I haven’t done one of these in awhile, but there’s been a lot out there. Unfortunately a lot of this is behind a paywall, but, well, let’s just dive in because I have strong opinions.

Aisle be damned? The in-flight fight for control over the window shade takes off. – Boston Globe ($Subscription Required$)

I think we can all agree this is by far the most important topic in flying today. And I do not mince words. My thoughts were cut off a bit, and it’s paywalled anyway, so I will paste my whole comment here with the part in bold not in the article. Feel free to discuss, but if you disagree with me, you are wrong. And don’t even get me started on flight attendants wresting control away from passengers on the B787…

The person in the window seat controls the window. Full stop. As a window person, I choose that seat because I like to look out the window, and I won’t let one of those silly aisle people stop me. That being said, I’m not a cruel window dictator. If the sun is shining in someone’s face or they’re trying to watch a movie, I will certainly lower the shade halfway to help. Sometimes, I’ll even put it down if I’m feeling particularly benevolent, but if I do, I’ll raise it every few minutes to see what I’ve missed.

Oh and here’s a bonus Boston Globe article where I was asked about JetBlue’s First Class product. I think it’s a wise move to be adding it back, and that’s pretty much the extent of things from me in there.

JetBlue is raising its checked bag fees again. Here’s how much you’ll spend — and how to save. – Yahoo Travel

JetBlue has jacked bag fees up to at least $50 for the first bag. That sounds like a big increase, but then again, this is JetBlue trying to recapture its fuel costs as quickly as it can. It’s already doing very well with an 87 percent recapture, but it doesn’t have time to sit around and wait. Presumably, more people pay for checked bags than on other airlines since it’s more leisure-focused and there are probably fewer people with credit card exemptions.

And how about a bonus Yahoo Travel article as well where I was asked for my holiday travel tips to avoid winter weather. There’s nothing ground-breaking here, but my two tips were that 1) if you have travel insurance, it may pay you but it won’t get you there any faster, and 2) if the airline has a weather waiver in place, use it.

Runway taxi times at O’Hare airport among the worst in the nation – Chicago Tribune ($Subscription Required$)

I don’t like to post links to articles that are behind a paywall, but I helped the reporter walk through some of the data, so I have more to say than my one quote. Yes, O’Hare’s taxi times are awful. There are temporary issues, including the construction work going on, but ultimately this is more structural than anything. When you have six parallel runways and a terminal complex in the middle, there are going to be two that are very far away. There is also more that could be done with taxiway geometry, I’m sure, but that’s not in the plan. In the end, the new terminal configuration will be better, but O’Hare is always going to have long taxi times.

Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts Brian Sumers and I are talking about airport costs this week. They’re expensive. And right now, there’s not a better way to keep costs low. We need infrastructure investment, but the funding mechanism isn’t great. There is at least one benefit though. Listen in to hear more.

War is (Almost) Over: Alaska, Hawaiian Pilots Come Closer to Terms

The Master Executive Councils for both the Alaska and Hawaiian corners of the Air Line Pilots Association unanimously approved a tentative agreement on a collective bargaining agreement, potentially bringing in an end to almost two full years of negotiating.

The proposal will now go in front of the entire membership of the merged carriers for an up-or-down vote. Details of the new agreement were not made public, but sources to Cranky tell us that the deal includes higher pay, better scheduling, settlement of seniority issues, a POG juice trough in all shared pilot crew rooms, and a pancake maker added to all crew rooms in former Hawaiian bases.

The two unions represent a combined total of nearly 5,000 pilots with about 3,400 from the Alaska side and over 1,200 from the Hawaiian side. Full voting on the new CBA will begin on December 1 and last for three weeks,

Frontier’s First Class of First Class Seats On Sale

Frontier’s transformation into a hoity-toity Delta lite may not be fully complete, but it did put first class tickets on sale for the first time in its history. The seats officially enter service on March 5, but some passengers may find special treats before then as the refurbed cabins reenter the sky prior to that date. The seats look like any other domestic first class seat, with the one caveat that they don’t recline. Frontier says they are “ergonomically reclined,” which is so good that whoever came up with that deserves a raise.

First class will come with 37 inches of pitch and no middle seats, while rows three through eight will have up to 34 inches of pitch. The first eight rows (first class plus extra legroom) will also have USB-C at every seat. Everyone else will exist in a powerless jungle left to fend for themselves.

One of the most exciting parts of this story is that the carrier intends to introduce complimentary upgrades for elite members of its loyalty program. Frontier likely has some travelers who have reached elite status in Frontier Miles who have never done so on another airline, and boy oh boy, will they enjoy the rush of getting to the gate to find out they’re number 21 of 55 for one open first class seat. There’s no feeling like it in the world.

When asked for their opinion on the new first class cabin, neither Buttercup the Utah Prairie Dog or Cortez the Green Turtle would speak with us on the record but when asked off the record if they felt Frontier was a sell out for adding first class neither animal denied it.

Viva Adds from Mexico City’s Boondoggle Airport

Mexico City/AIFA, the city’s second airport, has seen nothing but starts and stops when it comes to U.S. service during its short time as an airport, and that trend is continuing as Viva will try again to add U.S. routes in January from the airport.

The eight cities are:

• Austin
• Chicago/ORD
• Dallas/DFW
• Houston/IAH
• Los Angeles
• Orlando
• Miami
• Nashville

The only “new’ announcement here is Nashville, as the other seven were announced to start before the US government banned Mexican carriers from adding new routes over the border. With that ban lifted, it’s time to fly. But when the service does begin — barring another US about-face — it will bring these eight cities closer to Mexico City… well, not really, but closer to the airport that’s further from Mexico City than the other airport in Mexico City.

Avelo Opens McKinney Service

Avelo opened its newest base and a new commercial airport this week when it operated flight 1848 on Wednesday from McKinney (DTX) to Fort Myers (RSW).

McKinney becomes Avelo’s fifth base, with three 184-seat B737-800s stationed at the airport. The city also opened its brand-new, Texas-sized 46,000-square-foot terminal, which has four gates and room for two more. The idea is to capture travelers in the rapidly growing northern Dallas suburbs who would otherwise have to make the trek to DFW or Love Field. That’s right in Avelo’s wheelhouse of using smaller airports to serve largeish metropolitan areas, though McKinney is a particularly bold example of that strategy.

As for service from the suburban Dallas airport, Avelo inaugurated service to Las Vegas and Orlando yesterday with Fort Lauderdale and Tampa to join next week. The carrier says it’ll reach as many as 11 destinations from DTX by next month with Atlanta, Denver, Nashville, New Orleans, Sarasota, and West Palm Beach scheduled to begin on either December 16 or 17. That’s quite an opening month of destinations for an airport that didn’t have any scheduled service as recently as…Tuesday.

American Reminds Us Bigger Isn’t Always Better

American Airlines is introducing a new meal option in first class on flights between 700 and 899 miles, bringing back a light bites concept that will debut on flights between both LGA and JFK in New York to American’s hub at Chicago/ORD. The carrier says it’ll have a rotating selection of options, with two available on each flight, and it assures Cranky that whichever one you most want, that’s the one that won’t be catered for your flight. Seven-hundred mile flights come out to about 1.5 hours of flying, while 900 miles — which equals about two hours — already has meal service up front.

