Aviation

More than 3,000 pilots flew for Spirit Airlines before it stopped operating in May. Many have since found cockpits elsewhere, several hundred of them at American Arilines. What they left behind at Spirit was not just a uniform and a badge but decades of training files, fatigue reports and confidential safety submissions. Those records are now for sale, and the pilots are fighting to keep them out of Google’s hands. Google’s $10 million bid for the defunct carrier’s internal d

Boeing Co. reported its strongest cash generation in months and a record order book on Tuesday, although its commercial jet unit remained in the red. A day earlier, JetBlue Airways Corp. became the latest carrier to show how soaring fuel costs are wiping out the benefit of record fares. The planemaker posted third-quarter revenue of $24.2 billion, helped by higher defense and services volumes. It reported a core loss of 34 cents a share. Free cash flow was positive at about 5

Two of the largest US airlines reported record revenue this week but warned that soaring jet fuel prices are eroding the gains. American Airlines Group Inc. now expects a loss for the year and plans to slow its growth. American said on Thursday that third-quarter revenue rose 19.3% to $16.3 billion, the highest for any third quarter in its history. Its fuel bill rose even faster. The carrier paid an average of 3.85 dollars a gallon, up from 2.37 dollars a year earlier, pushin

Boeing Co. secured US approval on Tuesday for the largest version of its 737 Max. On the same day, United Airlines Holdings Inc. showed how soaring jet fuel costs are eroding profits despite record demand. The Federal Aviation Administration certified the 737 Max 10 after years of delays, clearing the way for deliveries that Boeing expects to begin in the coming months. The jet seats up to 230 passengers. It is the first commercial aircraft certified under the full requiremen

US air traffic controllers will start receiving a long-delayed pay increase from Sunday. Boeing Co., meanwhile, is within days of certification for its largest 737 Max, capping a weekend of progress for an industry strained by staffing shortages and production setbacks. The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association agreed late last week on a 2.8% raise, effective Oct. 18 and backdated to Jan. 1. Congress authorized a 3.8% increase in

Boeing Co. delivered 57 jetliners in September, its highest monthly total of the year, giving the planemaker fresh momentum ahead of earnings. Meanwhile, lawmakers in Washington turned on the Federal Aviation Administration’s push into artificial intelligence. The September figure was up from 51 in August and 55 a year earlier, the company said Tuesday. It included 43 737 Max jets, eight 787 Dreamliners, two 777 freighters and four 767s. Third-quarter deliveries reached 161 c

Jet fuel prices are up 76% since February, and travellers are starting to feel it at the booking stage. America's biggest airlines are cutting flights for the busiest travel weeks of the year as a renewed jump in jet fuel prices eats into their profits. US carriers have removed about 3% of domestic seats between 25 November and 31 December, according to aviation data firm Cirium. Jet fuel reached $4.40 a gallon this week. That is up 15% in a month and 76% since the conflict w

A jet fuel shock has pushed America's largest carriers into visibly different bets, and the gap between them widened this week at the Morgan Stanley Laguna investor conference. American Airlines said Wednesday it would trim capacity in late fourth quarter and slow growth into 2027, absorbing roughly $1 billion in additional fourth-quarter costs. Chief financial officer Devon May said fuel is running about a dollar a gallon above the airline's July assumptions — a punishing nu

The Transportation Department has quietly widened the list of things that are not the airline's fault, and in doing so has shifted a meaningful sum of money from passengers back to carriers. A rule published this week adds ten categories to the set of disruptions deemed outside airline control, the legal line that determines whether a stranded traveller is owed a hotel, a meal or anything at all. Among them: cleaning an aircraft after a passenger dies on board, weather damage

Nearly a year before their contract was due to become amendable, the Allied Pilots Association formally opened negotiations for a new deal, invoking a rarely used clause buried in their 2023 agreement. The trigger? A blunt declaration from union president Nick Silva, in an August 7 letter to CEO Robert Isom, that the airline "cannot agree that implementation is sufficient." Translation: you didn't finish what you promised us last time, so we're coming back to the table now. T

