown by the US carriers. I have some of my own quibbles, but this gets my point across.

With the categorizations set, I took the schedule data and counted departures by aircraft type. No, I did not measure to the actual tail, so while there may have been some variations in aircraft types in split fleets, again I decided it was good enough for this purpose.

Then, I had Claude create a heat map. The lighter colors are the earlier generations and the darker colors are the newer generations. This looked at the percent of fleet in each type to determine the overall adoption of more efficient aircraft.

^{Data via SkyGo and Cirium, map via Claude}

What does this tell us? So much. I want to roll through each airline, but first I want to show another chart that looks at this differently. This chart shows the percent of departures in the newest category. So when a new category rolls out, it will reset. This helps show which airlines were early adopters.

^{Data via SkyGo and Cirium, map via Claude}

So, with all that, let’s just talk through each airline, starting with the ones that went out of business earliest.

Pan Am – This is confusing to think of Pan Am as a leader in efficiency, but this is really a quirk of being a long-haul carrier. The bulk of that airline’s flying was on the B747 which sits in category 2. The domestic-focused airlines were still primarily using B727/737s or DC-9s, and those were in category 1. So this wasn’t really indicative of Pan Am being a leader. It just skewed to big airplanes for its largely international network. Of course, it failed so early that it never got out of category 4, something it had just started to fly with the A310 in 1985.

Eastern – Eastern was full of those B727s and DC-9s I mentioned. Sure it had A300s, but those were dwarfed by the massive narrowbody fleet. That didn’t start to turn until 1983 when the first B757 arrived, but of course, Eastern also failed in 1991 before it could make much of a change.

TWA – TWA was most definitely not an early adopter at all. Heck, it was flying its B707s until 1983. Then when it acquired Ozark in 1986, it took a step back even further with that flood of DC-9s. It did take on the MD-80 in the early 1980s, but that was always a ‘tweener… better than the early generation aircraft but not as efficient as the high bypass B737 classics. It had moved to the B757/767s in the 1980s, and that was gaining steam, but it was generally broke and behind the curve until it was merged into American in 2001.

Northwest – I find it fascinating that in 1980, Northwest was actually slightly ahead of the curve. After all, Northwest is an airline that I always think of flying airplanes forever and not keeping up with the times. I mean, Delta had been out of category 1 aircraft at the time of the Northwest merger for four years, but Northwest’s ancient DC-9s brought them right back in. Northwest received a similar but less pronounced benefit as Pan Am by skewing more toward international than other airlines in the 1980s. It was an early adopter of the B747-400, and then in the 1990s is started taking Airbus narrowbodies very early. This kept it ahead of some failed dinosaurs, but those DC-9s just kept flying so it was always a little behind.

Continental – At the beginning of my data, Continental was a small airline flying B727s and DC-10s and nothing else. But as airline after airline folder into Continental, that fleet shifted dramatically. First there was Texas International, then New York Air, and lastly PeoplExpress (including Frontier which that airline had bought). By 1990, the fleet was a mess. The airline was even flying around old B737-100s until 1998. But that miracle management team led by Gordon Bethune and Greg Brenneman came in and started to rebuild. The fleet was replaced mostly with B737NGs along with B767/777s. Remarkably, it had become one of the more forward-looking airlines by 2000, a not-insignificant feat.

US Airways – I realize putting US Airways in here is a challenge, because so much of its fleet was made up of small props. Even with jets, the biggest airplane it flew in 1980 was a small fleet of B727-200s. Most of the flying was on the DC-9 with a big portion on the BAC 1-11. In the 1980s it took on Piedmont and a bunch of old Boeings and even Fokker F28s along with PSA with its B727s alongside MD-80s and BAe 146s. What a jumble. But in the 1990s under Stephen Wolf, the reinvention began and USAir became US Airways. A massive order for A320 family aircraft was placed, and bankruptcy helped the airline walk away from from older airplanes. When it was taken over by America West, it had become an airline with a modern fleet, and it would carry that until the merger with American.

American – And speaking of the American merger, let’s talk about the three airlines in my chart that still exist. This won’t come as a surprise, but American was very slow to adopt new tech. Unlike its competitors which filed for bankruptcy, came out, and placed orders to refresh the fleet… American did not do any of that. It stayed out of bankruptcy and clung to those old aircraft, especially the MD-80s. It was a late adopter of everything. The re-fleeting began in the early 2010s when it filed for bankruptcy and placed a big order of its own. There was a further cleansing during the pandemic when several old types were retired.

Delta – Of the three airlines that remain, Delta was actually the slowest to adopt newer technology, not American, thanks to the Northwest merger and philosophy for opportunistic aircraft purchases. It flew those old Northwest DC-9s until 2014. The ancient B757s and B767s continue to soldier on. Even new orders were regularly for old tech, including the end-of-line order of B737-900ERs was came as a great deal since the MAXs were arriving. But it is now going big on A220s and A321neos. It will have MAXs coming as well. Meanwhile, the widebodies are still split, but those B767s will finally disappear at some point in the not-too-distant future. Delta’s decision to stick with old technology was strategic whereas American’s was more by financial necessity in the 2000s.

United – Of the three remaining carriers, United is the quickest to adopt new aircraft. It had A320s in 1993 and B777s in 1995. Then in the Continental merger, the older generation aircraft were all gone within a couple years, by 2013. Though United was late to take on the B777-300ER, it has been very quick to buy new airplanes in the last decade. Just look at the number of MAXs, A321neos, and B787s that have been pouring into the fleet. Today, it’s just the B757/767/777s that are the last of an old generation, and the B757s/767s will likely be gone fairly soon. The B757 replacement — the A321XLR — has just started arriving, and there are a lot more deliveries coming throughout the fleet.

What does all this mean? There aren’t any key takeaways to crystallize what we’re looking at into a pithy one-liner. Having newer technology doesn’t have to mean it’s a better airline. As Delta has shown, you take care of old aircraft, and they can be a great option. But this is just a useful way to help think about the evolution of airlines over time.

This lawsuit has been in the works for a long time. The rules for suing Los Angeles required you to file a government claim before you sue. The city can either accept the claim, reject it, or do nothing. There was no chance the city was going to accept this. If it did nothing for 45 days, then a two-year window would open during which LINXS could sue the city. LA did not do that. It outright rejected the claim on January 21 of this year. When that happened, LINXS had a six-month window open to sue. It waited until the end of that window, but it did file what I assume will be the first of many lawsuits on July 9. (If you’d like to follow along, you can search the docket at the LA Superior Court using case number 26TRCV02456.)

So what is LINXS’s beef? If only there was just one issue. LINXS has a laundry list of complaints, so we might as well talk through them all if, for no other reason, just for the sheer entertainment value.

The Problematic Metering Cabinet

Connecting the people mover with electricity is a very complicated process. There are sub-stations which receive power through LA’s Department of Water and Power (DWP), and then at some point there is a join where DWP’s work meets LINXS’s. There are metering cabinets in multiple places which measure the usage, just like at your house.

One of these metering cabinets has become a flashpoint. According to the lawsuit, these metering cabinets were not in scope for LINXS to design, build or really do anything, yet it seems that LINXS (“Developer” in the lawsuit) actually did the work anyway for some reason. Here’s how the lawsuit says it:

LAWA has alleged that Developer procured the Metering Cabinets at issue from Pioneer Power Solutions and had them installed, but, in any event, the Metering Cabinets were not in Developer’s contractual scope of Work.

I find it very funny that LINXS says LAWA has alleged this, but it doesn’t confirm it nor does it deny. It just says it doesn’t matter if LINXS did the work, because it wasn’t supposed to. That’s… a strategy.

Anyway, DWP screwed up, as those who live in Los Angeles won’t be surprised to hear. They didn’t have big enough cables to provide electricity, so in September 2024 they fixed the problem which required going into the metering cabinet to connect the cables. Apparently “within days,” the metering cabinet failed.

In January 2025, DWP apparently heard a noise coming from the cabinet, so it opened it up and found “moisture and debris” in there. Now, LINXS says this could have only happened when DWP opened it up to fix the cables. Why? Because DWP locked the cabinet and didn’t give LINXS a key. Apparently, LINXS doesn’t think it’s possible that this could have been manufactured or installed wrong, assuming it would admit it actually did install it in the first place.

