Skift Airline Weekly

In an interview, JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes remains a staunch supporter of the open-skies regulatory regime as it stands and says the U.S. Big Three are “pulling the drawbridge of competition up” behind them on transatlantic routes. In particular, Hayes thinks Delta, United, and American are wrong in claiming that Air Italy, in which Qatar […]

Here’s a bit of trivia: When was the last time a U.S. airline lost money for a full year? The answer: All the way back in 2011, when American lost more than $1b. American would file for bankruptcy later that year, and merge with US Airways two years later. By 2014, the new American was […]

This year’s first quarter was one all European airlines—no exceptions—would rather forget. From January through March, there wasn’t a single publicly traded U.S. airline that lost money. In stark contrast, every European airline except IAG (among the vast majority that have reported so far) suffered Q1 losses. And even within IAG, only British Airways avoided […]

Dear Skift Airline Weekly Readers, In observance of Memorial Day in the U.S. on Monday, May 27, the next edition of Skift Airline Weekly will be released on Tuesday, May 28. In the meantime, please download this week’s issue, featuring an analysis of the rapidly changing Canadian airline market. Best regards, Madhu Unnikrishnan Editor, Skift […]

Air Canada, in its boldest strategic move yet, strikes a deal to buy Air Transat India just lost an airline. Brazil just lost an airline. Europe is losing airlines. Hong Kong is set to lose one of its airlines through consolidation. Now, it’s Canada’s turn. Early last week, WestJet stunned the market by announcing a […]

The Skift Airline Weekly Lounge returns with an exclusive interview with British Airways CEO Alex Cruz. Since taking over as CEO and chairman of British Airways in 2016, Cruz has endured his fair share of criticism over some of the changes he made to the airline, particularly with regards to food on short-haul flights. But Cruz, […]

AirAsia is indisputably one of the world’s most successful airlines ever—don’t let its notoriously complex accounting obscure that reality. But the company is now trying to be something much more than an airline. Less than three months after the 9/11 terror attacks upended the global airline business, a music executive named Tony Fernandes bought a […]

Was it a good first quarter for U.S. airlines? In the aggregate: not bad. The country’s nine largest publicly-traded carriers collectively earned almost $3b in operating profits, along with a solid 7% operating margin—once upon a time it was rare to see any black ink in the offpeak first quarter. The 7% figure, furthermore, was […]

Sir Richard Branson knows how to make money. He’s a billionaire, after all. But his airlines? They’re better known not for making money but losing it. Remember Virgin Express, Virgin Sun, Virgin Nige-ria, Little Red, and Virgin America? None survives today. Virgin Australia is still around, but it’s notable for how much worse it’s performing […]

Once upon a time, it was the predator, not the prey. In India’s first wave of airline deregulation in the early 1990s, Jet Airways was a promising upstart, bringing world-class levels of service to a market long cursed with the legendary shortcomings of Air India. By the mid-2000s, Jet was standing tall, emerging as the […]