This is a nice gesture by American, but not all will be pleased. For everyone who appreciates that something is served, you’re gonna have someone else bitching that it’s not a full meal, as if they’re the only person in the entire world who’s ever gone straight from a business meeting to the airplane and that the 90 minutes between Chicago and New York is their only chance to eat all day. This is the same person who tells you they’re “so busy at work” they “haven’t even had time to use the restroom.”

Anyhow, we also expect to see the person who complains because it’s cold, or it’s not as good as what he or she had at the Palm the night before, or on Emirates when flying in the night before. But someone will like it, so that’s good. Bon Appetit.

Breakfast selections may include smoked salmon, tropical chia overnight oats, prosciutto and melon, fruit and cheese plates, prosciutto and brie, or apple cinnamon chia pudding. Lunch and dinner options may include curry chicken salads, Thai noodle salads, turkey and gouda sandwiches, whipped burrata, poached shrimp with noodle salads, mezze plates, blackened chicken, or grilled vegetable wraps. Each meal also comes with a complimentary item specifically designed to be thrown at basic economy passengers once the flight reaches cruising altitude.

• Advanced Air added its first E190.
• Air Arabia revenue was down 42%.
• Air Koryo is doubling its domestic capacity. Maybe.
• AirBlue left 300 staff feeling blue.
• Albastar is headed to the big airport in the sky.
• ANA is flirting with a stronger cargo relationship with Lufthansa. Because the Germans and Japanese teaming up is never a problem.
• easyJet shareholders approved Apollo’s offer.
• flynas retired its final four A320ceos reminding us all that sleep is a cousin to death.
• FlyOne Asia is looking for more airplanes.
• Omni Air International was purchased.
• Philippine Airlines ordered nine more A350-1000s.
• Qantas is outsourcing nearly 1,000 corporate jobs to scrappy underdog Accenture. But on the bright side, it moved its flight numbers 1 and 2 to its new SYD-LHR service.
• Royal Air Maroc is looking to grow its fleet to 80 airplanes by late next year.
• SeaPort Airlines is a thing again, and it will begin much-needed commercial service Olympia, WA (OLM) in January 8.
• STARLUX is adding a triangle route to both Sydney and Auckland in March.
• Turkish is considering a return to Equatorial Guinea.
• Vietnam Airlines is entering into a JV with ANA.
• Vueling returned LHR slots.
• Wizz Air saw fuel prices rise. Welcome to the club.

I opened a doggie poop clean-up operation.

I’ve been working pretty hard to get it off the ground.

^{Original photo via Jip Bosch, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons}

To be fair, while 11.4 percent is a healthy margin, European airlines need to make all their money in summer. That robust margin looks a lot different when you look at the first nine months of 2026… it drops to 4.8 percent, nearly two points less than Air France.

If you were hoping to get a clear understanding of why major changes are needed when the airline is still profitable during a time of massive fuel increases, well, think again. Here’s the quote that was attributed to Marjan Rintel, President and CEO of KLM.

Every day, we all work with incredible dedication, commitment, and pride. But KLM’s future is not guaranteed. The environment we operate in is becoming increasingly complex, with global instability, high fuel prices, and growing pressure on the aviation industry. That’s why, at this pivotal moment for KLM, we’re taking far-reaching, sometimes painful measures. Every department and every division will be asked to contribute.

We’re doing this with a clear vision for the future: one where KLM remains a great airline that connects customers to the world, a company people want to work for, and one the Netherlands can be proud of.

This is fluff that the comms team clearly just came up with, and it doesn’t tell us anything useful. But the details we get later are far more clear. KLM seems to want to cut staff, simplify the fleet, but still continue to serve the destinations that matter. Most importantly, it wants more profit, and it’s going about that in a way that’s completely against what most airlines are doing. It wants smaller airplanes.

The big news is about the fleet, but the smaller end of it. As of today, Cirium fleet data shows KLM has the following widebody fleet:

• B777-300ER (16)
• A350-900 (1 + 21 on order)
• B787-10 (15)
• B787-9 (13)
• B777-200ER (15)
• A330-300 (5)
• A330-200 (4)

There were no announcements regarding the widebodies here, but the A350s will replace the A330s and B777-200ERs, so it stays pretty flat overall. The news this month is on the narrowbody side. Here is the current narrowbody fleet at KLM itself:

• A321neo (18 + 15 on order)
• B737-900 (5)
• B737-800 (26)
• B737-700 (6)

And here is what KLM Cityhopper flies:

• E195-E2 (25)
• E190 (16)
• E175 (17)

On mainline, the B737 aircraft will be phased out “in the coming years.” Further, while there was a plan for KLM to operate at least nine A320neos, that plan is off. It looks like KLM will drop down from the 49 narrowbodies in the fleet today to only 33 A321neos.

But KLM does say that overall it will remain right around 185 airplanes, so this can only mean that the lower-cost subsidiary Cityhopper is stepping up.

This announcement does say the E190s will all be retired. There were remarks made previously about the airline becoming only an E192-E2 operator, though the E175s were not noted for retirement in this announcement. They might have more staying power, but in the long run, we know the goal.

Including the B737-700s, there are currently 64 airplanes in the combined fleet with less than 150 seats. With mainline widebody staying fairly flat and large narrowbodies shrinking by 10, Cityhopper is going to need to bring on around 45 new E2s, make that closer to 60 if/when the E175s are retired.

As of today, no E2s are on order, but there are 25 options which it could exercise. I’m guessing we’re going to see more orders beyond that, unless KLM is not planning on staying at 185 as it says and is just lying. While the future of the Cityhopper fleet is not as obvious, it does seem clear that KLM mainline will be a smaller airline with far fewer narrowbodies plying the skies.

Beyond the fleet, KLM will outsource more ground handling work. Reading between the lines, it will also outsource more maintenance work on the current fleet while tuning the maintenance operation to focus on the future fleet. That’s going to presumably mean a smaller organization.

The airline’s overall staffing levels will be smaller as well with another 15 percent of staff either being cut or moved elsewhere in the AF-KL Group. KLM also wants new contracts with its unions, saying it will trade an ominous-sounding “very moderate wage growth” for an eight percent rise in productivity.

The tone of the press release on all these changes can best be characterized as grim. I realize this is being spun as an effort to make KLM great in the future, but I can’t imagine it will be taken that way internally by just about anyone, especially with the expected massive shift of flying from mainline to Cityhopper.

A smaller, downgauged KLM is coming, and the airline might not be done. The CEO seems to be taking a page out of the American Airlines playbook with this quote in the release:

Further changes to the organization, employment conditions, productivity, and staffing may still be necessary.

Before we get into it, I want to be clear that this took a village. Thank you to John Walton, Tiffany Funk, Ned Russell, and others who helped me figure this out after I posted on Bluesky, and the cavalry came to the rescue.

The basic plan for the terminal numbers alone is fairly straightforward.

