Skift Airline Weekly

Andrew Watterson, Southwest’s chief revenue officer, had a few minutes to talk  to Skift Airline Weekly Editor Madhu Unnikrishnan and Skift Travel Senior Aviation Business Editor Brian Sumers at the Boyd Group’s International Aviation Forecast Summit in Las Vegas last month. Watterson still is bullish on Hawaii and says Southwest will expand its service to […]

For U.S. airlines, something profound happened in 2014, something that would change the fortune of the industry more than anything else. What was it? Fuel prices plummeted late that year. And they’ve remained low since, at least relative to the $100-plus-per-barrel prices that prevailed from 2011-2013. All U.S. airlines benefited, not least Allegiant, the most […]

Rosemary Vassiliadis, director of McCarran International Airport System, leads operations at McCarran and oversees four other airports in southern Nevada. Vassiliadis thinks airlines are flat wrong in their opposition to raising the passenger facility charge, or PFC. Airports have long argued for raising this fee to a maximum of $8.50 per passenger, up from $4.50 […]

During the second quarter of 2019, China’s Big Three state-owned airlines—Air China, China Eastern, and China Southern—all earned profits at the operating level. So did Hainan Airlines, Juneyao Airlines, and Spring Airlines. But three of these six publicly-traded carriers—China Eastern, China Southern, and Hainan—simultaneously reported red ink at the net level, which includes interest costs, […]

Hawaiian Airlines CEO Peter Ingram isn’t too worried about increasing competition from U.S. and Japanese carriers on routes to Hawaii. During an an interview with Skift Airline Weekly Editor Madhu Unnikrishnan in Las Vegas on Aug. 26, Ingram said  Hawaiian has been competing fiercely on those routes for 90 years, so this is nothing new, […]

We hope you enjoyed your summer as much as we did ours. After a two-week summer hiatus, Skift Airline Weekly editors are back working on the Sept. 9 issue. In the next edition, we’ll take a deep dive in the state of China’s airlines now that they’ve reported their second-quarter earnings. Demand remains strong, but […]

AirBaltic was an early adopter of the Airbus A220, back when it was the Bombardier CSeries. The aircraft is perfectly designed for the Baltic carrier’s missions, and CEO Martin Gauss is enthusiastic about the model. He took a few minutes to talk to Skift Airline Weekly editor Madhu Unnikrishnan and Skift Senior Aviation Business Editor […]

After a horrible first quarter, European airlines badly needed a strong second quarter. What they got was a mixed second quarter, with some trends favorable and others adverse. Results varied widely across the continent, from IAG’s outstanding 14% Q2 operating margin to Iceland’s appalling negative 6%. Of the eight major European carriers that have reported […]

Just before stepping down as CEO of British regional carrier Flybe, Christine Ourmières-Widener took a minute to talk to Skift Airline Weekly at the IATA Annual General Meeting in Seoul. Ourmières-Widener’s two years at the helm of Flybe were tumultuous, she acknowledged, and culminated with the carrier’s acquisition by Virgin Atlantic. But she noted that […]

They call it the “Lucky Country.” And for good reason. Australia hasn’t experienced an economic recession in almost three decades. But as the nation’s central bank governor warned last week, the economy has “slowed sharply since the middle of last year.” Already, airlines are feeling it. In May, Virgin Australia, with heavy domestic exposure, warned […]