Europe's Promising Summer

Will it Be a Hot Vaxxed Summer for European Airlines?

Pushing Back: Inside the Issue

European airline executives at last week's Airlines for Europe conference were remarkably bullish on summer demand. Bookings for summer travel are robust and trending higher. Airlines are planning scads of new routes, particularly to southern Europe to capitalize on booming leisure demand. Discounters are facing off to grab as much market share as possible.

This confidence is remarkable for a few reasons. First, lest we forget, the pandemic hasn't ended, nor has the threat of new variants. Europe is enduring its largest land war since the 1940s in Ukraine, raising questions about the durability of demand in the continent's East. And last, where oil prices will go is an open question. The price of crude remains volatile. Demand for diesel could cause prices for other distillates, including jet fuel, to spike. Maybe AerCap CEO Aengus Kelly is right, though, that the desire to travel after two years of lockdowns will overcome all of these short-term problems.

Meanwhile, the changes in C-suites continue. KLM and Pegasus named their first women CEOs, Marjan Rintel and Güliz Öztürk, respectively. SAS has a new finance chief in Erno Hilden. And after 50 years spent reinventing how the world moves goods and packages, FedEx founder and CEO Fred Smith ends an era and steps down from the company he dreamed up in 1973.

Verbulence

"The good guys are winning."

Volotea CEO Carlos Muñoz on European demand

The Airline Weekly Lounge Podcast

Delta Air Lines is making a play for more premium passengers in Los Angeles. Our reporter Brian Sumers took a field trip to LAX to talk to Delta leaders to see what the airline thinks sets it apart at the country’s second-largest market. Then, Brian and Madhu Unnikrishnan use the “garden center index” to gauge how far the travel recovery has come. Listen to the episode, and go here for the full archive of the Airline Weekly Lounge.