• The old Terminal 1 which is home to most Star Alliance flying along with some cats and dogs will remain Terminal 1
• The old Terminal 3 which is mostly for leisure airlines and ULCCs will become Terminal 2
• The old Terminals 2A and 2C which are largely for oneworld airlines plus some cats and dogs will become Terminal 3
• The old Terminals 2B and 2D which are mostly easyJet and Air France partners will become Terminal 4
• The old Terminal 2E which is mostly non-Schengen (long-haul) Air France and joint venture partners will become Terminal 5
• The old Terminal 2F which is almost completely Schengen (short-haul) Air France and partners will become Terminal 6
• The old Terminal 2G which is for Air France regional flying and a couple small partners will become Terminal 7

I could quibble with the numbering a little in that maybe T3 and T4 should swap along with T5 and T6, but you can see how they generally got here. Here’s a map.

Where confusion reigns is in the gate lettering in each terminal. And this is where I really needed all that help.

We have to think about this as CDG really only having three terminals before. It’s just that Terminal 2 was broken down with A, B, C, D, F, and G gates, and those letters became part of the terminal name. But inexplicably, there were no E gates. Instead, T2E was broken down into the K, L, and M gates. (And no, KLM isn’t in any of those gates. It’s in T2F, of course.) Everybody got it?

To be clear, not all of these terminals actually use lettered gate numbers, so that adds even more to the confusion. For example, Terminal 1? That just uses numbers and no letters anywhere. So the idea now is that everything will have a letter. But the letters are sort of nonsensical.

I believe the core of this plan is in the Air France terminals, now T5/6/7. And actually, let’s start with T5. The M gates will become the B gates, the L gates will become the C gates, and the K gates will become the D gates. That’s right, they’ve reversed the order of the previous system, just to mess with everyone.

With that, you’d think that the gates in Terminal 7 would be the A gates, right? No, those are the N gates. I give up on trying to understand that, especially since it’s not on the north side at all. But this does fit with the airport’s development vision to knock down T7 at some point and replace it with another parallel concourse which would become the A gates.

^{CDG Development Vision 2035/2050}

I assume the Terminal 7 name transfers to the new concourse eventually, so I have no idea why A gate letters couldn’t do the same. But anyway… it’s N over there and you’ll just deal with it.

Then in Terminal 6, we have the two concourses there which will be the E and F gates. That follows in order, though it’s very confusing that the E gates are in the old T2F. But you can see what’s happening, we just keep going up heading further west. But while T3 and T4 look similar, T3 has only F gates while T4 is split between G and H gates. I’m assuming that is some distinction between Schengen and non-Schengen gates, but I don’t actually know that. Also, that will require some airlines to move around since there are mixes of Schengen and non-Schengen in both terminals.

So far, it’s holding together, though I really don’t understand why terminal numbers go up to the east and gate letters go up to the west. This is madness. But now let’s move on to the oddballs.

The new T2 has the I gates, right? Don’t be ridiculous! It has V gates. Now on some maps, it shows by P and V gates, but the official communications says in the future it will only be V. That’s another one where I’m guessing it was Schengen and non-Schengen, but now it’s being consolidated. But why V? I have absolutely no idea.

Lastly we get to Terminal 1. This will be split into… the R and S gates. The connected gates on one side are R, and those go to non-Schengen destinations. The other satellites are S, which serves Schengen operators like Aer Lingus or Icelandair. Why R and S? Well, now I’ve completely lost any sense of an idea.

It seems like CDG has decided to start in the southeast corner, head straight west from A to H (at least, one the N gates are gone). Then it goes north and skips way ahead to R and S, so maybe someday there is a dream of an I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q? After T1, it then goes to T2. V may just be a placeholder, because a new T2 is going to be built. Look at that map above, and you’ll see the potential three concourses. So then, those are maybe T, U, and a new V?

There clearly was some method to this madness, but it’s not entirely clear what that is. I don’t hate the idea of having more terminal numbers than before for navigation purposes, but the gate plan is bananas.

Under founders Stan Little and Keith Sisson, Southern was a quirky airline that was never afraid to try things. When it started in 2013, the airline was primarily flying around the southeast, originally from Olive Branch in Mississippi just outside of Memphis, and then seizing on Destin as an opportunity. Then this airline learned it loved to make acquisitions.

Southern started out as a charter seller, but it bought the operator, Executive Express, and started flying itself. And it was soon expanding. It had its first Essential Air Service (EAS) contract in 2015, but the real growth began in 2016 when it bought Sun Air Express and that airline’s Pennsylvania-focused operation.

In 2019, it bought Mokulele which was flying almost entirely in Hawaiʻi. (The only exception was EAS service at Imperial/El Centro in California.) And once it bought Mokulele, it then bought fellow local operator Makani Kai which made it the one true regional operator in the islands. That was cemented even further when Hawaiian shut down its small turboprop operation during the pandemic.

But it wasn’t just about acquisitions. Southern was game for pretty much anything that it thought might work. That same year it bought Mokulele, in 2019, Southern took a swing at a regional operation out of Nantucket.

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

During the pandemic, the airline stuck with what it knew best. It bought Air Choice One in 2022, and that same year it entered into an agreement to operate in the Pacific, flying between Saipan, Guam, Tinian, and Rota. In partnership with the government in the Northern Mariana Islands — a US territory — Marianas Southern Airways was formed. In a somewhat unique agreement, Southern also started selling flights for the new operator Tailwind under the 9X code. Those flights otherwise had nothing to do with Southern, but it showed that the team was creative and willing to try anything.

That same year in 2022 is when everything but EAS started to fall off. That’s when the non-EAS flying in the Southeast was wound up. The airline also slashed Nantucket in 2022 and fully walked away in 2023. The money dried up in the Marianas, and that failed fast, gone by 2023. That was the year that the airline ended up being sold to Surf Air in a very complex transaction that somehow involved going public first (a SPAC) and focusing on developing hybrid-engine aircraft. Once that happened, it’s been all downhill.

When EAS contracts came up post-merger, Southern started to lose them at a rapid pace. It also tried a couple of non-EAS routes funded by local support, but those didn’t last long.

The only bright spot, if there is one, is Mokulele which continues to operate more-or-less than same way. It holds the EAS contracts that exist in the islands, but there is no growth opportunity. After years of poor operational performance, Molokai and Lānaʻi have been screaming for something better.

But thatʻs all under the Mokulele name anyway. What is left under Southern Airways Express itself? From Feb of next year, just this:

^{Illustration created by Claude}

That’s right, Southern holds three contracts for EAS and nothing else after it winds down some other lost contracts in Feb. And these three? I would be surprised if they didn’t go elsewhere.

Both Hot Springs and Harrison are up for bid, and all the proposals were just filed in the docket. The issue for Southern is that it exists today as a tweener. Everyone is pitching flights to DFW except for SkyWest which has Houston. Some have suggested other destinations as well, but Southern is focused on DFW this time around. I suppose that makes sense when you have no other operation in Memphis anymore.

But if the cheapest subsidy wins, then that’s Denver Air Connection which is about $1m less for each city in the first year. It will do DFW with a sprinkling of Memphis for that price, and it has interline connections and all the other benefits Southern can offer. It’ll fly Metroliners — that’s right, the flying pencil lives — but outfitted with only 9 seats, so it’s pretty spacious compared to the Southern Grand Caravans.

