Delta Air Lines walked into the summer's first earnings print carrying the largest quarterly fuel bill in its history. It walked out having reaffirmed its full-year guidance, lifted its dividend and dragged the entire sector up with it. The Atlanta carrier reported $19.8 billion in GAAP operating revenue for the June quarter and $2.44 in earnings per share, with $1.56 adjusted — ahead of the $1.51 analysts had penciled in. Full-year adjusted EPS guidance held at $6.50 to $7.5

The U.S. airline industry is flying its busiest-ever summer straight into a fuel wall, and Wall Street blinked first. Airline shares sold off sharply this week as American Airlines dropped 5 percent, United fell 4 percent, and Delta and JetBlue slipped 3 percent, while the U.S. Global Jets ETF fell 3 percent, confirming a sector-wide event rather than a single-name stumble. The trigger was another jump in crude, driven by renewed Middle East supply fears as fresh U.S.-Iran mi

Two stories are defining the American airline industry this week, and both trace back to the same brutal truth: the budget model is being remade in real time, and the system underneath it is straining. The first is opportunistic. Starting July 5 and 6, Frontier Airlines began flying eight former Spirit routes, adding 16 new one-way options across popular U.S. markets. The launches include daily Boston-Orlando, Dallas-New Orleans and Detroit-Fort Lauderdale service, with intro

The last day of a fiscal quarter is sacred at Boeing. It is when the planemaker rushes finished jets out the factory door to book the revenue that keeps Wall Street patient. This June 30, the door jammed. A widespread IT outage swept Boeing facilities from Washington State to Florida on Tuesday, significantly disrupting both commercial and military production on the single most financially consequential day of the quarter. The company completed some handovers, but final comme

US carriers are flying into the busiest summer in aviation history — and quietly bracing for it to break. Airlines for America projects 271 million passengers worldwide between June 1 and August 31, a 6.3% jump over last summer and the highest figure ever recorded. American Airlines alone is preparing to move 75 million customers across roughly 750,000 flights, the busiest summer in its history. This is not, executives insist, a soft demand environment. July international boo

Seven weeks after Spirit Airlines went dark, the carrier that defined American budget travel is back in the headlines — this time as a name on an auction block, and a cautionary tale shaping a suddenly buoyant industry. Texas-based Mooney International has submitted a bid to acquire the Spirit brand and related assets out of bankruptcy liquidation, court filings show. Mooney said its proposal would combine operations involving Spirit Airlines, Mooney International and SEAir u

In a procurement decision that doubles as a statement of intent, the Federal Aviation Administration this week awarded a 12-year, $875m contract to Air Space Intelligence, a Boston startup, to build the artificial intelligence system that will reshape how America manages its skies. The deal, announced Monday by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, covers a platform known as SMART, short for Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes, and Traj

The Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), which represents 28,000 cabin crew at American Airlines, has raised concerns about the length of training modules that crew members are required to finish. The union argues that the modules have been extended over time to pack in as much content as possible. This has caused unrest as American Airline flight attendants argue it is not possible to complete the training within the 8-hour window they are paid for. By way o

For nearly a decade, American Airlines watched from the sidelines while its two biggest rivals quietly stockpiled long-haul jets. That changed this week. At the carrier's annual shareholders meeting on 10 June, chief executive Robert Isom confirmed that American has issued a request for proposals to both Airbus and Boeing for a new generation of widebody aircraft, its first such order since committing to the Boeing 787 in 2018. Isom framed the move as routine long-term planni

A skydiving flight that crashed moments after takeoff in rural western Missouri on Sunday has killed all twelve people aboard, making it one of the deadliest US skydiving incidents in decades and handing federal investigators a fresh aviation disaster to unpick. The single-engine Pacific Aerospace 750XL went down at around 11:30 a.m. near Butler Memorial Airport, roughly 60 miles south of Kansas City, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Eleven skydivers and the pi

At 6:15 p.m. on Monday June 1, a JetBlue pilot approaching Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport reported a close call involving a smaller aircraft. Located in Florida, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood is the 18th-busiest airport in the United States. The incident was a near miss between the commercial jet and the smaller aircraft. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed that the JetBlue pilot said that the second plane is “turning towards us.” The planes were

The cost of flying in America has hit its steepest climb in years, and the latest government data confirms travelers are absorbing the pain just as the peak summer season gets underway. Fresh figures released this week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show airfare costs are up 26.7% over the past year, a remarkable surge that has made airline tickets one of the fastest-growing line items in the entire inflation basket. The numbers landed alongside the broader Consumer Price

US carriers are absorbing the heaviest blow to their bottom lines since the pandemic, as a widening Middle East conflict and a doubling of jet fuel prices upend an industry that began the year flush with confidence. The reckoning came into sharp focus this week in Rio de Janeiro, where the International Air Transport Association used its annual summit to slash its global profit outlook. Airlines are now expected to post a combined net profit of $23 billion in 2026, roughly ha

One of America’s busiest international airports found itself at the centre of political confrontation. The Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin threatened on 28 May that the Trump administration could soon stop processing international travellers and cargo at Newark airport as local law enforcement in the Blue State of New Jersey refused to assist federal immigration officials. With fans gearing up for the FIFA World Cup this summer, questions over international

When a parent books a flight for themselves and a young child, most assume the family will sit together. For many travellers, that assumption does not survive contact with the booking page. Across several major carriers, seating a parent next to their child can mean an extra charge, a gamble on whatever is left at check-in, or an awkward negotiation with strangers at the gate. A long-running effort in Washington has sought to put an end to that. The question now is not whethe

The Federal Aviation Administration has shut down the legacy US NOTAM System (USNS), completing the first phase of a long-promised overhaul of the pilot alert system that has dogged successive administrations following its dramatic collapse in January 2023. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced on Monday that the FAA had migrated thousands of users to the new cloud-based NOTAM Management Service (NMS) in mid-April, retiring the four-decade-old infrastructure that grou

Before dawn on Saturday, the country's signature ultra-low-cost carrier ceased operations after a $500 million federal loan package, which would have given the government up to a 90 percent stake in the Florida-based airline, collapsed in the final hours. The shutdown ended a 34-year run that reshaped American air travel and put 17,000 workers, including 14,000 Spirit employees, out of a job overnight. The collapse caps weeks of frantic deal-making between the White House, Sp

The U.S. aviation sector is entering a defining period — shaped by a multi-billion dollar infrastructure reckoning, a renewed focus on safety at the highest levels of government, and consolidation moves quietly redrawing the competitive map of American air travel. At the centre of it all is the Federal Aviation Administration's sweeping plan to modernise the country's ageing air traffic control network. The FAA is seeking more than $12 billion in Congressional funding for a f

Washington's long-standing resistance to airline consolidation may be softening, and Sean Duffy wants you to know where the administration stands. The Transportation Secretary used a CNBC appearance Tuesday to signal that the White House is open to mergers among U.S. carriers — a marked departure from the aggressive anti-consolidation posture of the Biden years. "President Trump, he loves to see big deals happen," Duffy said. The comment, brief as it was, landed like a flare

On 26 March 2026, United Airlines and the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA) announced a tentative agreement covering approximately 30,000 cabin crew members. On paper, it is a landmark deal. The airline says it will make its flight attendants the best-paid in the American airline industry, with top hourly wages reaching $100 by the end of the contract's five-year term and immediate pay increases kicking in the moment ratification is confirmed. The total package is su