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U.S. Airlines Face Challenges on Transcon Routes

Healthy. Strong. Robust. When U.S. airlines are asked about current demand conditions, these are the kinds of adjectives one will hear. There’s no ambiguity: U.S. airports are jammed pack. Travelers are paying handsomely. And airlines are poised for a highly...

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Icelandair Rides High Yields to Profits

It's easy to get distracted in Icelandair's Reykjavik headquarters overlooking the runways at Reykjavik's downtown airport. The occasional departing De Havilland Dash 8, soaring up over the city, immediately catches one's eye. But Icelandair CEO Bogi Nils Bogason is seemingly...

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Turkish Airlines to Spin Off Low-Cost Carrier Anadolujet

By now you’ve probably heard: Turkish Airlines is taking the airline world by storm. This year, it expects to move more than 85 million passengers, up from just 10 million 20 years ago. Today, among global airlines based outside the...

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Capacity Shortages Reshape the Global Airline Industry

An airline is only as good as the airplanes it flies. Good news: Airbus and Boeing have a lineup of efficient planes that make money for airlines — planes with increasingly longer range, better fuel burn, improved comfort, lower emissions...

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Mexico’s Volaris Eyes U.S. Expansion; Hoping This Year Will be Better than Last

Rare is an airline that did better in 2021 than it did in 2022. For Mexico’s Volaris, this was indeed the case. In fact, 2021 was a great year for the company, and 2022 much less so. As for 2023...

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WestJet’s Next Chapter

Alexis von Hoensbroech made a leap last year when he left a 16-year career with the Lufthansa Group, including as CEO of Austrian Airlines, to lead Canada’s second carrier, WestJet.  The Calgary-based airline faced numerous challenges. A multi-year effort to...

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A New Airline Storyline in the Philippines

Tear up the script. The storyline is flipping. For years, the Philippines featured a classic airline narrative: A bright young low-cost carrier making life miserable for a stodgy old money-losing legacy carrier. The protagonist was Cebu Pacific, quietly one of...

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More Red Ink for Chinese Airlines but Recovery Seems Near

The fourth quarter of last year was another bloody one for Chinese airlines. Hopes are rising, however, that this year will finally mark a turnaround for the sector. For the three months that ended in December, China’s Big Three airlines...

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American, Still Less Profitable than Delta and United, Attempts to Catch Up

Once again last year, American came in last place. In the battle for profitability with peers Delta and United, American’s operating margin (excluding special items) was just 4 percent. This was half what Delta earned and two points worse than...

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For Taiwan’s Airlines, Three Could Be an Unlucky Number

For China Airlines, two plus one equals negative $53 million. That’s how many U.S. Dollars the Taiwanese carrier lost at the operating level last quarter, as it grappled with the challenge of a two-airline market becoming a three-airline market.  ...

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U.S. Airlines Insist: Demand Still Red Hot. But for How Long?

It’s like that bunny in the old Energizer battery commercials: Still going.   Roughly one year ago, Covid’s cork on travel demand finally popped off, unleashing some of the strongest bookings for air travel that U.S. airlines have ever seen. Well,...

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Long Troubled Thai Airways Now Profitable

Sometimes, bankruptcy is just what the doctor ordered. Thai Airways, Thailand’s largest airline, just stunned the aviation world with a striking 21 percent operating margin for the October-to-December quarter. Not bad for an airline whose operating losses exceeded $100 million...

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