Meanwhile, DWP had to cut power from February to July 2025 to allow — wait for it — LINXS to fix the thing, so LINXS thought it deserved a project completion date extension. LAWA said no, and because of that, it could withhold a $115 million progress payment. I won’t get into the weeds on why, but as you can imagine, LINXS doesn’t like that one bit.

This dispute went to what’s called a “project neutral,” who is supposed to quickly help settle disputes. The project neutral agreed with LINXS, but it turns out, the project neutral has never once agreed with LAWA. It sounds like this person may not be so neutral. (For more on this, I highly recommend watching this video.)

As if that’s not enough, LINXS says that it has uncovered that LAWA knew this was DWP’s fault the whole time and it was a big cover up.

So, that’s… one issue.

Other Contractors Ruin Everything

LINXS has been working in its project area at LAX for many, many years now. As the years go by, more unrelated projects need to get started in that area, but LINXS says they should all stay out of the way. They aren’t doing that. Even more than that, LINXS goes dramatic by saying some of its work has been destroyed. What happened? Apparently some work by other contractors on 96th St resulted in “damaged Developer installed irrigation lines and valves, as well as planters, shrubs and trees.”

Sounds a lot less dramatic that way, huh? And also, I will point out, this is landscaping. How this prevents them from running a train, I have no idea. But wait, there’s more. See, these contractors working in the LINXS project area is a safety issue. And yes, something has happened.

“…one of LAWA’s Other Contractors, in the process of demolishing a glass lighting pylon, ejected shards of thick glass plate onto the guideway over which the People Mover vehicles travel. Fortunately, no workers were on the tracks at the time, and the vehicles were not being tested in the area showered by glass.

Right, well, I’m going to assume that this other contractor probably made sure nobody was around when it decided to demolish a glass pylon. LINXS seems to want to use this as leverage by now slowing down other projects to run as slowly as its own.

Oh, and I almost forgot another favorite. LINXS says other contractors are stealing its electrical power! Sounds like someone needs to talk to DWP.

The Drawing Scandal

A sub-contractor for LINXS submitted some drawings to the city for approval for some roadway construction work. And then, SCANDAL.

According to LINXS, somebody “altered and resubmitted” these drawings and “deleted certain elements of the roadway work….” Wanna guess who LINXS blames? That’s right, it says LAWA did it. But why?

Developer is informed and believes, and based on that information and belief alleges, that LAWA was behind the resubmission of the [engineer’s] roadway drawings, and the purpose was to obtain permits for a reduced scope of roadway work so that LAWA could attempt to declare (wrongfully) that Developer’s work in certain areas is complete, such that LAWA’s Other Contractors could work in those areas.

So, LAWA wants to reduce the scope and help the project reach completion faster, but now LINXS doesn’t want that? Make up your mind, people. Do you want to finish this thing or not?

But wait, there’s more. Because the updated drawings still had the original engineer’s seal and signature, LINXS says this is now a criminal issue.

Don’t Be a Blocker

LINXS says that LAWA is blocking simple things, and that’s preventing the project from being finished. This is like two kids fighting.

• There is a solar farm which will power the people mover but also send power back to the grid. To connect this with DWP, “the customer” needs to sign a document. LINXS says LAWA needs to sign, but LAWA says LINXS needs to sign.
• LINXS is supposed to be doing some street/landscape work which includes installing irrigation. LINXS says it did that, but it had no responsibility after building it. The work is done, but LAWA never applied to DWP to turn on the irrigation.
• There was a requirement that LINXS put together a cybersecurity plan. It did that, and then it submitted some modifications which it called minor clarifications. LAWA said the intrusion detection system was removed, but LINXS said that didn’t happen. Oh, and crucially, “LAWA complained that a word was missing at the end of a sentence that was unrelated to the substance of the [plan].”
• LINXS submitted a test plan for a surveillance system. LAWA said it had issues with it, but LINXS said that’s crap.

Clock’s a Tickin’

So, here we are. And while they fight this out over some seemingly stupid things — just look at how many of these actually involve the SkyLink train itself — the clock is ticking.

If LINXS doesn’t have this thing ready by October 8, then lenders can call the loan. While it doesn’t definitively say so, the implication is clear. LINXS will go bankrupt, and it wants LAWA to know that will be bad news for LAWA. As of now, the projected opening date is November, so, uh, something’s gotta give.

See, if LINXS goes bankrupt, then LAWA will apparently have to pay a ~$900 million termination payment, and the airport will have to find a new operator which LINXS says will cost a lot more. Why would a new operator be needed? Well, this is a deal that spans decades and includes the actual operation of the people mover for many years to come, not just its construction.

If this all sounds bad, just wait. LINXS has already submitted another batch of government claims on June 5, and these were rejected by the city on July 7. So, the six month clock is now ticking for a whole new round of lawsuits.

Meanwhile, millions of travelers have to sit there and wait just to get a damn train.

American Airlines CEO lays out his vision to close a more than $3 billion profit gap – CNBC

There seems to be a bit of a thawing in the Metroplex. American is trying to open up a little bit more to media to talk about an actual plan, and that includes making CEO Robert Isom available to talk about his vision, as he did with CNBC’s Leslie Josephs. I don’t think I’d call what she got from him a true vision. He effectively said the airline wants to be premium like Delta and United but with more domestic flights. Oh, and “be best at everything that we do.” Sure.

With Delta going back into Manila for the first time since the pandemic, Brian and I decided to pick apart Transpacific strategies. This is one place where Delta is truly playing catch-up, but the discussion isn’t limited just to Delta. Listen in and join the discussion to LinkedIn.

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JetBlue Wins LGA Slot Auction

JetBlue Airways emerged as the winner for Spirit’s former slots at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. It paid $58.5 million for the right to operate up to 12 more daily roundtrips flights, outbidding Frontier by $1 million. The ink isn’t dry on the deal yet, and JetBlue is already considering a move to the now-deserted Marine Air Terminal at the airport. The historic terminal is without a human tenant at the moment as Spirit was its lone carrier until it ceased operating. The rats that fled the old central terminal for the MAT have indicated a willingness to share the space once again.

The Marine Air Terminal was the home of the Delta Shuttle with nearly hourly service to Boston, Chicago, and Washington at various times in its history until December 2017. Delta moved its full operation to Terminal C at that time while Alaska and JetBlue moved to the terminal. Alaska left LGA altogether in December of 2019, and Spirit joined JetBlue in April 2021. B6 left for Terminal B on July 9, 2022, but this deal proves that what’s old can be new again.

A move for JetBlue would lower its operating costs at LGA. It currently flies to just four destinations from the airport, Fort Lauderdale, Nantucket, Orlando, and West Palm Beach with the bulk of its NYC operation a few miles away at JFK.

Southwest Barrels to Record Revenue

Here’s an idea: Open a business and give a lot of things to your customers included in the price of what you’re selling — regardless of what it is. Maybe its napkins and straws at a restaurants, or water and towels at a gym — or checked bags and seat assignments for an airline. Then start charging for it and see what it does to your revenue, because Southwest Airlines announced gross revenue of $8.4 billion, the highest in its history, and a 16.4% increase from last year.

Net profit for Southwest was $233 million which came out to $0.47 per share. Southwest’s fuel bill came to $2.2 billion, a whopping 67% jump from Q2 in ’25. The carrier paid $3.92 per gallon (imagine how any Rapid Rewards points the carrier could have if it used its RR Visa to pay for the fuel), somewhat better than the $4.10-$4.15 it expected to pay. Looking forward, it expects Q3 fuel to be around $3.75 per gallon. To keep pace, the airline saw one-way fares jump 21% up to $225.61 — this is not your father’s Southwest.

Q3 forecasting was underwhelming for Southwest as it now expects a $3.25 to $4.25 profit per share for the full year, compared to the $4 profit per share it predicted back in January before that whole inconvenient war thing broke out. It ended the quarter with $3.8 billion in cash and cash equivalents plus about $500,000 in gatehouse boarding group signage that’s now collecting dust in a secret vault located 100 feet underground at the point equidistant to DAL, HOU, and SAT airports.

American Squeaked Out a Small Profit

American squeaked its way to a tidy $71 million profit in Q2 on $16.7 billion in gross revenue. That figure was an all-time record for the airline for any quarter in its history. Just like everyone else, the carrier took it on the chin at the pump as it pAAid just shy of $5 billion on fuel — a figure in line with its rival United.