If convenience wins the day, then chances are SkyWest will do better, especially since they will presumably be sold as United flights and connect into Houston.

If the destination matters, then Contour has a great shot since they put out proposals that not only include DFW but also either Atlanta, Chicago/O’Hare, Houston/IAH, or Nashville.

As we’ve seen, there doesn’t seem to be much of a care about continuity since Southern keeps losing its bids. It doesn’t seem particularly motivated, and I’m guessing that it isn’t trying to be very aggressive on price for that reason.

If these are lost, then Southern will be down to just Jonesboro, and there’s one more year on that contract. But it’s completely realistic to suggest that in about a year, the Southern might have disappeared completely, leaving only the scheduled service on Mokulele to carry the torch.

Delta Threatens Legal Action Over LHR Terminal Moves

Moving Day is coming to London/Heathrow in 2028, and Delta is not happy about the plan as it currently stands for longtime JV partner, BFF, and known Anglophile Virgin Atlantic.

Heathrow’s management company, the cleverly named Heathrow Airport Ltd, does a once-per-decade review of its four terminals and who’s situated where, but we have no confirmation as to whether or not the term linear gate footage played into the decision. The airport said it will ship Delta out of its cushy T3 home to the rough-and-tumble land that is LHR’s T4, nearly two miles from Virgin Atlantic and T3 via airside transfer bus, or as its called in England, a bus.

The problems with the move are plentiful if you ask Delta. CEO Ed Bastian says that making DL be one of only five carriers forced to move “undermines years of investment and disregards the tightly integrated customer benefits that we offer in our co-located terminal.” And that’s before taking into account the stores of Biscoffs and real U.S.-style Diet Coke that Delta keeps buried deep in T3. The carrier is also known to suffer from significant separation anxiety and is struggling to deal with the idea of such physical distance between its own gates and that of its quirky English buddy.

The other four planned moves include Finnair and JAL also moving to T4, China Southern to T5, and LATAM to T2. This is all being done to make room for Southwest when it begins flying all business class A380s from Omaha next week.

Frontier Announces C-Suite Shakeup

Despite rumors to the contrary, we can confirm as of press time that Frontier did not name Betty the Bluebird or Ichabod the Whooping Crane to its senior leadership team, but it did appoint Michael Delehant to the role of EVP and Chief Commercial Officer.

Delehant comes from fellow Indigo-backed airline Wizz Air where he was the carrier’s Group Managing Director, a role in which he was primarily responsible for handing out discipline to staff or passengers who made urination jokes about the name of the airline. Additionally, Frontier promoted James Fenner to Senior VP and Chief Revenue Officer, which means he’s the guy to complain about if you’re unhappy with a fee the airline charges you. He’d welcome your feedback, we’re sure.

Lastly, Bobby Schroeter was pushed out of the Chief Commercial Officer role and given a new rule as Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer. Two Senior VPs — Trevor Stedke (operations) and Alec Clerc (customers) — will leave the carrier, with their last day set for next Friday. As part of their severance package, both executives were given a three-month supply of Frontier’s Little Bear Bites from its on-board menu and a two week trial GoWild! pass. Thanksgiving in San Pedro Sula — who says no?

JetBlue Raises Bag Fee

JetBlue is raising the price to check bags for a third time this year, seemingly to offset surging fuel costs (which means the price will be dropped when fuel prices come back down, right?) but are going with the twist of using dynamic pricing to secure every last possible dollar.

Early this year, checked bags on JetBlue started at $35, but when checking a bag now, it’ll start at $50 if checked more than 24 hours in advance. Within 24 hours of departure, it’ll go up to $60, while the airline will reserve the right to up those fees to $55 and $70, respectively, during what it calls “peak travel.” We assume peak travel will be defined as any flight flying to a city with more Dunkin’ locations than Starbucks or with a preponderance of blue architecture.

The only question now will be to see which airlines elect to play Follow the Leader and use the cover of JetBlue’s increase to increase their own fees. Spoiler: it’ll be someone.

Singapore Unveils Fancy New Cabins You Probably Won’t Ever Sit In

More than two years after first hinting that something was afoot, Singapore airlines unveiled its new business and first class cabins coming to its A350 and B777-9 fleets.

The new B777-9s and some A350s will receive new first class, business class, premium economy, and economy, new IFE, Starlink to connect online, a new shame cage for Basic Economy passengers and a fresh pasta making station in one galley. Beyond the new aircraft coming into the fleet, the airline will also invest about $800 million to update its current A350-900 fleet which currently consists of 41 aircraft.

The A350 retrofit will go from 253 to 258 seats, adding five more for the hoi palloi in the back. The A350-900 ULRs which the carriers uses to operate its nominees for longest flights in the world will go from 161 seats to just 132. They’ll go from a 67 biz and 94 premium econ configuration to now having four first class seats, 70 business class seats, and just 58 in premium economy.

As to the soft product, the seats look large and comfy. They will make 98% of their occupants very happy, with a vocal 2% who will light up the web with damning trip reports about delayed champagne refills and an uninspired amuse bouche. The new cabins are expected to begin appearing next year, on the reconfigured A350-900s first. The first ULR should come out of the retrofit factory late next year, and the first B777-9 is expected in late 2027 or early 2028.

Lufthansa Honors German Heritage, Creates Complicated Process for Something that Basically Already Exists

Lufthansa is now requiring a ‘travel ID’ for check-in on the website and apps of its Lufthansa Group airlines. That’s correct, it will now require you to have a login and password to access its websites for basic functionality that helps it to reduce the burden on airport staff. It put out a release and everything, inexplicably suggesting this is a good idea.

More specifically, it’s going to require one login across the board for its seven airlines, and this is not the same as having a Miles and More frequent flier account. We can only hope there is a word with several consonants in a row in the German language that defines the idea of implementing a process that already exists and is used by generally everyone. Now it wouldn’t it be a regulation without exceptions, right? Well the exceptions for this one are basically every way you could interact with the airline that doesn’t include online check-in and flight management.

Checking in at the airport, tickets issued by other airlines, group bookings, tour operator bookings, really just everything else. So to sum up, if you need to access your travel information online, you need a login and a password. If you don’t, you don’t. We’re all up to speed now.

• Air India is in the widebody market.
• Air Mauritius‘s full-year profit came in at €79 million,
• Alaska is furloughing about 200.
• American is resuming service to Haiti.
• Breeze secured financing for six A220s.
• Delta, along with nine other non-airlines are being order to hand over detailed information on how it handles personal data to the FTC.
• Discover discovered a fleet of A350-900s that will debut next summer.
• Emirates reported a 66% decline in profit.
• Ghana Airways is hoping and wishing for a 2027 return.
• Gulf Air will begin flying between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.
• ITA cut 226 jobs and people aren’t happy.
• JAL is pleased with its earnings report.
• JetBlue unveiled a Florida Panthers-themed livery. No word on what baggage fee the panther has to pay. The aircraft is supposedly outfitted with overhead bins big enough to fit the Stanley Cup which means if JetBlue ever flies to Canada, this airplane will not be needed there.
• LOT no longer has a LOT of E170s flying, in fact, it just retired its final one.
• Norwegian laid off 123 Copenhagen-based crew members.
• Oman Air is leasing slots at London/LHR to Qatar Airways.
• Qantas is adding 3x weekly seasonal service between Sydney and Cape Town next October.
• SkyWest will return all of its Delta owned CRJ900s by the middle of next year.
• Turkish will begin 3x weekly flights to Chengdu/TFU on Wednesday.
• United is adding three, but as we learned last week, two of them are 1x weekly and don’t really count.
• Waltzing Matilda is still a thing it seems.

