Airline Weekly

It’s not Beijing. No, China’s largest airline market is Shanghai, a city with not one but two of the world’s top 50 airports by traffic. Sure enough, Beijing’s main airport stands out as the world’s second busiest behind Atlanta. Add about 6m passengers from the city’s smallish Nanyuan airport, and China’s capital is now part […]

We’re taking a short break to retool the Airline Weekly Lounge podcast. When we return, you’ll get the same exclusive insights and great conversation along with new guests and a new host. Expect insightful conversations and deeper analysis of that week’s aviation news and developments. Thanks for listening Click here to subscribe to the podcast. […]

A sharp drop in fuel prices midway through the fourth quarter was welcome. But it didn’t prevent U.S. airlines from paying 24% more for their fuel this Q4 versus last. So once again, industry margins declined. But not much. The country’s nine largest scheduled airlines that have reported (Frontier hasn’t yet done so) collectively earned […]

Who said Canadians are so nice? Its airlines aren’t being nice to each other, that’s for sure. Right now, Canada’s airline industry looks something like a hockey fight. On January 24, high in the mountains of British Columbia, Canada’s two leading airlines shared their latest observations. The venue: a CIBC investor conference in Whistler, where […]

The great moderation. That’s what economists called the period of almost three decades without a major U.S. recession, finally ending with the financial crisis of 2008. But the opposite was true for U.S. airlines: three decades of almost nonstop crisis, finally ending with an extended period of relative bliss thanks to a series of dramatic […]

For an airline in a country almost synonymous with economic malaise, Gol sounds awfully cheerful. And perhaps with good reason. In a presentation to investors last week, Brazil’s largest domestic airline detailed its projections for 2019 and beyond, depicting a much-improved operating environment than the miserable one it has faced in recent years. The Brazilian […]

Welcome, Istanbul, to the distinguished club of cities with at least 100m airline passengers annually. In the 12 months to November, the city’s main Atatürk airport, together with its secondary Sabiha Gökçen airport, handled almost 102m passengers, up 8% y/y and a record for the city over a 12-month period. This means Istanbul will certainly […]

With a new year underway, we’re thinking about what will happen in 2019—always a dicey proposition. In this episode, we consider the prospects of airlines around the world. Some, like Aeroflot and Turkish Airlines, are facing huge opportunities. Others, like Jet Airways and South African Airlines, are facing grave challenges. Will the International Airlines Group […]

Radical reconstructive surgery? Not quite. No new hubs. No newly shuttered hubs. No mass route closures. But make no mistake: United’s network strategy is changing in meaningful ways. It’s no mystery why. For five straight years, from 2013 through 2017, United was the bottom-dweller among America’s Big Three airlines, measured by annual operating margin. The […]

Was 2018 a good year or a bad year? Speaking collectively, airlines can’t complain. As IATA pointed out last week, industry profits should hit about $32b this year, good for a 7% operating margin. This 7% comfortably exceeds the sector’s cost of capital. But IATA isn’t throwing any parties. That might sound like a lot […]