The $71 million profit represents about $0.11 per share, down significantly from Q2 last year in which its $599 million profit came out to $0.91 per share. The record revenue figure was a 16% jump from last year and included a 10% leap in unit revenue.

AA’s forward-looking guidance is less bullish on the rest of the year, predicting the stock to end up somewhere between a $0.65 loss and $0.65 profit per share, quite the range. In Q3, however, it’s expecting to lose between $0.10 and $0.70 per share despite an increase in revenue of 16-19%. The airline remains burned by $29 billion in long-term debt that is eating away at what profits it does have. In some good news, it did end the quarter with over $11 billion in available liquidity which means they can probably spring for the mid-tier liquor at the holiday party later this year.

Alaska Adjusts Hawaiʻi Fleet, Announces Earnings

Alaska Airlines continues to walk a tightrope in an attempt to align its own Alaska brand with Hawaiian’s brand on flying to, from, and within the islands while also keeping Hawaiian somewhat separate to keep the locals happy.

The carrier is going to swap the current B717 fleet that flies interisland service with a new B737-800 fleet which will feature Starlink for those who can’t afford to be off the grid for 25 minutes. These planes will have more cargo room for surfboards, but there was no confirmation they’ll also have more room for suckling pig, nor on how many pallets of spam can fit onboard.

In other Alaska news, the airline’s Q2 reporting shows a loss of $76 million on gross revenue of $4.1 billion, a 10% increase from last year. The story was much of the same for Alaska — rising everything including costs and fuel. Forward looking guidence says ASM will jump next quarter 2-3%, with RASM up low double digits, all of which will lead to $0.00 to $1.00 profit per share.

For more on Alaska’s aircraft swap in Hawai’i, please visit Wednesday’s post from crankyflier.com.

United Drops 11 in the Windy City

United’s grand plan to outflank American in Chicago and operate the largest schedule in ORD history is shrinking, as it will not operate 10 regional routes it previously planned to fly this summer, along with one route to Mexico.

You’ll recall that earlier in the season we had the FAA guest starring in Beyond ORD Gates, and the government told both airlines that its planned summer schedules were not reasonable and both needed to pull back. As a result, United will not begin these 11:

• Bloomington (IL)
• Central Wisconsin
• Champaign
• Erie
• Kalmazoo
• La Crosse
• Lansing
• Marquette
• Rochester (MN)
• Tri-Cities
• and…Guadalajara

As of now, UA could bring these back (can you bring something back that never started?) some day, but for now, the good people of Bloomington and Champaign can probably drive to ORD. For everyone else, it might be time to introduce you to American Airlines…or Detroit.

• Aerolíneas Argentinas is leasing six B737-10s.
• Air Astana applied for rights to begin operating to the U.S.
• Air Canada is working with Airbus to scale domestic Canadian SAF, whatever that means. The people of Santa Fe had no comment.
• Air France is wet-leasing an A220.
• airBaltic owes the Latvian government $34 million.
• Alaska‘s entire B787 fleet will be equipped with Starlink by the end of the year.
• BA is putting Pratt & Whitney engines on its A320neos.
• BermudAir placed an order for 10 A220-300s. Delivery is expected to begin late next year.
• Emirates revealed a new headrest in economy that it seems to be really excited about. But the carrier is less excited about the first batch of B777X aircraft with its president Sir Tim Clark saying he would not accept delivery of the planes and compared them to “baked bean tins” which seems offensive to the beans.
• Etihad chose peace, not war, as it expands its interline agreement with Air Peace.
• Finnair adjusted its capacity guidence downward.
• Fuji Dream Airlines fulfilled one of its dreaming adding to its E175 fleet.
• Gulf Air is buying JetZero’s Z4 if it ever actually becomes a thing.
• IndiGo posted a loss.
• LATAM received $505 million in aircraft financing.
• Philippine Airlines plans to join oneworld late next year.
• Qatar is adding 1x daily service between Brisbane and Auckland as a tag on its Doha-Brisbane route.
• Ryanair saw its profits drop 34%.
• Saudia signed an MoU to expand its partnership with Garuda Indonesia.
• Uganda Airlines ordered four B737-8s and four B787-9s.
• US-Bangla Airlines, our third favorite Bangladesh-based airline, wants to launch a LCC which would then become our fourth favorite Bangladesh-based airline.
• Vietnam Airlines is leasing 19 B737 MAX 8s.

My friend’s girlfriend wrote on a balloon, “Will you propose to me?”

He immediately popped the question

Now that the first lawsuit has been filed, there is more public information available on what exactly has gone wrong. I will post about that soon, but first, it’s time to set the stage about what exactly the plan has been for the so-called SkyLink train and why it is so important.

Anyone who has driven in the infamous horseshoe that carries cars around Los Angeles International Airport’s (LAX) central terminal area knows just how miserable it can be. Gridlock is common, rogue car rental buses dart out in front of you — I’m not kidding, I had one sideswipe me several years ago, curse you, Enterprise — and travelers are constantly playing Frogger to get to and from the parking garages.

But fear not, the LAMP is underway and it will solve all your problems.* That stands for the Landside Access Modernization Program, and I’m pretty sure it was launched in 1963 shortly after the central terminal area opened. That’s only a slight exaggeration. But the idea is to make it easy for people to avoid the dreaded horseshoe. After years of discussion, this is the plan that was settled on.

^{*Or at least some of them}

It is hard to explain in words just how much of an undertaking this was. See the rental car center at the upper right? That used to be an entire neighborhood from the post-WWII period called Manchester Square. As you can see below, in 2005 it was still a crowded neighborhood with homes and even a school. By 2015, it had been largely abandoned as the airport kept buying up property for expansion, many of them having been knocked down. And today? It’s a gigantic rental car center.

Maybe the scale still isn’t clear. The rental car center is the second largest concrete building in the US behind the Pentagon. And that’s just the upper right corner of that map showing the entire project’s scope.

The next stop to the west is the LAX/Metro Transit Center which finally, after many years, brought light rail (in pink) to the airport with the K (Crenshaw) line going north-south and the C (Green) line heading east. Previously, C line travelers had been forced to get off at a station south of the airport which isn’t even on this map. It had a slow and infrequent bus into the terminal area. The opening of the K line and the eventual SkyLink will change the game here, especially since this is also where buses from all over the LA Basin will park.

Still further west, we have the Intermodal Transportation Facility – West, which is going to be generally referred to as the economy parking stop. But this is also where hotel shuttles will go along with a park & ride area for people to drop off passengers. In other words, the horseshoe will be rid of car rental buses and hotel shuttles, and travelers will have the option of being dropped off remotely and then taking the train in. This is going to make a huge difference. It may eventually mean the ultimate demise of the hated LAXit lot for rideshare as well. We’ll see how that goes.

Inside the central terminal area, there are three stops. They opted to go with a train running right up the spine instead of around the horseshoe, and that’s a good thing. It means getting to United in Terminal 7 will be a lot quicker than it otherwise would be. There are bridges that take people from the train right into each terminal area. Well, ok, close enough. Terminal 1 doesn’t appear to have a bridge. I think that’s supposed to go into Concourse 0 when it’s built, but it probably won’t be built. So there will be a bit of overshoot to get in there.

And that’s just the train itself. There’s more to this project, including making 98th Street go all the way through to take some of the pressure off of the main artery, Century Blvd, which people take to and from the east of the airport today.

There are other projects which will reconfigure Sepulveda Blvd to try to make traffic flow more smoothly, but I’m not even getting into that. Suffice it to say that the LAMP alone is a massive undertaking with an incredible result… when that SkyLink opens. Because until then, shuttles still flood the horseshoe and those on Metro still need to take a slow bus to the terminals. The SkyLink solves all those problems, and we are all just waiting for it to open.

As I mentioned up top, this has turned very ugly, and now, it’s lawsuit time. I’ve read through this first suit so you don’t have to, and I’ll have more on why we still can’t take the train next week.

Hawaiian officially announced yesterday that it will replace its B717 fleet with the B737-800 as first reported by The Air Current, and as we discussed on The Air Show podcast. I had the chance to sit with Hawaiian CEO Diana Birkett Rakow and Head of Hawaiʻi Operations Jim Landers on Tuesday to learn more about the plan.

