Many of the airlines in the United States got their start decades ago hauling mail across the country. It was only much later when enterprising individuals realized they could add some seats onto their planes and bring people along as well. This led to the birth of passenger airlines in the United States. These days we primarily think of the major U.S. airlines as movers of people. But they are still movers of mail domestically and overseas as well, a…
Over nearly two decades, the United States and the European Union (EU) have been engaged in a tit-for-tat battle over allegations that each was providing unfair subsidies to their respective aircraft manufacturers, Boeing and Airbus. This conflict has been the world’s largest ever corporate trade dispute. In recent years, the…
Late last year, the impending arrival of vaccines for COVID-19 stood as a glimmer of hope for the travel industry. Many thought vaccines would help travel return and begin down the path toward normalcy for airlines. But even now, with multiple vaccines beginning distribution, that optimism has quickly soured. There…
Over the past several years, airlines in the U.S. have gorged on easy business, many making money hand over fist. This led to some brazen liberties taken by three of major U.S. airlines to devalue their loyalty programs. The logic was simple: they were making tons of money, so what…
It’s pretty obvious Boeing has had it rough for quite some time now. It first started with their first Boeing 737 MAX aircraft crashed and in October 2018. No plane crash is good for an aircraft manufacturer but for the time being, it was thought that there wasn’t a systemic…
Artificial intelligence is making gains in various fields and just this past week it hit another milestone, this one in aviation. The United States Air Force flew the first test flight where artificial intelligence assisted the pilot of a Lockheed U-2 spy plane. The test was conducted at Beale Air…
Air travel has been significantly curtailed due to COVID-19, with international travel, in particular, being a shadow of what it once was. The international flights that have lasted through the pandemic, however, are posing an unforeseen set of challenges for airlines as they try to make it out to the…
Qatar Airways is set to launch yet another route to the United States with the start of service from Doha, Qatar to Seattle. Service will begin on March 15, 2021 using the Airbus A350-900 and is expected to operate four times a week. The flights will depart Doha at 8:00…
The Indian government has repeatedly tried to privatize Air India. The first time around there really wasn’t interested by any major entity to buy-in. Then the Indian government went ahead with some financial gymnastics to create special purpose vehicles to take a huge chunk of the airline’s debt off the…
Goldman Sachs often invites executives from various industries for talks. This has been going for quite some time now, so the roster is quite large. The talks are more informal and have more of a talk show vibe than any sort of news interview, but they still reveal some interesting…