What’s the difference between an Indian restaurant and a Vietnamese restaurant?

One is naan profit and the other is pho profit.

Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts JetBlue’s troubles have been brewing for years. Come listen as Jon Ostrower and I sit down tracing this back to before the pandemic on what has gone wrong. But also… why this current panic is overblown.

JetBlue has always had its roots in being a more premium version of what other airlines were offering. The thing is, it was a premium version of coach, and it never quite built out its portfolio to take advantage of all that growth in higher level premium demand. In other words, while JetBlue was good at acting premium, it could never actually profit off it the ways others have.

This goes all the way back to the beginning of the airline when founder David Neeleman was focused on a great experience for all. I’ll bring my old chart back showing the evolution of the A320 configuration:

Soon after launching, David decided to take 12 seats off the airplane. The result was an incredible amount of legroom for everyone and no actual upsell capability for people who wanted a better experience versus those who just wanted a cheap fare. Maybe it wasn’t so obvious at the time, but you’d think after American’s More Room Throughout Coach flamed out, JetBlue would have started to pick up on this.

Over time, JetBlue did create Even More Legroom, which became Even More Space, but these were just simple opportunities to pay for a better seat assignment. It wasn’t a bundled option for an overall better product that could have demanded a higher price. Now, JetBlue finally has morphed this into EvenMore, which is that better product all around. Of course there’s the excellent Mint experience, but now there will also be BlueFirst coming to the whole domestic fleet. The upsell engine is just getting started over there.

The network has improved dramatically as well. It was not focused enough on profit previously when the money-losing LA/Long Beach focus city existed. Capacity was moved out of Boston to fund adventures in places like San Francisco or Raleigh/Durham or Miami, none of which really turned into anything. But that leading position in Boston turned into a second-place position as Delta took advantage, especially during the Northeast Alliance period with American where it had to redirect planes to fly all of those LaGuardia slots from American.

The new team under CEO Joanna Geraghty, President Marty St George, and SVP Revenue, Network, and Enterprise Planning Daniel Shurz has been trying to fix all of this. And they are starting to make real inroads.

The network as of late has focused mostly on Fort Lauderdale since Spirit’s demise created an opportunity. But beyond that, Boston, JFK, Orlando, and San Juan are the places that will get attention. JetBlue is trying to be a premium leisure airline, and the network decisions show that. It’s not just network, of course. We’ve already talked about product, and the United Blue Sky partnership has been a big win. Revamped credit card offerings have certainly helped as well.

The passenger revenue numbers from Q3 were impressive. Take a look for yourself.

Q3 2026 PRASM vs Q3 2025 by Airline

^{*Frontier does not report PRASM; calculated from filed passenger revenue and ASMs, Data via airline SEC Filings}

Don’t focus on the aggregate passenger revenue per available seat mile (PRASM). These aren’t adjusted for stage length, nor do these airlines all have the same models. Focus instead on the percent change year-over-year and what do you see?

Yes, Frontier is at the top with a truly impressive revenue performance in Q3. It had a great quarter, though really it is easier to have a higher percentage change when you start with a low base. Still, this performance bounce is largely due to the demise of Spirit. In second place is Southwest. As we all know by now, Southwest has completely changed its model. Seat assignments, extra legroom, checked bag fees. Yes, this revenue performance is impressive, and it should be. And that brings us to number three, JetBlue, with a nearly 20 percent increase.

Sure, JetBlue benefits from Spirit’s demise as well, but we have to remember that it also poured capacity into Fort Lauderdale to try to backfill and dominate. Overall, despite Spirit’s failure, Q3 seats for FLL in total were down only 2.3 percent year-over-year. And focusing in on the markets that JetBlue served in Q3 2026 from FLL, seats are UP nearly 3 percent year-over-year. That is usually bad for short term unit revenues when you have such a massive increase in capacity at your own airline that leads to higher industry capacity in those markets, but in this case it worked.

I’ll let this slide from JetBlue’s earnings presentation tell the story.

A 65 percent increase in capacity accompanied by a 15 percent increase in unit revenue? That is just excellent work. Yes, Spirit going away is a big driver, but it’s not easy replacing all that lost low fare capacity with seats that need to generate much higher fares. (Actually, Spirit needed to get higher fares too… hence, why it’s now gone.) JetBlue has managed it well.

And the airline’s forecast for the broader network in Q4 is for unit revenue to be up 18 to 22 percent. The train keeps on rolling… for now.

With such a rosy revenue picture, why is everyone still freaking out about this airline? Again, high fuel prices, large debt… it makes it tougher to dig out of the hole that was dug by the previous regime. And throw in uncertainty about future fuel inputs since that is truly an unknown considering how this Iranian war is going (or not going).

We talk more about this on The Air Show this week, but suffice it to say that whatever issues the airline has, revenue is not currently one of them. And the panic about the airline’s demise is certainly overblown.

Loreto sits about two-thirds of the way down the Baja peninsula between Tijuana and Los Cabos on the Sea of Cortés, just across from Los Mochis. It is wedged in on the coastal plain with the Sierra de la Giganta mountains looming toward the west and Parque Nacional Bahía de Loreto and its islands ringing around the city to the east.

The town itself is steeped in history as the first permanent Spanish settlement in California when it was founded in 1697. It was the colonial capital of the region for 80 years until that moved north to Monterey.

Loreto was also the home of the first California mission, Misión de Nuestra Señora de Loreto Conchó. For kids who grew up learning California history like me, you’ll realize this means it was the beginning of El Camino Real, the royal road that connected an ever-growing number of missions all the way up to the Bay Area. That’s why you see so many streets in California named El Camino Real, and you’ll also see bells along the route marking the original path. But today, Loreto is just a speck on the map with only about 20,000 people.

The people I met while in town were overwhelmingly friendly, with many asking me what I thought of the place. As we talked, more than one person offered up the belief that the best way to describe Loreto was tranquilo. It really was relaxed, and it felt very safe, as several people proudly proclaimed.

This relaxed and unsophisticated nature — which I mean in the best way — means travelers have to be prepared. Few of the places I visited took credit cards, and US dollars were not ubiquitous as in Los Cabos. Get a healthy number of pesos from an ATM, and try to get change. I was not prepared for the number of merchants that miraculously had no change available despite only accepting cash. I learned this first when the taxi driver on my rather pricey 410 peso ride from the airport to town told me after we arrived that he couldn’t give me any money back for my 500 peso bill.

I stayed at Hotel La Misión which is waterfront in Loreto and appears to be the nicest traditional hotel in town with a pool, an upscale restaurant, and a bar. It also has a confusing sense of direction.