Hawaiian has been in a bind. The B717 fleet has aged noticeably over the last couple of years, requiring more downtime and maintenance work. Temporarily expanding that fleet was considered a non-starter, and so the interisland operation has suffered. There have been operational issues, and the only solution was to pull down the schedule to give the existing fleet more of a breather. The problem has become so acute, especially in the middle of the day, that Hawaiian is putting a temporary solution into place.

Starting this October, Alaska — not Hawaiian — will fly three daily roundtrips between Honolulu and Kahului (Maui) on a B737 that will rotate back into the mainland fleet. Since this is Alaska-branded, there will be no pog juice or any Hawaiian-style service. This is simply a band-aid until they can bring the real solution into place.

That will start in 2028 when the first B737-800 painted in the Hawaiian livery and with Hawaiian-branded service will enter the fleet. The full timeline for the retirement of the B717 has not been determined, but this will not be drawn out. They just don’t have all the answers yet.

^{Rendering via Hawaiian}

For example, we don’t yet know how many of these airplanes will enter the Hawaiian fleet. They need to figure out exactly how many flights at what time of day they need to operate with these higher-capacity aircraft, so they will back into the exact number later. That’s easy to do when you have a whole fleet of -800s at Alaska today that gives flexibility, but I was assured that this will continue to be a high-frequency operation the same way it is today. And when asked if all interisland routes that operate today would continue to be flown with these bigger airplanes, Diana responded, “I don’t see us pulling out of any of those markets”

What will these look like on the inside? If you’ve been on an Alaska -800 today, it will be pretty similar. Those airplanes just had a full refresh, so the configuration will remain the same with 16 First Class, 30 Premium Class (extra legroom), and 115 in coach for a total of 161 onboard. While none of that will change, the color schemes onboard will, including the bulkheads and seat covers. This will look like a Hawaiian-branded airplane.

This means the interisland experience will be better in several ways. Most notably, these airplanes will have an extra inch of pitch in coach, a full extra legroom section, and double the number of First Class seats onboard compared to the 128-seat B717. The reality is that with 33 more seats on the airplane, they don’t need to try to squeeze more capacity into the aircraft, so they can make it a little more comfortable.

The bigger First Class cabin and new Premium class also means improvement for elites who will have more upgrade opportunity, but it also means more seats are available in general. Diana said, “a lot of guests really do purchase First Class.” First Class is also helpful for paid connectors in First Class, especially those from Japan and Australia who have to funnel via Honolulu before going to another island.

Diana and Jim highlighted a lot more about the improved onboard experience including power outlets and Starlink onboard, but who really cares when your longest flight is less than 45 minutes? I suppose it’s still a nice bonus, especially for the local business traveler. But ultimately, this is just something they’re going to milk since it’s already on the fleet at Alaska today.

The Decision

I was most curious about how they arrived at the -800 as the right airplane, and Jim gave some really helpful context since he was at Hawaiian before the merger. He explained that while “there isn’t another perfect 128-seat tank being built,” it was a previous generation narrowbody which seemed to be the best fit. Pre-merger Hawaiian was circling its efforts on a second-hand fleet of either A319ceo or A320ceo aircraft since it would give more commonality with the Airbus fleet.

Now that Hawaiian is part of Alaska, the decision tipped in favor of a B737 fleet instead, but it’s for the same basic reason… engines. New generation Pratt & Whitney GTF or GE LEAP engines just don’t work well for short, frequent hops. I did ask about the Embraer 195 E1 which uses engines from that generation, but the combination of already having the -800s in the fleet and wanting more capacity made the -800 a no-brainer, especially in the middle of the day when they don’t have enough capacity now They would rather have bigger planes with enough capacity during the peak and then fly with more empty seats in off-peak.

I did ask if this meant the A321neo was not long for the fleet, Diana said that wasn’t the case. As she explained it, “we are maximally using every airplane we have at our disposal right now, we want all those airplanes.” What to do with the A321neos is something for much further down the line.

The Added Bonus

These airplanes will be based in Honolulu and will be flown only within the islands… usually. There is an added bonus of having this fleet in the same configuration it is in now, and that is the ability to sub the airplanes on to mainland routes if needed. This isn’t going to be something that’s scheduled, but what if a plane breaks in Honolulu? In my view, they don’t need to have significant spare capacity for the mainland fleet, because they can press a -800 into service if needed and maintain the schedule.

They have yet to figure out how training and maintenance and all that will be handled, and that’s going to make some Honolulu-based employees a little anxious. But Diana did point out that Alaska just opened a new global training center in Renton outside Seattle. I would be surprised if that’s not where primary training happens which would obviously be a change from how training is done on the B717 fleet. Maintenance functions will, of course, be significant in Honolulu, but they don’t know what the plan is for heavy checks yet. Or at least, they aren’t ready to talk about it.

While this will make some people anxious, Diana did say, “we intend to keep a strong headquarters [in Honolulu] with training and front line resources.”

The Cargo Angle

Also announced yesterday was that Alaska Air Cargo will expand from five to nine aircraft, and at least some of those airplanes will be branded Hawaiian Air Cargo and will be based in Honolulu to fly between the islands. The exact split isn’t yet ready to be announced, but they will start flying in the first half of 2027.

^{Rendering via Hawaiian}

Hawaiian hasn’t had a dedicated cargo fleet in nearly a decade. Back then, it leveraged the ATRs that were flying to Molokai and Lānaiʻi to bring in some cargo-only aircraft to fly between the bigger stations. Jim was there for that, and I actually met with him in 2018 to learn more about the operation. But the pandemic brought big issues. With reduced jet flying, the outsourced passenger ATRs had to be grounded to avoid busting the pilot contract. In the end, Hawaiian decided the operation just wasn’t worth it, so it shut the whole thing down.

Now, Jim is bullish once again. He said that there were “bright spots in the ATR service,” but they also had real reliability issues thanks partially to their age. That was magnified by the fact that routine service and parts availability were all pain-points. Jim says they had “plenty of customers lining up,” and now they’ll be able to go back to them with much bigger airplanes. I can’t imagine Aloha and Kamaka are thrilled about this prospect, but with Transair having a much-diminished presence flying only Shorts 360s after crashing a B737 in 2021, maybe there is opportunity for all.

Either way, with Alaska already having a successful air cargo business, adding more to the fleet to fly within the islands is a whole lot easier than standing something up from scratch. All of these changes show some of why Alaska taking over Hawaiian can have a real benefit.

Once all the media fun was done at Hawaiian’s oneworld event, it was time to come home. I opted for the morning flight back to LAX which arrives mid-afternoon. Most tourists prefer something later, but this is a great flight for kamaʻāina (locals) to get to the mainland earlier in the day. Besides, this is a flight that gets some of the best service the airline has to offer. The morning flight is a turn for the Honolulu-based flight attendants, flying to LAX in the morning and then coming right back that evening. It gets flight attendants a lot of hours in a very short time without having to ever sleep in a hotel, so it is highly desirable and goes very senior. I’ve found those are the flight attendants you really want to have at Hawaiian, and I was proven right once again on this trip.

[Hawaiian provided my travel at no cost to me]

I took an Uber which dropped me off at 6:45am. The main checkpoint going into the Mauka concourse had TSA Precheck closed, so I walked over to the next one by the interisland gates and was through quickly. Then I walked back to gate A2 to wait in the very sterile concourse. I really don’t love these new gates; the facility has no real character.

The gate agent announced we had a very special flight attendant on this flight, Kuʻulei had just celebrated her 60th year with the airline, and they had a ceremony for her. That kind of time at one company doing one job is just hard to even fathom. The gate area gave a round of applause.

We were called for boarding, and I was in the B group again, as a silver elite. In this concourse, you go through the agriculture check required for those departing the islands in the gate area, and then you get onboard.

Hawaiian 810
July 1, 2026

From Honolulu
➤ Scheduled Departure: 8a
➤ Actual Departure: 809a
➤ From Gate: A2
➤ Wheels Up: 829a
➤ From Runway: 8R

To Los Angeles
➤ Wheels Down: 413p
➤ On Runway: 25L
➤ Scheduled Arrival: 420p
➤ Actual Arrival: 421p
➤ At Gate: 69A

Aircraft
➤ Type: Airbus A330-243
➤ Delivered: November 11, 2010
➤ Registered: N382HA, msn 1171
➤ Livery: Maile Lei colors

Flight
➤ Cabin: Coach in Seat 21A
➤ Load: ~99% Full
➤ Flight Time: 4h44m

I was originally seated in a standard coach seat, but I snagged an extra legroom one on the seat map when I had checked in… put another few dollars in the “elite status benefit” jar.

