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Jon and Brian went to the Wings Club Annual Awards Gala, and while they were there, they sat down with Emirates’s President Sir Tim Clark, the man who built that airline into what it is today. Have a listen to their interview.

Southwest, Alaska Earn Q3 Profits

It turns out the sky is not falling as much as Southwest once thought, as the airline posted an unexpected profit for the quarter, and expects to follow that up with record sales in the year’s final three months with demand picking up for customers who want to get as far away from their family as possible.

Southwest finished the quarter with $54 million in profit on record Q3 revenues of $6.9 billion. For shareholders, it ended up with $0.11 earnings for the quarter, beating Wall Street’s expectation of a loss of $0.03. It maintained its full-year outlook it released in July, expecting earnings before taxes between $600-$800 million, less than half of the $1.7 billion it previously predicted.

Alaska Airlines joined Southwest in the black, earning $73 million in profit this summer on $3.8 billion in gross revenue. Alaska saw an 8% rise in corporate travel as the carrier’s corporate customers learned how much easier it is to fly to Hawai’i now on the carrier. Premium revenue was up 5%, cargo jumped 27% and its unit revenue increased 1.4%. Costs for Alaska were up 8.6% for the quarter, which it blames primarily on an IT outage in July (thanks a lot, Crowdstrike), and what it referred to as “challenging weather,” but we just refer to as “summer.”

Alaska guidance for Q4 expects growth in revenue, capacity, and costs. It forecasts earnings per share of at least $0.40 with full-year earnings ending at no less than $2.40

American Ends Q3 with Record Revenue and a Net Loss

American Airlines posted a smaller-then-predicted loss for Q3 and exceeded industry projections for revenue, while turning in a positive look ahead for Q4.

Its gross revenue figure for the quarter was $13.7 billion, a new record for the company, and it ended up with a loss of $114 million, or as AA calls it — three A321neos and a dream. AA had concerned Wall Street in July with its Q3 outlook, but the carrier ended up outperforming the gloomy prediction losing just $0.17 per share instead of the expected loss of $0.28. Cargo revenue actually increased almost 10% YoY for AA, which makes little sense when considering the U.S. mail and fresh flowers don’t buy up for priority boarding or extra legroom seating.

Load factor dropped slightly — down just 0.6% from a year ago — and AA paid a full 5.5% less at the pump that it did last summer. Looking forward to Q4, AA expects to earn between $0.45 and $0.75 per share, well above the $0.31 predicted by Wall Street. That would put its full-year earnings between $0.65 and $0.95, with fourth quarter capacity expected to grow by as much as 5%.

American closed the quarter with $10.3 billion of liquidity, which includes cash, cash equivalents, and apparently a lot of U.S. mail and fresh flowers.

West Coast, Best Coast, says Alaska

Alaska Airlines is adding 13 new flights from West Coast destinations including Portland and San Diego and growing its presence in the Hawaiian islands, adding a new route from Honolulu to Burbank and growing frequencies to both Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Two new destinations join the Alaska family, and they’re two cities often confused for one another: Eureka, California, and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Eureka, of course, is known to locals as the Tulsa of northwestern California and southern Oregon, and it will receive daily 1x daily E175 service to Seattle. Tulsa gets two routes, both E175 daily flights — to Seattle and San Diego.

Other new service for AS includes Dallas/Fort Worth (2x daily), Oakland (4x daily), Raleigh-Durham (1x daily), and Santa Barbara (2x daily) to San Diego. Portland adds four: Baltimore (summer-only 1x daily), Idaho Falls (1x daily), Philadelphia (summer-only 1x daily), and St Louis (summer-only 1x daily). Lastly, 1x daily intra-California service between Ontario and Santa Rosa will begin March 18.

The Burbank – Honolulu flight will be the first between the two airports in 20 years, with service stopping once Hawaiians figured out that Bob Hope died in 2003. Additionally to Hawai’i, LAX – Kahului will double to 2x daily in the spring, while San Francisco to both Kona and Līhu’e going daily in June.

United Adds 10 from Chicago

We now know what United is going to do with the new gates it received at Chicago/ORD, as it will add service to 10 new cities, six of which are new destinations from the airport. While lacking the sexiness of Ulaanbaatar or Santiago de Compostela, Spain, these ten routes will add heft to its ORD hub and create connecting opportunities across the U.S.

