Skift Airline Weekly

Air India, a notoriously bloated state organ, is again up for sale by India’s government. In April, Jet Airways stopped flying, eliminating Air India’s only home-grown rival on intercontinental routes. The two airlines competed vigorously on shorthaul international routes as well, and domestic routes. Good news for Air India? Not really. Immediately after Jet’s collapse, […]

Skift Europe Editor Patrick Whyte joined Skift Airline Weekly Editor Madhu Unnikrishnan to share his insights into the latest in European airline news. First, of course, Whyte takes a look at why Air Europa’s parent company, Globalia, would want to sell one of its largest business units to IAG. Is there a future for vertically […]

IAG’s interest in buying Norwegian is now history. But its interest in consolidation? Anything but. The latest move is a €1b deal to buy Spain’s Air Europa, a carrier specializing in Latin America flights from Madrid. The opportunity came as Air Europa’s parent company felt heightened pressure to sell. In 2018, it earned just a […]

International Airlines Group (IAG) had a surprise for the airline industry this week: It stated its intention to buy Spanish carrier Air Europa. This wasn’t a surprise to Skift Airline Weekly, however, which earlier this year reported on the rumors afloat about the acquisition. What’s in it for IAG?  Skift Airline Weekly Senior Analyst Jay […]

When Christina Cassotis became CEO of the Allegheny County Airport Authority in January 2015, Pittsburgh International Airport was casting about for a new airline to make it a hub, after US Airways left. Pittsburgh shouldn’t chase the goal of becoming a hub again, Cassotis said, before embarking on a program to completely remake the facility […]

Skift Airline Weekly Editor Madhu Unnikrishnan caught up with Anders Lindström, Norwegian’s director of communications for the U.S., at San Francisco International Airport on Monday when the carrier launched San Francisco-Barcelona flights. Lindström explained why Norwegian is moving some flights from Oakland to SFO, and what routes in the U.S. are doing well for the […]

Air Lease Corp.’s John Plueger, presenting at an Airline Economics conference in New York on Oct. 18, identified several “hot topics” currently facing the airline industry. One was environmental sustainability. Another was the tariff war now affecting Airbus planes exported to the U.S. Also on his list: This year’s spate of airline bankruptcies. Plueger also […]

The UK government this week engages in another set of inquiries on why Thomas Cook went bankrupt, which is the perfect time to ask Skift Europe Editor Patrick Whyte, who has been covering the story, what happened. How did the “booking clerk to the empire” go belly-up after more than 150 years? Whyte explains that […]

In the years leading up to the current decade, Thai Airways knew nothing but profits — more than 40 straight years of profits. Then its world turned upside down. From 2011 through 2018, Thailand’s national carrier amassed nearly $1.8b in net losses. And the trends are getting worse, not better. The story of Thai Airways […]

Back in the aughts, Airlines for America’s Chief Economist John Heimlich often showed a slide with an alarming statistic: Coffee giant Starbucks’ market capitalization was more than that of the entire U.S. airline industry combined. So much has changed in the last 10 years, as the airline industry recovered from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, SARS, […]