The captain welcomed us onboard, and he said we were ready to go but they were still loading cargo. Alright. Departure time came and went, and it wasn’t until about 10 minutes late that we pushed back. This is where I had flashbacks to the last time I tried to take this flight… and ended up with two gate returns. Fortunately, history did not repeat itself. We taxied to the runway and climbed out to the east.

The flight attendants asked us to have patience with them, because it was the first day of the new pre-ordered meal option. That was no problem, as I waited to get the corned beef hash I had ordered online for ~$15 before travel. But in reality, they didn’t need anyone to have patience with them, because they were pros. Yes, the most senior flight attendant had just hit her 60th anniversary milestone, but remember how I said this trip goes senior? The most junior onboard had 38 years. This crew was one of the best I’ve seen.

The flight attendants communicated well, first coming through with a beverage service including the complimentary-for-all Koloa rum punch and a granola bar.

Flight attendant Debbie told me and my seatmate that we were both entitled to free drinks throughout the flight, making sure we knew about our benefits. This was helpful for my seatmate who, it turns out, was on a basic economy fare and hit the jackpot when his seat was assigned. He was a nice guy coming home from seeing family in the islands, and we had a few good conversations throughout the flight.

After that was done, a little more than an hour into the flight, they came through with the pre-ordered food.

I learned from the flight attendants that Hawaiian has capped the number of meals initially at 50 (+ special meals and First Class) as they get used to the process. This flight hit the 50 cap, which is either a good sign that people are willing to pay or simply a reflection of the kamaʻāina who are members of the Huakaʻi program for locals. They were given a couple of free meals to ease them into the new paid program.

The corned beef hash was delivered in all-paper containers with two dipping sauces alongside the main. First impression? It looked good.

Second impression? It WAS good, really good. Chef Sheldon Simeon has done an incredible job.

That was a real egg on top that was cooked perfectly, the yolk oozing out when punctured. The food was very flavorful and heated well. I wolfed it down so fast, that by the time they came around with a second beverage service right after food was delivered, I was already done.

I settled in to work thanks to Starlink being blazing fast as usual. I flipped on movies I’d already seen just as background noise, and then it was time to head to the lav.

While I was waiting, I struck up a conversation with Debbie and another flight attendant Noe who had 43 and 40 years of service respectively. They had known each other since even before they started working for the airline, and they were so good at this job. If you know Hawaiian culture, just imagine a handful of aunties running the show onboard and you’ll get the picture. They were warm, efficient, and attentive, but you could also tell in an emergency that they would turn into no-nonsense pros. These are the people you want as flight attendants on your flight.

I didn’t want to distract them, but they seemed happy to chat. I stuck around for a bit each of the two times I came to use the lav. The second time, there was a flight attendant in management up there who was on this flight to help monitor the new food process and take notes. They were all constantly looking for feedback on the food and the process. For the most part, it seemed to be a big hit. There was one complaint from someone that the food was too salty, but… come on, why did you order the corned beef hash? Of course it’s salty. Everyone else loved the food. There were just a few ordering glitches for some huakaʻi members.

While I was there, Kuʻulei came back from First Class where she was serving, and we chatted a little. She started on the DC-3 in 1966. Just imagine what she’s seen.

Back at my seat I was working again. An hour and a half out from landing, the flight attendants came by with another beverage service and gave us a goodbye AlohaMac.

Debbie came back later and gave me a card she had written up. Not only did she take the time to write it, but she got the entire crew to sign.

I know what you’re thinking. They knew I was media, and they were going over the top to please me. First of all, I can’t imagine 40+ year flight attendant doing that just to try to get the company slightly better press. But more importantly, I clearly wasn’t the only one enjoying this crew. There was an older man in the bulkhead who was with his wife, but he told Debbie he was going to take her to Rome with him. My seatmate mentioned on descent that this was one of the best flights he’d taken. I’m pretty sure this is just who those flight attendants are, and it is a great reflection on the Hawaiian brand.

We passed over Catalina Island and then up from the south before landing. After a short taxi, we were at the very same gate I had left from two days earlier. I was sad to leave this flight, especially since it meant another painful journey through public transit. This time, the only painpoint was a 20 minute wait for the shuttle to show up at LAX. But none of that was going to erase the glow of such a pleasant trip home.

In the summer of 2023, Southwest’s interisland operation peaked with 64 daily flights between the islands. That had dropped to 50 in April 2025, where it remained until this new schedule for next March which has a mere 32 daily. Interisland flying has now been consolidated to only include flights from Honolulu to the four main neighbor island airports of Hilo, Kahului, Kona, and Līhuʻe. All flying between the neighbor islands themselves has been canceled.

Daily Southwest Interisland Flights in Hawaiʻi

^{Data via Cirium and Southwest}

But this is more than just a reduction. It’s a structural change in how the interisland flying network operates. Take a look at Honolulu departures by hour over these three different schedules.

Daily Southwest Interisland Departures from Honolulu by Hour

^{Data via Cirium and Southwest, chart via Claude}

At its peak in 2023, the Southwest interisland schedule was smoothed throughout the day. By 2025, you could see some peaks forming, but there was still a variety of flying at different times. Now, we are in a very clear bank structure where all four other airports get flights at the same four times. There is no longer a morning departure bank from Honolulu, so the airplanes start their day on the neighbor islands before coming to Honolulu.

The end result is something that will generally appeal to the very price-sensitive locals who care less about schedule, but it further cements Hawaiian’s position as the airline that makes the interisland economy go. For Southwest, the local market looks more like an afterthought.

This interisland flying plan is going to largely serve connecting markets from the mainland, and that is probably what it should be doing anyway. Honolulu becomes something of a transit hub with service from 10 mainland cities… four of which — Burbank, Long Beach, Ontario, San Jose, have no service nonstop to the neighbor islands at all.

The mainland market has evolved as well with some pretty significant swings in capacity over the last few years, including massive changes in departure times now that redeyes exist in the Southwest network.

Looking at a Saturday in the summer of 2023, Southwest had 13 departures from Hawaiʻi to the mainland before 11am and 17 between 11am and 4pm. Next March, there will be only two departures before 11am, 16 between 11am and 5pm, and then 10 redeyes. The destinations on the mainland have also shifted.

Weekly Southwest Departures to Hawaiʻi by Mainland Origin

^{Data via Cirium and Southwest}

Think of Las Vegas – Honolulu as a hub-to-hub market. Las Vegas remains solidly the most important connecting point for travel east of the Rockies, and it maintains flying that doesn’t exist in other hubs. That includes the only mainland flight to Hilo as well as a new westbound redeye from Vegas to Honolulu (which is beloved by the kamaʻāina who fly Hawaiian already).

San Diego has now surged into a very clear second place with flying now to all four main neighbor island airports (Kona and Līhuʻe are new weekend flights). While this will take some connections, this looks more like Southwest fighting for the local San Diego market with Alaska in general.

On the flip side, you can see just how far the Bay Area has fallen. Oakland had the first flight on Southwest to the islands, but it is now a fraction of what it used to be. San Jose has also fallen dramatically, now only having a Honolulu flight. Even Sacramento is down.

In Southern California, it’s a mixed bag. LAX has lost most of its service over time, now down to only a poorly-timed daily Honolulu flight (westbound in the afternoon, redeye back) and a Saturday-only flight to Kahului, Kona, and Līhuʻe. Long Beach too has fallen, now with only 5x weekly to Honolulu. But that 5x weekly pattern has now spread to both Burbank and Ontario as well, so there is some good news for those who like those airports.

With these moves, Southwest has become a niche player in the interisland market and a more focused player from the mainland to the islands. Las Vegas and Honolulu will be the two big connecting points, but then the airports in the west that have strong demand to Hawaiʻi will still have flights… just fewer of them (except in San Diego).

That’s a far cry from what people thought would happen when Southwest first entered the market, but it did not make the kind of inroads that it had originally hoped to see.