Yep, I was in 309. They had a travel industry rate which brought the nightly rate down to a little under $200 a night. This got me a “mountain view” room which, while very spacious and comfortable, mostly had a view of palm trees and the empty lot behind me that alternated between constant daylight construction or stonecutting or something loud, and barking dogs in the evening. Still, that was better than the noise of Seahawks fans in the bar screaming as their team pummeled the Chiefs on my first night.

I’m really overstating the downsides here. I wasn’t in Loreto to sit in my room, but when I was there, it was quite nice.

One of the issues with a short trip to Loreto is that so much of what I wanted to do requires a half-day trip. It’s hard to cram all that into a couple of days, especially during the shoulder season when trip minimum numbers can often mean that a solo traveler won’t have any options. That was the case for me in my attempt to visit the old mission in San Javier which sits an hour’s drive away up in the mountains and is supposed to be well worth the visit.

That first afternoon, I wasn’t quite sure what to do, so I just walked. And walked. From the hotel, it is just a block away to the walking street named after the first Spanish settler in 1697, Salvatierra. This street starts off as a quiet stroll with a couple of restaurants, but then it opens up to the main plaza which feels like it’s straight out of a movie.

Just beyond the main plaza was an outdoor area that had been set up for a concert later that evening. And across from that was the mission.

The mission is very small, a far cry from the missions we have in Southern California which were built much later. It was open to walk in, and that took me all of five minutes.

It looks like there is some sort of school that may still be active, though I imagine it would be somewhat hard to learn in this setup.

I continued to walk until the end of the pedestrian street, and then wandered through a local supermarket. I ended up getting a recommendation to eat at a new restaurant called Kawacan which filled me up with tacos dorados that had a shrimp relish on them.

At this point, the street was filling up with people preparing for whatever that evening’s celebration was. There were families with children, there were tourists, and there were vendors lining the street. After walking around more, I was exhausted, so I wandered back down the street toward the hotel, and found a place that served Thrifty ice cream. (Black Cherry, for the win.)

I continued walking among the lush trees as the crowds thinned out closer to the water.

And then at the end of the walk… what a view of the rising moon.

The next morning, I was up early, so I went to look for breakfast. D’Cordero did not disappoint with some of the best chilaquiles rojos I’ve had.

After stuffing myself, it was time to make my way back to the marina which was only a 5 minute walk from the hotel. I still had time to kill, so I walked to the beach just north of the marina. It’s not a fine sand here, but there is plenty of it.

At the marina, I was joining a group of five that had signed up to visit Isla Coronados for the day with Wild Loreto Tours. This group had come up the 45+ minutes from Villa del Palmar, a massive master-planned resort south of town with timeshares and golfing. I’m guessing this is the reason there is a flight from the US in the first place. I didn’t make it down there, but I imagine it would have been a nice if not extremely different (and undoubtedly expensive).

We met at the marina where I had to pay in cash for a bracelet that allowed me to enter the Parque Nacional Bahía de Loreto. The largest island, Isla del Carmen, is the only one with a fresh water source, and it looms large across the bay from Loreto. But the closest to the town itself is Coronados, and that is a very popular day trip.

The transportation of choice is a flat-bottomed panga boat which makes it easy to cut through the chop when the winds pick up and to go into shallow areas, which are very common in this volcanic zone.

It’s about a 25 minute trip to the island, and the views are just… glorious. I’m not sure of a better way to describe the breathtaking surroundings.

The plan was to stop in a couple of areas where we could snorkel if we liked, but our captain saw a spout in the distance, so we went on a whale hunt. I didn’t see it, but others did multiple times, and that was a surprise. This is very early in the season for a whale to be showing up, but in winter, gray, humpback, and yes, blue whales are apparently everywhere.

We did eventually come back to snorkel, and I jumped right into the warm, shallow water to go look around. There was no shortage of fish to be seen, but mostly, I just enjoyed cooling off in the water.

There isn’t much in the way of wildlife to see on land here, but we were warned about rattlesnakes. We did, however, see plenty of sea lions, oh, and the resident blue-footed boobies. I didn’t get a good picture of them, but I just wanted to say boobies because I have the mind of a 12 year old boy.

We circled around to the north before drifting into the very shallow spit of land which looks like nothing I’ve ever seen on the West Coast. You would have thought we were somewhere in the Caribbean with the very white sand and the very blue water.

Our captain unloaded the coolers with beer and sandwiches for lunch into the palapas which were on the beach, and then he took off, giving us a couple hours to do whatever we wanted.

I ate, and then I walked to the end of the crescent, found a piece of beach I liked, and sat down to read and listen to the ocean. It was idyllic. These waters were filled with small fish, so the pelicans would dive bomb into the shallows and eat their fill. Seagulls would follow them, waiting for them to spill a little, and everyone ate like a king.

All too soon, it was time to head back. The boat returned, we loaded up, and then we were back in the marina around 1pm. At this point, I wasn’t sure what to do.

Like I said, there isn’t a lot to do in town, and the one museum at the mission is closed Sunday and Monday. I wasn’t hungry, so… I just went to the hotel and sat by the pool. There are worse places to read and continue drinking after already having my fill of Pacificos on the boat.

It was getting later in the afternoon, so I had to think about my evening. Game 3 of the World Series was at 5pm (they are on the same time zone as Arizona with no daylight saving), so I figured I would head up to the bar at the hotel. Apparently there were Eagles fans who wanted to watch Monday night football, so I had to find a corner where they’d let me change the TV. I’d say my view worked out pretty well. That’s Coronados out the window on the left. And that’s a nice mezcal with chilled, salted oranges on the table.

I had grand plans to have an appetizer and then move on elsewhere for dinner, but I got tired. And I think the beers started to wear off. So I ended up just eating there, starting with an exquisite clam chowder made with local clams, following it up with a tuna tartare. I was full, and that was good, because this game was over in the 5th inning. I just went back to my room.

The last morning in town, I had a plan. I would wake up and get breakfast. Then I would catch the mission’s museum when it opened, for the first time since I had been in town. But where to go to breakfast? Another casualty of small town life in México is that Google Maps does not live in reality. I found a breakfast joint that looked good, but it was a boarded up building that didn’t look like it had been a restaurant in ages. There was another spot which Google said was open, but it was clearly not. (This, by the way, was common for everything, including the museum which I later found out opened an hour before Google said.)

I finally settled on Casa Madera which was filled with workers preparing to start the day.

I had an omelette with steak and fresh tortillas that absolutely hit the spot. When I went to pay the bill, I was told that they had no change again. The only reason I bring this up is because the waiter, who I’m guessing was probably the son of one of the women working hard in the back, told me to just keep the extra money and just pay 20 pesos less to round it down. I certainly wasn’t going to do that, so I gave him the change, but I appreciated that offer very much.

It was then time to head to the beginning of El Camino Real and then to the museum.

This museum was very small with perhaps four rooms around a small courtyard. They showed a little of the founding history of the mission as well as some artifacts from the earlier periods of colonization. It did not take me long, and I didn’t take any photos, but for the 145 peso admission, I suppose it was worth it. It’s still tough to stomach what happened to the natives here who had been largely nomadic until the Spaniards came, forced them to settle down, and then converted them to Christianity.