The six new cities to be served exclusively by United from ORD are:

• Eugene (1x daily)
• Lynchburg (1x daily)
• Monterey (Saturday-only)
• Paducah (1x daily)
• Santa Barbara (1x daily)
• St. George (Saturday-only)

United will also beginning flying to four other destinations — Idaho Falls (Saturday-only), Marquette (MI), Rochester (MN), and Wausau (WI) in which it will compete head-to-head with American.

The carrier is also growing other weekend-only routes to lesser-known cities, including flying daily from ORD including Aruba, Halifax, Hilton Head, Nassau, and Sun Valley. West Palm Beach will go from seasonal to year-round while the carrier announced its strongly considering ending all ORD-Newark service out of respect for the people of Chicagoland.

Air Canada to Begin Transborder Service from Toronto Billy Bishop Airport

Air Canada is growing its presence at Toronto’s other airport, Toronto/City (YTZ). Beginning in spring 2026, Air Canada will fly to New York/LGA (4x daily), Boston (3x daily), Chicago/ORD (2x daily), and Washington/Dulles (1x daily).

The exact date of the start of service will coincide with when CBP completes its U.S. pre-clearance facility at the airport, provided the government shutdown is wrapped up sometime before next spring. In addition to adding these four U.S. destinations to its operation from YTZ, the carrier will increase service to both Montréal and Ottawa. YUL will see a ninth daily frequency added on, while YOW will grow to 6x daily flights.

The transborder flights will be operated by Air Canada Jazz as Air Canada Express using 78-seat Dash 8-400 aircraft. When asked to comment on this development, that raccoon who works for Porter declined comment other than to say “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and apparently the sincerest form of network planning, too.”

• Air Cǒte d’Ivoire launched its first long-haul route to Paris this week.
• Air France plans to gamble on non-stop service from Paris/CDG to Las Vegas with 3x weekly summer seasonal service beginning next year. Las Vegas will be Air France’s is 19th U.S. destination.
• American named Nathaniel Pieper as its COO. It also took delivery of its first A321XLR, becoming the first U.S. Carrier to add the aircraft to its fleet. It will operate its first revenue flight between New York/JFK and Los Angeles in December. That route won in a tight race for first flight over stiff competition from Cleveland – Toledo and Tucson – Flagstaff.
• Breeze is introducing loyalty tiers to its Breezy Rewards Program. Now that it has loyalty tiers, the carrier is meeting with Delta officials in Atlanta with how best to devalue the program as quickly as possible.
• Cathay Pacific is joining Airbus to invest up to $70 million to grow SAF in Asia.
• China Eastern will resume Shanghai – Delhi service next month.
• Condor‘s B757 will finally run out of stripes next month.
• Delta is expected to begin serving Riyadh from Atlanta beginning next year on its A350 in a move that’s a surprise to literally no one.
• Finnair will return its entire A321 fleet to service by the end of this month.
• flydubai cannot stop adding interline agreements.
• Frontier will not be attending Coachella next year.
• Hawaiian is going back to Auckland.
• Icelandair will get out of the widebody business as early as next year.
• IranAir received federal approval to pay for new airplanes. That seems like a good first step.
• Iraqi Airways is adding 13 airplanes.
• JetBlue‘s foray into Bonaire was short lived.
• Korean named Archer its exclusive eVTOL partner.
• LATAM is celebrating three years as BFF with Delta. But its relationship with Lima airport — not so good.
• LOT is selling tickets for its new route to Almaty.
• Lufthansa is reducing its domestic schedule.
• Norwegian‘s Q3 was its best ever.
• Rex was purchased by American aviation holding company Air T which we assume is owned by Doug Flutie and Frank Thomas.
• Thai is growing its 11-person board to at least 15 people. Applications are open.
• WestJet sold off 25% of the airline via private equity platform Onex to SkyTeam partners Delta, KLM-Air France, and Korean. Delta purchased 15% of the carrier and Korean purchased 10%, and Delta then turned and flipped a 2.3% stake to Air France-KLM in exchange for a defensive shortstop, two baguettes, one pain au chocolat, and three drink carts to be named later.

I tried to go to a really trendy nightclub last night with my younger friends. The doorman stopped me on the way in and said “sorry, sir, you’ve had a few too many.”

I told him I hadn’t had a drink all night and that I was fine, and he said “no sir, not drinks, birthdays.”