United Reports $805 Million Profit

United Airlines’s Q2 earnings were released Wednesday after the close of the market, and the carrier earned a profit of $805 million on $17.7 billion in gross revenue. The revenue figure is a 16% jump from last year’s Q2 but profit dropped more than 17% primarily due to rising fuel costs but also from extensive miscellaneous costs the airline simply listed under “Newark sucks” on its report.

Its total unit revenue (TRASM) jumped 12.1% but was outpaced by a 15.2% rise in CASM. While a significant amount of its rise in costs was direftly tied to fuel, its CASM-ex (unit costs excluding fuel) were up as well by 6%. United’s fuel spend was a whopping $5.1 billion dollars, a cool 84% more than Q2 in 2025. That comes out to $4.19 per gallon, a figure curiously close to the national average for a gallon of milk, which is currently $4.22. It makes one wonder — what’s United putting in its airplanes? Jet A…or milk?

The carrier earned $1.99 per share for its overlords shareholders, outpacing the $1.88 expected at the start of the quarter. It forecasted between $2.50 and $3.50 earnings per share in Q3, while analysts are expecting closer to $3.60 per share. As part of its forward looking guidance, the airline expects to earn between $9 and $11 per share for the full year, at the high end of its previous guidance of $7-$11.

And if you’re in need of some quick cash (or milk), we suggest giving Scott Kirby a call. He and United are sitting on $10.1 billion in cash and cash equivalents at the close of Q2.

Southwest Adds a Heap of New Flights

Southwest extended its schedule through peak March spring break and added 19 routes, particularly beefing up its operations in Austin, Las Vegas, Nashville, and Orlando.

The 19 new routes are:

• Austin: Detroit, San José (CR)
• Baltimore: Philadelphia
• Columbus: Punta Cana
• Dallas/Love: Detroit
• Las Vegas: Boston, Knoxville, Miami, Philadelphia
• Nashville: Aruba, Des Moines, Liberia, Montego Bay, St Thomas, Wichita
• Orlando: New York/LGA, Pensacola
• San Diego: Kona, Līhu’e

Along with those additions, Southwest will debut its first westbound redeye as it retimes a Las Vegas – Honolulu flight to depart at 2:45 a.m. and arrive into Honolulu just after 6 a.m. The carrier is also increasing its service from HNL to both Burbank and Ontario to 5x weekly. More on that market next week.

As it built this new schedule, Southwest took a day-by-day approach with Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays seeing more than 4,400 flights per day while Tuesdays, Wednesday, and Saturdays will see just over 4,000, a roughly 10% reduction from peak days. They thought about pulling a Chick-fil-A and just not flying on Sundays, but instead they just shaved about 100 flights off the peak to round out the week.

United Brings Euro Business Class Home

United’s new A321XLR aircraft will enter the carrier’s fleet later this year, and it will come with a new twist. A guaranteed blocked middle seat in one row of Economy Plus with a tray table over the middle seat will allow four passengers to enjoy both extra legroom offered to all Economy Plus passengers along with more elbow and shoulder room.

United’s original plan called for the two passengers on either side of the blocked middle to share access to the extra tray table, but as of press time, reports tell Cranky that the carrier is considering auctioning off tray table access to the highest bidder in the gatehouse prior to boarding.

The airline also says it’ll consider expanding this to other airplanes depending on well it does. The A321XLR is a single-aisle aircraft that will have new Polaris seats up front and will be used both domestically and to Europe.

The blocked middle will also potentially solve another problem for United — staffing the new XLRs on domestic flights. As currently laid out, the aircraft have 152 seats. Since the FAA requires an additional flight attendant for each 50 seats, by removing two middle seats, the capacity of the plane magically becomes 150 and allows it to be staffed lower.

Alaska Makes Changes to Hawaiian Network

Alaska and its warm-blooded subsidiary Hawaiian Airlines are adding new service to the islands from the U.S. mainland while ending one long-haul destination from Honolulu. Boise and Spokane will receive nonstop service to the islands for the first time in a while. Boise had a handful of flights to HNL in 2013 and 2014 on Allegiant, but that’s it between the two.

Both flights will begin in mid-December and will be operated by Alaska-branded B737 MAX airplanes. The routes will operate seasonally, flying through the spring. The Boise flight will operate 1x daily through March 21, while Spokane will fly 1x weekly through April 17. Both are timed for connections on both ends, with an arrival into HNL around 2pm and similar mid-afternoon departure times back to the mainland.

In addition to these two, the carrier is beefing up its service to the eighth Hawaiian island — Las Vegas. During its winter and spring peak, Alaska will up LAS-HNL from 3x to 4x daily on its A330 fleet. But it’s often a zero sum game in the airline world, and with additions, we get cuts. And the one left without seat when the music stopped this time is Auckland. The carrier’s 3x weekly seasonal AKL-HNL service is no more. This flight, which had been operated by an A330 was set to resume in November but now, that’s not happening.

Good and Bad News on the Canadian Labour Front

Flair Airlines pilots ratified a new 3-year contract with 89% of its electorate voting to accept the deal. Flair has about 270 pilots, and their new agreement will take effect immediately. Neither the airline or ALPA released the details of the new agreement other than for ALPA to say in a statement that the new agreement “offers meaningful improvements to compensation, retirement, scheduling, career progression, and overall quality of life.” We assume that means easier access to maple syrup and ice hockey.

On the other end of the labour spectrum, things are not so great at WestJet. Its FAs voted by an overwhelming 99% majority to authorize a strike. Canadian law requires a cooling-off period, which makes August 2 the soonest the FAs could walk off the job. Their current contract went into effect in 2021 and became amendable at the end of last year.

The union’s beef with the airline will sound very familiar. They want boarding pay, saying they have an average of 35 hours of unpaid work per month and that when you average out their months, they actually make less than Canada’s $18 federal minimum wage. The carrier responded saying it self-audited 40 FAs for nine months and found only four incidents where staff did not receive at least the minimum wage and blamed the specific FAs for the shortcoming saying they made shift trades that caused the drop in pay.

WestJet CEO Alex von Hoensbroech says the carrier is 100% committed to coming to an agreement with its cabin crew, while the union says “not so much.” Stay tuned.

• Aer Lingus will end flying to three U.S. destinations this fall: Denver, Las Vegas, Minneapolis/St Paul.
• Air Algérie received its first B737-8
• airBaltic needs $170 million…maybe try Scott Kirby?
• Boliviana is leasing 10 new Embraers.
• Brussels Airlines named Lorenza Maggio as CEO.
• Cabo Verde Airlines expects to begin 1x weekly service to Recife this fall.
• Cathay Pacific is adding its CX code onto Iberia flights from Madrid to two destinations in Brazil and one in the Dominican Republic.
• Cebu Pacific is adding Starlink by next year.
• China Airlines is updating the business class on its B787 fleet.
• Delta is permanently dedicating gate A25 in Atlanta to Braves outfielder Andruw Jones who will be inducted into the Hall of Fame next weekend. Delta originally wanted to do this at an E gate, but Andruw wasn’t having it.
• Fiji Airways is considering adding Premium Economy.
• JetBlue is pulling out of both Antigua and Daytona Beach.
• Kenmore Air named Cape Air COO Andrew Bonney its new CEO.
• KLM is being fined by the Danish government for what it called misleading SAF marketing.
• Korean earned a $170 million operating profit but a $65 million total net loss of during in Q2.
• LAM is spending €30.2 Million on five new aircraft.
• Lufthansa‘s Miles & More program is going through a dramatically ridiculous rebrand.
• Philippine Airlines expects to push its next widebody order to both Airbus and Boeing.
• Qantas operated the first trial cargo flight into the new Eastern Perth Western Sydney Airport.
• Singapore Airlines has a new lounge in Melbourne.
• TAP plans to add 24 new aircraft over the next two years.
• United is adding service to Charlottesville (1x daily), Knoxville (2x daily), NW Arkansas (1x daily), and Omaha (1x daily) from Newark. All four begin September 24.

Do you realize that if you are sitting on the toilet at 11:59PM, and the clock strikes midnight.

It’s same shit, different day.

On the surface, it looks like Delta is outperforming with an operating margin of 9.4 percent versus United’s 6.2 percent, but remember, Delta owns a refinery and that helped boost the company’s fortunes this quarter. Since today’s topic is about the core business, let’s try and strip out fuel’s impact.