There was one other spot I had hoped to visit which was a coffee shop that I had read also had some museum-like qualities to it. Google said it was open, but… apparently they were on a late fall break and wouldn’t be back until the first week of November. So much for that idea.

At this point I didn’t have the time to do any real excursions, so I just sat back and read my book in the plaza for a little while. I eventually made my way back to the room where I packed up, checked out, and headed over to the airport.

I really enjoyed Loreto a great deal. If I were to come back, I would want more time to explore other islands in the national park. The same goes for that mission in San Javier. I think with more time, it would be easier to do a half-day trip each day, relax in the afternoons on the beach or at the pool, have a great meal in town at night, and then do it all over again.

The alternative is to do it in a completely different way and stay at Villa del Palmar. This is a different trip, but it’s one that would work well for kids who might be picky eaters and prefer routine. It is a sanitized version of a real visit to Loreto, one where you just drop in when you want to get that local flavor, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. In reality, I don’t think there is a bad way to see this region which most Americans only know if they look down as they fly to Los Cabos.

Flights

• Alaska flies daily from Los Angeles except during the off-peak fall when it drops to 4-5x weekly. It is also starting a new 2x weekly flight from San Diego from December through April.
• American flies daily from Phoenix except during the off-peak fall when it drops to 5x weekly. It also has Saturday-only service from Dallas/Fort Worth, though that is currently expected to become seasonal with no flights after April.
• Volaris flies daily from Tijuana, which is easily accessed using CBX from San Diego.
• WestJet flies 2x weekly from Calgary from late October through April, but I left just a day or so before that first seasonal flight arrived.

Hotels

• Hotel La Misión is where I stayed right on the malecón.
• Hotel 1697 is a boutique property that I considered which is right on the main plaza.
• Villa del Santo Niño was the third finalist, but it’s more of an apartment-style hotel right on the walking street that looked excellent.

Restaurants

• Casa Madera is where I had that omelette.
• D’ Cordero where I ordered the chilaquiles.
• Kawacan where I scarfed down the tacos dorados.
• Los Olivos is the upscale restaurant in my hotel

Tourist Spots

• Misión de Nuestra Señora de Loreto Conchó is the mission in town.
• Museo de las Misiones de Baja California is the small museum next to the mission.
• Wild Loreto arranged my trip to Isla Coronados
• Parque Nacional Bahía de Loreto is the official national park page that covers Coronados

This move is effectively Alaska trying to make Anchorage look like Honolulu. Stay with me for a second, because I realize that sounds absurd. The flights between Honolulu and Japan have historically been full of Japanese travelers looking to take a vacation in Hawaiʻi. What Alaska is trying to do here is the exact same thing, but it’s for Japanese travelers looking to take a vacation in, well, Alaska. This is a much smaller market, however, so it is actually pretty remarkable that Alaska has found a way to even be willing to take a chance like this.

This is Not About Connections to the Lower 48

I’ve seen others suggest this is about building a hub in Anchorage, but that is not what’s happening at all. Just look at the flight times.

This departs Anchorage for Tokyo at 2:10pm, and the return gets into Anchorage at noon. The traditional pattern for flights in the Continental US is for late evening arrivals and redeye returns, so this does not connect. This route was announced with three new Saturday only flights to Anchorage from Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth, and Nashville, but these do not connect westbound and have long layovers eastbound. Besides, if you lived in those cities, wouldn’t you fly through Seattle and get a proper long-haul experience anyway? Of course you would.

Or look at July 2026. There were 16 cities served in the lower 48 from Anchorage that month, and only San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle had flights departing within four hours of the noon arrival. Extend it to six hours and you only add Portland and Boise.

Again, Alaska already flies nonstop from Seattle with a true long-haul product, so there really is no reason to take these awkward connections.

This is About Alaska Inbound with Any Outbound That Exists

On the other hand, within four hours of that noon arrival from Tokyo, there are connections on to Adak, Cordova, Dillingham, Fairbanks, King Salmon, Nome, Prudhoe Bay, and Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow).

Looking at Cirium ARC/BSP data, this past June through August showed about 15 people a day flying each way between Tokyo and Anchorage with only about 25 per day flying between all of Japan and Alaska. This is not a large market. Interestingly, in Jan/Feb, it only drops to about 18.5 per day each way, so this is not as variable as you might think, but it skews even more toward Japan origin in those winter months.

Today, the vast majority of these people go through Seattle, though there is a sprinkling through Honolulu, San Francisco, and Vancouver. Alaska takes less than half of those today with Delta carrying about half again the number Alaska does. This would certainly be a time-saver for anyone starting in or going to anywhere in Alaska, perhaps outside of Southeast AK which might be indifferent.

The thing to keep in mind here is that this is a stimulation play but really only in Japan. People there are more likely to consider an Alaskan vacation with such an easy way to get there. People in Alaska who fly to Japan are doing it today, but they are just taking a longer way around.

This is Far Away

The flight from Anchorage to Tokyo is 3,433 miles. That is actually shorter than Alaska’s longest MAX 8 flight today. Seattle – Reykjavík clocks in at 3,622 miles, but there are differences between these flights.

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

Alaska’s -8s have ETOPS 180, which means they can fly up to 180 minutes away from the nearest suitable diversion airport on one engine. As the map above shows, Anchorage to Tokyo is well within what’s allowed. That’s the same story for Seattle to Iceland — but that’s a route where you probably don’t even need ETOPS because of all the diversion airports in Canada and Greenland.

The real issue is that most of this flight skirts Russian airspace. Sure, if there’s an emergency, there are technically airports where a B737 can land in Russia. But listen, you do not want to put down in Russia unless you have no other choice. That means diversion airports are either Northern Japan or somewhere in the Aleutians where the weather can be… sporty.

The MAX 8 Has Impressive Range

The -8 was always meant to be the real performer with a mix of capacity and range. (Yes, the -7 can go farther, but it’s too small for most to care.) But the -8 has a published range of 3,500nm. This is about 3,000nm.

Airplanes never live up to their max range in real world conditions, and it’ll be different every day based on weather. But it’s particularly challenging to meet range limits when you have these overwater legs that require more fuel. Throw in the fact that this will fly in winter when westbound headwinds can be vicious, and this is impressive that Alaska expects it to be able to work reliably.

Nobody Has Tried This for a Long Time

Long ago, flights regularly went between Asia or Europe and Anchorage, because they couldn’t fly nonstop to the lower 48. This was a fuel stop by necessity. Over time, as aircraft got longer legs, the Alaska stop was eliminated.

T-100 data shows that the last time a US airline regularly served this market was back in 1993 when Delta flew through Anchorage to get to Hong Kong. This ended shortly after the MD-11 replaced the L-1011 and it started flying nonstop from Hong Kong to LAX. But these flights were never meant to serve the Alaska market.

That’s not been the case for the Asian airlines. They’ve long had charter operations that come and go, but both Asiana and Korean served the market until 2005. The last holdout was China Airlines which continued to fly B747-400s on the Taipei – Anchorage route until 2011.