Boeing has cleared one of the most stubborn hurdles in its long climb back from crisis, winning a federal type certificate for the 737 MAX 7, the smallest member of its best-selling jet family, roughly seven years later than the planemaker once promised. The Federal Aviation Administration issued the certificate on August 3, formally clearing the aircraft to enter commercial service. The approval lands years behind schedule, having been repeatedly delayed by the fallout from

United Airlines announced the largest international expansion in its history on Tuesday, adding 10 new destinations across Europe and Asia for 2027 and revealing for the first time where its new Airbus A321XLR will fly. The new cities are Okinawa, Toulouse, Luxembourg, Ljubljana, Olbia, Catania, Ibiza, Valencia, Marseille and Terceira in the Azores. Eight of them are served nonstop by no other US carrier. Newark takes the bulk of the additions with eight new European routes,

Ten years after American Airlines pushed him out and United hired him the same day, Scott Kirby is still competing against his old employer in the market that matters most. This time he intends to win New York. In an interview with CNBC published over the weekend, the United chief executive said the carrier expects to return to JFK through its Blue Sky partnership with JetBlue as early as next year, and that he wants a meaningfully larger footprint than a codeshare would deli

For nearly a decade, American Airlines told passengers their phones were the entertainment system. This week it admitted the strategy had run its course. The Fort Worth carrier announced on Tuesday that it will install seatback screens at every seat across its narrowbody fleet, reversing a device-only policy dating back almost ten years and aligning itself with Delta and United, both of which kept screens on much of their fleets. New Airbus and Boeing deliveries will arrive f

America's largest airline by passengers has stopped pretending its problem is the fuel price. This week it reorganised its leadership to say so. On 12 August, chief executive Robert Isom announced a sweeping overhaul of American Airlines' senior ranks, adding four executives and parting with three. In a memo to staff, he acknowledged a meaningful gap between where the airline is and where it should be, and framed the shake-up as the first step in a series of actions. Among th

For fourteen years, the first price an American saw when shopping for a flight had to be the real one, taxes and fees included. The Transportation Department is now moving to change that, and the fight over it runs through the comment window that stays open until 21 August. The proposed rule, "Enhancing Flexibility of Air Fare Price Advertising," would loosen the Obama-era full-fare standard that took effect in 2012. Under current rules, the components of a fare may be listed

The certification that Boeing chased for the better part of a decade arrived on Monday. The strange part is how little of the market was waiting for it. The FAA granted Boeing an amended type certificate for the 737 MAX 7 on 3 August, clearing the smallest member of the MAX family for commercial service. The approval closes one of the longest-running certification programmes in modern aviation. Boeing first targeted 2019. It arrives roughly seven years late, having been groun

United Airlines' decision to reportedly fire a number of senior flight attendants accused of selling trips to their colleagues shines a spotlight on a much larger issue at the heart of airline labour negotiations: whether seniority-based systems, fiercely protected by unions, are still the fairest way to allocate work. According to reports, experienced flight attendants allegedly secured highly desirable international destinations like Paris or Rome through United's seniority

The busiest travel weeks of the year are being decided not in boardrooms but by the weather over New York, and the system is buckling. Over 10,000 flights were delayed within, into or out of the United States on Sunday, with heavy rain and thunderstorms across the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest the primary cause. The FAA issued ground stops at seven major airports and warned that stoppages would continue into Monday. More than 1,450 flights were cancelled nationwide by S

The controller pipeline ran dry. Jet fuel doubled in five weeks. And the regulator began capping traffic at major airports because the airspace could no longer safely absorb it. Between them, those three explain this summer far better than any story about a single carrier's failings. The shortage of controllers As of June 2026, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was running roughly 3,000 certified air traffic controllers short of its own staffing target, around 10,800