• Excluding the refinery, Delta’s operating revenues were up 13.9 percent, below United’s 16.0 percent
• Fuel expense at Delta rose 67.2 percent year-over-year while United was up 84.1 percent
• Fuel went from being worth 55.8 percent of Delta’s largest expense — total salaries and wages expense — to 86.3 percent, but at United fuel soared to become the airline’s number one cost at 109 percent of salaries and wages
• Delta’s unit costs were up 21.4 percent, but excluding fuel, they were up only 6.8 percent while United’s numbers were up 15.2 and 6.1 percent respectively

You get it. Fuel is a big deal, and it was very messy in Q2 when the bulk of the Iran War was being waged. And yes, I’m well aware that it’s still being waged and probably won’t end anytime soon now that Iran has learned it can toy with the Strait of Hormuz whenever it feels like it. Just look at the downward slope reversing course recently.

^{via IATA}

And when fuel goes up, fares have to go up. In the past, this often meant cutting significant capacity thanks to basic economics, but that’s not happening now. And even when fuel came down off its highs, fares didn’t budge downward at all. Demand has been very strong, and it took an event like this to get airlines to actually be able to take real pricing increases for the first time in a long time.

To see what I mean, you can look at the Government Accountability Office’s new report on the impact of mergers. I sat with Courtney Miller as my guest host on The Air Show this week to talk about that report in detail. I won’t get into those details here, because it frankly isn’t helpful to this discussion since the study period stopped in 2024. This just provides the historical context that fares have been going down for quite some time. In other words, while this consolidated industry structure has been in the works for a couple decades, the airlines really didn’t significantly flex their pricing muscles until recently.

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There’s no question that consolidation made this possible, and sometimes in ways you might not imagine. For example, airline pricing teams are better at their jobs simply because there are fewer of them out there. The ones that remain tend to be much better at the job at hand. The reason this is so important for gaining pricing power is that one airline has historically been able to tank a fare initiative pretty easily, even something as simple as a small, across-the-board fare increase. Today, we aren’t seeing that.

Let’s get back to Delta’s results — I can’t do this with United yet since the 10-Q wasn’t out at the time of publication. Strip out things like loyalty revenues (which always seems to go up these days) and look at just Delta’s Q2 ticket revenue, and we see it increased 12.5 percent year-over-year. The reality is that fares went up much more than that, because a decent chunk of Q2 bookings happened before the recent run-up. But even 12.5 percent is a remarkable increase considering that capacity was flat.

This doesn’t look like a temporary blip, even though we know everything in this industry is somewhat temporary. Just look at Delta which reaffirmed its earnings guidance for the full year and United which improved it. They won’t be the only ones. It’s easy to say this is all due to that growing pot of credit card money or refinery earnings or something else, and yes, those all help. But the reality is that none of this happens without the industry’s main players all realizing that there is room for higher fares. Even if that weren’t the case, it has become easier for airlines to insulate themselves from low-cost airline fare actions, something that has always been a problem.

Pricing is far more complex than it was in the past, so there are more levers to pull. If Frontier decided it wanted a massive sale since its results are not great, the other airlines could match with Basic Economy fares only and not see their entire fare structure collapse. The ability to better segment means that fare actions can be compartmentalized.

The airlines love segmentation so much that it continues to spread. Delta is now introducing Basic Business — or as I like to call it, Delta None — which will undoubtedly keep the same pricing business class has today, simply creating an upsell for those who want a seat assignment in advance along with other goodies. It’s a straight-up fare increase that others likely can’t torpedo. (United has already gone down this path anyway.)

All this being said, fare increases don’t work in a vacuum. Capacity levels are very important, and the industry has seen capacity decline dramatically very recently. Spirit finally went away in Q2 after being unsustainable as a business for a couple of years. This takes away one more desperate management team and further consolidates the industry into something more rational.

This doesn’t mean that fares will only go up from now on. There will be a recession. There will be downturns. Maybe there will even be a well-funded startup, though that doesn’t seem very likely today. We don’t know when, but when this happens, fares will fall. But instead of plunging, airlines will better manage their capacity and keep pricing at a higher level.

This is exactly the kind of thing former American CEO Doug Parker meant when he said the industry wouldn’t lose money again. It was a tone-deaf statement that didn’t land with employees, but it also didn’t prove to be strictly true. Of course, he wasn’t thinking about a global pandemic when he said it; he was talking about normal economic cycles. And he was right. The thing is, the big airlines hadn’t really been willing to test it out until this year once it was pretty clear they had largely vanquished the low-cost carrier threat.

Admittedly, we haven’t seen this tested in any significant way since the pandemic ended. Only time will tell if this is right or not, but the fact that airlines are pushing fares higher and not seeing much blowback means they will be emboldened to keep trying to push the envelope. Now the only real question is whether the government will eventually decide this is an antitrust issue that it needs to revisit.

Why am I writing about this? Well, I was busy playing around looking at the data when I came across something that surprised me. In 1980, Pan Am had more domestic flights in West Germany than it did in the US. Just let that sink in.

Pan Am Departures Domestic Departures by Region

^{OAG schedule data via SkyGo}

Naturally this changed very quickly toward the end of 1980 when National’s NA code disappeared into Pan Am post-merger. But the IGS kept on flying, and somehow it went to the bitter end even though it had become technically irrelevant in 1990.

The Rise of the IGS

In the 1950s, West Germany was being rebuilt after World War II, and Berlin was a challenge. At the end of the war, Berlin had been split into four zones. In West Berlin, there was an American, British, and French zone. East Berlin, the capital of East Germany, was Soviet-controlled. West Berlin was completely surrounded by East Germany, and that caused its own issues. (Look up the Berlin Airlift if you aren’t familiar with that heroic effort.)

But by the 1950s, recovery in West Germany was in full swing, and there was no German airline to fly to West Berlin. Only American, British, and French carriers were allowed into West Berlin per the terms of the German surrender, so the rebuilding Lufthansa was shut out.

In the American sector, Pan Am, America’s chosen instrument, became the carrier of West Berlin. It initially operated from Tempelhof Airport along with British European Airways (BEA, later British Airways) and Air France. By the late 1950s, Tempelhof’s short runways were a problem for new jets, and so Air France moved to Tegel Airport in the French sector.

Pan Am flew a New York flight from Tegel, but it kept everything else at Tempelhof thanks to jets with short-field capabilities. That didn’t last. In 1975, it and British Airways moved over to Tegel entirely, and Tempelhof was shut. By then, West Berlin traffic had sagged as road restrictions were loosened allowing more people to go on the ground, but Tegel was still a hugely important lifeline. And that’s when the data kicks in.

Here’s a look at the IGS route map from 1980 until the end. Not all of these operated the entire time, but I’ll talk through that. This was quite an operation.

^{Pan Am IGS route map using OAG data via SkyGo, map via Claude}

The routes in blue were core routes that regularly and consistently operated from the different parts of West Germany to Berlin. The black lines were operated some of the time as Pan Am tried to find the right network. You’ll notice some of that flying included domestic flights wholly within contiguous West Germany, but that wasn’t a huge amount of flying. Also, the dotted lines show when Ransome was brought over in the late 1980s to start Pan Am Express using ATRs. Some of these — Sylt, anyone? — are very, very thin routes even today.

What happened during the 1980s in Berlin was fascinating. Pan Am continued to be the most dominant presence at Tegel until the winds of change blew in at the end of the decade. Take a look.

Berlin Tegel Annual Departures by Airline

^{OAG schedule data via SkyGo}

All of a sudden, we see the rise of Euroberlin Franc in the late 1980s. This was a joint venture between Air France (51 percent) and Lufthansa (49 percent) since Lufthansa still wasn’t allowed in Berlin on its own. But when the wall fell and reunification came, Lufthansa jumped in and Euroberlin disappeared. Pan Am also disappeared in 1991, though that wasn’t just from Berlin… that was from the world entirely.

When the Wall fell, many airlines decided to try the market, ranging from other Western European airlines to more German carriers and even multiple US carriers.

By 1992, only British Airways remained a notable player at the airport from the orginal days, and that wouldn’t last. Yes, BA would continue to fly to Berlin, but in 1992 it bought nearly half of Delta Air which became Deutsche BA. That was the number two airline in Berlin in short order, something which lasted until much later when Air Berlin rose and took over the then-rebranded DBA.