All of this is to say that nobody has tried this in a really long time, and nobody has ever tried it with an airplane this small. (Just saying you want to try it doesn’t count, Northern New Pacific.)

I don’t have high hopes for this, but I love giving it a try. Because who knows, it might work? The key will be getting in good with the big Japanese agencies like JTB that can market the trips and fill those planes in a heartbeat. And fortunately, through Hawaiian, Alaska now has those relationships dating back decades. This is the kind of route that the Alaska and Hawaiian merger together really makes possible.

JetBlue Earnings Leave the Carrier Feeling Blue but Not as Blue as Some Predicted

JetBlue announced its Q3 earnings a day early on Monday as the carrier reported a loss bigger than last year’s Q3 loss of $257 million. But its stock was up later in the day as its forecast for Q4 and beyond was more positive than expected.

Gross revenues for JetBlue came in at $2.8 billion, 21% higher than last year with $2.6 billion coming from passenger revenue. The net loss was $257 million, a whopping 80% higher than last year’s loss in Q3 when the carrier was $143 million in the blue red. This may come as a shock to you dear reader, if you’ve been living under a rock, but fuel was a major reason for the jump in expenses as the airline spent $868 million at the pump during the quarter, 61% more than the $539 million in spent in ’25.

Looking forward, JetBlue paints a more positive picture. It expects unit revenue to be up as much as 22% in Q4. Despite it not posting a full year profit since 2019, spirits are high at the airline. Capacity is expected to rise between 3 and 4% for the rest of the year despite the price spike in fuel continuing to rise — the 61% jump in fuel in paid in Q3 will pale in comparison to the 85% increase it’s bracing for in Q4. The carrier closed the quarter with $2.2 billion in liquidity, $8.4 billion in liquidity, and a bunch of slots at New York/LGA it bought over the summer that turned out to be gates with nothing but BuzzBalls, yellow paint, and 2-for-1 coupons for Happy Hour at Poor House in Fort Lauderdale.

Alaska Adds Four from Anchorage

Alaska Airlines announced a fun four-route expansion from Anchorage as the airline adds passenger flights from the world’s cargo hub to Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth, Nashville, and Tokyo/Narita.

All four will be operated by the B737-8 MAX — yep that even includes Tokyo, so good luck to the guy or gal stuck in 34B for that one. Amazingly though, ANC-NRT won’t even rank amongst the top 10 longest MAX 8 routes in the world, and it won’t even be Alaska’s longest — SEA-KEF clocks in a 3,622 miles, a clear victory over the 3,422 for ANC-NRT. As for competition on these routes, American flies to DFW from ANC but (not) shockingly no one else flies to either Austin or Nashville.

The Tokyo/NRT flight also brings back a piece of aviation history. Back in the day when planes couldn’t make the Pacific crossing on their own, a stop in Anchorage to refuel was considered standard. Many airlines including Air France. BA, JAL, and KLM would stop in Anchorage on their way home.

The Tokyo flight will operate daily during the summer between May 13 and September 7. It will operate 3x weekly beginning in January 2028 while the other three newly announced flights will operate 1x weekly only as Saturday-only service which makes them nearly useless.

Frontier Needs Somewhere New To Store All its Cash

Perception can be everything, especially in the world of commercial aviation. Frontier lost money in Q3 — $104 million, significantly more than the $77 million it lost in Q3 last year but things seem to be looking up. Its fuel bill jumped 82% to $425 million, and it took a $134 million charge to return aircraft to Airbus, all this despite record gross revenue of $1.35 billion. Without those special items, Frontier posted a nearly 3% pre-tax margin. No, you aren’t imagining things. There is no minus sign in front of that number.

But the airline sold tickets at an average of $67.82 during the quarter, an astronomical figure for the budget carrier and 71% higher than the $39.74 it got last year. After accounting for fees, total revenue per passenger jumped 30% to $138.22. Not only that, but total passengers rose 18% to 9.8 million, an increase of 1.5 million. Naturally some of those migrated from the carcass that was Spirit, and countless others did so because they were drawn to the friendly demeanor of Hugh the Manatee.

Frontier’s forecast for Q4 projected a wide range of outcomes between a loss of $0.15 to share to a profit of $0.05. It closed the quarter with liquidity of $1.18 billion, which might be just enough to buy JetBlue and have enough left over for a BlueFirst ticket from JFK to FLL.

Discover Announces First A350 Destinations…Or Does It?

Discover Airlines put out a press release Thursday with the title “Discover Airlines announces first Airbus A350 destinations.” Simple enough, right? Wrong. The second bullet point under the title is where this goes awry: “Orlando or Calgary planned as first long-haul destination.” Well which is it? What would be amazing is if they had two airplanes and they both took off from Germany at the same time, one to Orlando and one to Calgary and it was a race and the winner got credit for being the first long-haul A350 destination in the airline’s history. But alas, they have just one to start, so perhaps it’ll be coin flip to decide the winner.

As we keep reading, before the aircraft is deployed on long-haul rights, it will fly on a high-frequency short-haul route for training purposes for its first few weeks. That part makes sense. Then it says a second A350 will join the fleet and it will operate to San Jose (CR) beginning December 14, taking the route from FRA away from LH. But two of the 6x weekly flights will operate as a triangle (or as the German translation says, “triangular”) to (naturally) Belize City.

Then, two more A350s will join the fleet in wait for it…summer 2028. Unfortunately Discover is going to make us wait to find out where those planes are going which just seems criminal. Stay tuned.

Sun Sets on Jude Bricker

Former Sun Country CEO Jude Bricker resigned from the Board of Directors of Allegiant this week, ending a 10-year affiliation with the carrier. Bricker previously was at Allegiant as its COO and became CEO of Sun Country in 2017. When the merger with Allegiant closed earlier this year, he found himself technically without a job anymore and was named to the board of the combined carrier.

Then-Allegiant CEO Greg Anderson was named the CEO of the combined carrier leaving Bricker on the outside looking in. Jude is one of the people behind a company that just purchased Omni Air International from a private equity firm, so clearly he had to choose one or the other since they will both go head-to-head in the competitive charter market. And when it comes to fighting to see who will transport those field hockey teams for their west coast swings, you have to pick a side.

• Aeromexico is adding 1x daily, non-stop service to Fort Lauderdale, Orange County, and Portland (OR) from MEX.
• Air Canada‘s Aeroplan members can now redeem for flights on Harbour Air.
• airBaltic is going to be cutting jobs.
• Allegiant purchased six more B737-8 MAXs.
• ANA is gobbling up regional rivals.
• Congo Airways is expected to restart late this year.
• EVA and China Airlines resumed using Russian airspace.
• Flair is beginning cargo ops.
• Indigo posted a loss.
• ITA seems to have solved everything so it’s moving on to air taxis.
• Norwegian is cutting Q1 flying.
• Philippine Airlines will operate a daily A350-1000 on MNL-SFO for the rest of the calendar year.
• Qatar might create a premium economy product. Then again, it might not.
• United resumed San Francisco to Cincinnati service this week for the first time since the pandemic.

What do skeletons say before they eat?

Bone Appétit