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

How the FAA's gaming pitch drew a record 12,350 applications in a single hiring window The United States Federal Aviation Administration has spent the better part of a decade wrestling with a chronic shortage of air traffic controllers. This month, it tried something unorthodox: it asked video gamers to step up. The response was overwhelming. On 17 April 2026, the FAA opened its annual hiring window for trainee air traffic controllers with a recruitment campaign built around

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

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