Terms and Conditions Apply: Spirit’s Pilots Didn’t Sign Up to Train Google
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
Mayday for Isom? American's Pilots Seek a New Captain (and a Bigger Cut)
Pilots Turn on Isom Just as Their Contract Talks Begin The head of American Airlines’ pilot union has publicly questioned whether CEO Robert Isom is the right man to lead the carrier's turnaround, sharpening a dispute that has been building for the best part of a year. Capt. Nick Silva, president of the Allied Pilots Association (APA), which represents American's roughly 16,000 pilots, said the pool of executives able to run an airline is small, but asked whether someone cou
A High-Class Problem: Why America's Pilots Are Doing Just Fine
Jeff Barath retired from United Airlines last year at 65 with a problem most Americans would love to have. He has a partial pension, a brokerage account and a $3.5 million 401(k). Once his required minimum distributions kick in, his retirement income, including Social Security, will be well over $300,000 a year. That's more than he earned in most of his working years. "It's a high-class problem," according to Barath. He's right. And he's far from the only one. Four times the
The Grey Areas of the Bargaining Table
When flight attendants at United voted on strike authorisation in August 2024, the result came back at 99.99 per cent in favour. The union announced it live from twenty informational picket lines at airports across the country, on the eve of the Labor Day travel weekend. And in the same announcement, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA) reminded everyone reading that it holds a trademarked strike strategy called CHAOS, an acronym for Create Havoc Around Our System,
Five Years On Top: What Delta's Punctuality Record Says About the Industry
Earlier this year, Delta Air Lines was named the most punctual airline in North America for the fifth consecutive year. This was according to Cirium’s On-Time Performance Review, with 80.9 per cent of its 1.8 million flights in 2025 arriving within 15 minutes of schedule. The number needs context. It represented a 1.7 percentage point lead over the nearest competitor, achieved with more than four times the flight volume, and made Delta the only US carrier in Cirium's global t
Why Your Flight Is Late
Your evening departure is sitting at the gate. The sky is clear. Here is what is actually going on and why almost none of it is a decision your airline made today. Start with the good news, because it rarely gets said. Most flights still arrive on time, and airlines got noticeably better at handling baggage and assisting passengers with wheelchairs last year. The yardstick everyone quotes is a strict one: a flight is late if it reaches the gate more than fifteen minutes behin
FAA’s Air Traffic Overhaul: Why China Is in the Conversation
The battle over who will build America’s next air traffic control system is increasingly becoming a debate over whether foreign-owned companies should have a role in critical national infrastructure. A closer look at the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) priorities reveals the wider landscape shaping the competition, one in which companies such as Leidos and RTX are positioning themselves, and where China’s role is both closely scrutinised and more limited than some cla
Delta Secures Spirit's Atlanta Gates as Global Ambitions Take Flight
Delta Air Lines has emerged as the winning bidder for a slice of Spirit Airlines’ former footprint at the world's busiest airport. Court filings show the Atlanta-based carrier offered $12 million to take over gates C4 and C6 at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, along with Spirit's ticketing lobby and associated support space. It is a modest sum for a prize that few airlines ever get their hands on. A Prize Born of Spirit's Collapse The deal follows the low-cos
FAA Set to Hand Air Traffic AI Contract to Boston Startup, Snubbing Palantir and Thales
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is poised to award Boston-based Air Space Intelligence (ASI) a closely watched contract for its AI-powered air traffic management tool, according to multiple people familiar with the deal. It would be a remarkable coup. ASI, which counted just over 150 employees as of April, is set to beat out software heavyweights Palantir and Thales, which are the only other vendors bidding for the work. The win would catapult the young company to
Banned by one, banned by all: why the UK and US are cracking down on drunk passengers
If you have flown anywhere this summer, you may have sensed a shift in tone. Airlines and regulators on both sides of the Atlantic are converging on the same conclusion: the era of treating disruptive, alcohol-fuelled passengers as an unfortunate cost of doing business is ending. New proposals in the UK and a rare enforcement action in the US suggest the crackdown is moving from rhetoric to legislation, and in some cases to your wallet before you have even boarded. What the U
Arch de Trump? Will the FAA approve Trump’s latest architectural endeavour?
As the Trump administration rushes to build a 250-foot Triumphal Arch by America’s 250th birthday in July 2026, the project faces FAA safety reviews over its proximity to Reagan National Airport. The proposed 250-foot ‘triumphal arch’ will be built opposite the Lincoln Memorial, at the end of Memorial Bridge. The project poses risk to flights ascending and descending from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, one of the busiest in the U.S. The Federal Aviation Administra
Fuelling the Crisis: Aviation’s most dangerous vulnerability exposed
There is a line buried in airline annual reports that tends to get overlooked in good times. Fuel costs are, the reports note, "extremely volatile and unpredictable, and even a small change in market fuel prices can significantly affect profitability." Southwest Airlines wrote that in its 2025 filing. Weeks later, it became the understatement of the year. When the US and Israel struck Iran on 28 February 2026, the airline industry's most intractable cost problem moved from ch