The reunification of West and East Germany didn’t just impact Tegel. Remember, there were two other main airports. Tempelhof did close in 1975, but that was temporary. Scheduled flights were restarted in 1985 by Tempelhof Airways USA on a limited basis. After reunification, other airlines joined in as well, but it was primarily used by small commuters. In 2008, Tempelhof shut down for good and the land has been repurposed.

Lastly, we had Schönefeld in East Berlin. This airport was far smaller than Tegel in the 1980s, and it was dominated by Interflug, the East German airline. But wait, how was that possible? Wouldn’t only Soviet airlines be allowed to serve an airport in East Berlin post-war? The trick was that Schönefeld was technically outside the Berlin city limits in East Germany, so while Lufthansa couldn’t serve any of the West Berlin airports, Interflug could serve this one.

Berlin Schönefeld Annual Departures by Airline

^{OAG schedule data via SkyGo}

In addition to Interflug, there was service from all the other airlines from countries behind the Iron Curtain. This included Aeroflot, of course, but also notable service from airlines in the Middle East, Africa, and yes, Cuba… very briefly.

But while Tegel traffic surged after reunification, Schönefeld fell dramatically. This was primarily because no buyer for Interflug could be found to take it off the state’s hands, so it was shut down in 1991.

Over time, Schönefeld became the base for the Ryanairs and easyJets of the world while Tegel remained the primary point of service for network airlines, including hometown-carrier Air Berlin which ultimately failed in 2017. Then, in 2020, the long-delayed Brandenburg airport opened on the southern end of the grounds of Schönefeld. The old Schönefeld terminal was officially shut down for good in 2022, but just consider that if you use the northern runway at Brandenburg, that was the same runway used by Interflug Il-62s long, long ago.

When everything moved to Brandenburg, the decision was made to close down Tegel despite some protests. Tegel, like Tempelhof, is being redeveloped.

The aviation scene in Berlin today is very tame with just a single airport filled mainly with easyJet, Ryanair, and Eurowings flights, but in the 1980s, it was a wildly-unique place that played a very important role in Pan Am’s network.

[Hawaiian provided my travel at no cost to me]

I decided to sleep in a little and take the 10:05am from LAX to Honolulu for the flight out. Sure, I could have flown from Long Beach, but… and I know this sound ridiculous… I really wanted one last hot pocket. See, Hawaiian would officially switch from the free hot pocket to paid options two days later, on July 1. Hot pockets were only served on flights after 10am, so I got a little sentimental and made the choice. Besides, an A330 over an A321neo? Yes, please.

Since it wasn’t too early, I decided to take public transit for my first run through the LAX Metro Transit Center. I left home at about 7:30am and walked 20 minutes to the closest metro stop. I took the A (blue) line up to the C (green) line and found myself at the LAX Metro Transit Center only a little over an hour after I left home. This wasn’t bad at all. But then… I had to go down to the buses since the people mover still isn’t open.

The transit plaza is nice and open, even with a giant blow-up soccer ball temporarily in the middle. But then after waiting several minutes, we got on the bus and it took forever. By the time we crawled through back streets and the horseshoe, it was about half an hour. Had the train been open, it would have been less than 10 minutes with an easy walk from the first stop to Terminal 6. On the bright side, I sat next to some very nice ladies who were flying Air Canada for their first trip to Europe but were going to the Bradley Terminal since that’s where they figured all international flights were. I was able to save them a whole lot of wasted time by pointing them to Terminal 6.

Inside, the terminal was busy, but TSA Precheck was nearly empty. I then walked all the way back to gate 69A where it was a madhouse. There are a lot of widebodies rolling through this terminal, and there is nowhere near enough seating.

The addition of Hawaiian into Alaska’s operation has definitely squeezed things, and it does make me wonder if Alaska might prefer a split operation between the new, roomier T5 when it opens and some of T6. Just something to think about.

We had an eight minute delay posted, which I thought was oddly specific. But we started boarding when they said, and even though there was one line for Priority and groups A/B plus another for the rest, they told everyone to board using both lines to speed things up, I assume. As a very fancy and important Atmos Silver, I was able to board in group B. I know, you are all impressed. After they scanned my boarding pass, I had to turn into the hallway where they isolate international arrivals and wait in an impossibly long line to board, so this didn’t actually speed up anything. Eventually, I made it on the airplane.

Hawaiian 803
June 29, 2026

From Los Angeles
➤ Scheduled Departure: 1005a
➤ Actual Departure: 1023a
➤ From Gate: 69A
➤ Wheels Up: 1041a
➤ From Runway: 25R

To Honolulu
➤ Wheels Down: 107p
➤ On Runway: 8L
➤ Scheduled Arrival: 1258p
➤ Actual Arrival: 115p
➤ At Gate: A6

Aircraft
➤ Type: Airbus A330-243
➤ Delivered: April 27, 2012
➤ Registered: N386HA, msn 1302
➤ Livery: Maile Lei colors, “Heiheionākeiki”

Flight
➤ Cabin: Coach in Seat 18J
➤ Load: ~99% Full
➤ Flight Time: 5h26m

Our A330 was full of pinks and turquoises as always but yes, it looks a little tired. I really can’t wait until Alaska is able to put these airplanes through the announced retrofit. I still like flying them as a passenger, but they do need some love.

I went back to my seat which it turns out was in the Extra Comfort (or as Alaska calls it, Premium) section. I didn’t realize that before, but I don’t have long legs anyway. Still, always happy for a little extra room. And no, my upgrade to First did not come through. At last check I was something like number 25 or 27 on the list, so I never bothered to pay attention again.

We were all boarded up and ready to go, but we weren’t moving. The captain came on after a few minutes to tell us that we’d been ready for awhile, but due to taxiway construction just to the west of us causing congestion, we hadn’t been able to get pushback clearance. It took about another 10 minutes before we could finally start moving.

The good news is that taxi was short and we were airborne into the marine layer quickly after passing quite a colorful assortment of airlines at the Bradley Terminal.

I had started browsing the movie selection on the ground and had already fired up Young Frankenstein to start me off. At the same time, I pulled out my laptop and phone and connected to Starlink. I kind of hate Starlink, because now I can never go back to other airborne wifi options again. It’s just so fast.

The flight attendants came through with the snack cart, drinks, and yes, the hot pocket.

This time, it was the turkey focaccia one, and it was very tasty if not a little salty… since my tears kept flowing down on to the sandwich.

I get why these are going away, but I will miss them. I washed it down with the customary and complimentary-for-all Koloa rum punch, and then I sat back.

The flight attendants asked everyone to lower their windowshades, but as usual, I was defiant. I did lower it somewhat but not all the way. Yes I know it’s open ocean, but I can watch cloud formations all day long. Then, I broke the rules again. I briefly got on a Google Meet with someone at work who needed to talk. I mostly just listened and whispered when I had to speak, but I realized this was certainly no more disruptive than talking to a seatmate. Still, I know it’s not allowed, and this makes me a true rebel.

I was going to watch another movie, but instead I decided to catch up on some reading. They may not play Territorial Airwaves on the inflight entertainment system anymore, but I had the entire internet at my disposal. I put on some Hawaiian music (Kealiʻi Reichel, if you’re curious) to get into an aloha mindset and then cranked through some long articles I’d been meaning to read.

The flight attendants had walked through with water regularly, but then they stopped. Within an hour of landing, they handed out cookies from Honolulu Cookie Co and I asked if more water was coming. She said no, but she would bring me some. Sure enough, she did, and I was content.

We started our descent into Honolulu when a call went out for a doctor or nurse. Gulp. That’s never good news, but there would be no diversions at this point. We circled around and landed to the east with a quick taxi to the gate. That’s when the flight attendant asked us all to be seated because paramedics would meet the ill party at the gate… and it was a child.

Surprisingly, everyone listened and nobody moved into the aisle. The family got off first, and I could see a rash on the kid’s neck as he walked past us, sobbing. Poor kid. Once they were off, it was time for us to follow. I headed to the hotel where I had this view from the Outrigger Reef for a couple of nights.

I’ll cover the return where I tasted the new pre-order meals for the first time and had excellent service in a future post.

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.