United Reports $805 Million Profit

United Airlines’s Q2 earnings were released Wednesday after the close of the market, and the carrier earned a profit of $805 million on $17.7 billion in gross revenue. The revenue figure is a 16% jump from last year’s Q2 but profit dropped more than 17% primarily due to rising fuel costs but also from extensive miscellaneous costs the airline simply listed under “Newark sucks” on its report.

Its total unit revenue (TRASM) jumped 12.1% but was outpaced by a 15.2% rise in CASM. While a significant amount of its rise in costs was direftly tied to fuel, its CASM-ex (unit costs excluding fuel) were up as well by 6%. United’s fuel spend was a whopping $5.1 billion dollars, a cool 84% more than Q2 in 2025. That comes out to $4.19 per gallon, a figure curiously close to the national average for a gallon of milk, which is currently $4.22. It makes one wonder — what’s United putting in its airplanes? Jet A…or milk?

The carrier earned $1.99 per share for its overlords shareholders, outpacing the $1.88 expected at the start of the quarter. It forecasted between $2.50 and $3.50 earnings per share in Q3, while analysts are expecting closer to $3.60 per share. As part of its forward looking guidance, the airline expects to earn between $9 and $11 per share for the full year, at the high end of its previous guidance of $7-$11.

And if you’re in need of some quick cash (or milk), we suggest giving Scott Kirby a call. He and United are sitting on $10.1 billion in cash and cash equivalents at the close of Q2.

Southwest Adds a Heap of New Flights

Southwest extended its schedule through peak March spring break and added 19 routes, particularly beefing up its operations in Austin, Las Vegas, Nashville, and Orlando.

The 19 new routes are:

• Austin: Detroit, San José (CR)
• Baltimore: Philadelphia
• Columbus: Punta Cana
• Dallas/Love: Detroit
• Las Vegas: Boston, Knoxville, Miami, Philadelphia
• Nashville: Aruba, Des Moines, Liberia, Montego Bay, St Thomas, Wichita
• Orlando: New York/LGA, Pensacola
• San Diego: Kona, Līhu’e

Along with those additions, Southwest will debut its first westbound redeye as it retimes a Las Vegas – Honolulu flight to depart at 2:45 a.m. and arrive into Honolulu just after 6 a.m. The carrier is also increasing its service from HNL to both Burbank and Ontario to 5x weekly. More on that market next week.

As it built this new schedule, Southwest took a day-by-day approach with Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays seeing more than 4,400 flights per day while Tuesdays, Wednesday, and Saturdays will see just over 4,000, a roughly 10% reduction from peak days. They thought about pulling a Chick-fil-A and just not flying on Sundays, but instead they just shaved about 100 flights off the peak to round out the week.

United Brings Euro Business Class Home

United’s new A321XLR aircraft will enter the carrier’s fleet later this year, and it will come with a new twist. A guaranteed blocked middle seat in one row of Economy Plus with a tray table over the middle seat will allow four passengers to enjoy both extra legroom offered to all Economy Plus passengers along with more elbow and shoulder room.

United’s original plan called for the two passengers on either side of the blocked middle to share access to the extra tray table, but as of press time, reports tell Cranky that the carrier is considering auctioning off tray table access to the highest bidder in the gatehouse prior to boarding.

The airline also says it’ll consider expanding this to other airplanes depending on well it does. The A321XLR is a single-aisle aircraft that will have new Polaris seats up front and will be used both domestically and to Europe.

The blocked middle will also potentially solve another problem for United — staffing the new XLRs on domestic flights. As currently laid out, the aircraft have 152 seats. Since the FAA requires an additional flight attendant for each 50 seats, by removing two middle seats, the capacity of the plane magically becomes 150 and allows it to be staffed lower.

Alaska Makes Changes to Hawaiian Network

Alaska and its warm-blooded subsidiary Hawaiian Airlines are adding new service to the islands from the U.S. mainland while ending one long-haul destination from Honolulu. Boise and Spokane will receive nonstop service to the islands for the first time in a while. Boise had a handful of flights to HNL in 2013 and 2014 on Allegiant, but that’s it between the two.

Both flights will begin in mid-December and will be operated by Alaska-branded B737 MAX airplanes. The routes will operate seasonally, flying through the spring. The Boise flight will operate 1x daily through March 21, while Spokane will fly 1x weekly through April 17. Both are timed for connections on both ends, with an arrival into HNL around 2pm and similar mid-afternoon departure times back to the mainland.

In addition to these two, the carrier is beefing up its service to the eighth Hawaiian island — Las Vegas. During its winter and spring peak, Alaska will up LAS-HNL from 3x to 4x daily on its A330 fleet. But it’s often a zero sum game in the airline world, and with additions, we get cuts. And the one left without seat when the music stopped this time is Auckland. The carrier’s 3x weekly seasonal AKL-HNL service is no more. This flight, which had been operated by an A330 was set to resume in November but now, that’s not happening.

Good and Bad News on the Canadian Labour Front

Flair Airlines pilots ratified a new 3-year contract with 89% of its electorate voting to accept the deal. Flair has about 270 pilots, and their new agreement will take effect immediately. Neither the airline or ALPA released the details of the new agreement other than for ALPA to say in a statement that the new agreement “offers meaningful improvements to compensation, retirement, scheduling, career progression, and overall quality of life.” We assume that means easier access to maple syrup and ice hockey.

On the other end of the labour spectrum, things are not so great at WestJet. Its FAs voted by an overwhelming 99% majority to authorize a strike. Canadian law requires a cooling-off period, which makes August 2 the soonest the FAs could walk off the job. Their current contract went into effect in 2021 and became amendable at the end of last year.

The union’s beef with the airline will sound very familiar. They want boarding pay, saying they have an average of 35 hours of unpaid work per month and that when you average out their months, they actually make less than Canada’s $18 federal minimum wage. The carrier responded saying it self-audited 40 FAs for nine months and found only four incidents where staff did not receive at least the minimum wage and blamed the specific FAs for the shortcoming saying they made shift trades that caused the drop in pay.

WestJet CEO Alex von Hoensbroech says the carrier is 100% committed to coming to an agreement with its cabin crew, while the union says “not so much.” Stay tuned.

• Aer Lingus will end flying to three U.S. destinations this fall: Denver, Las Vegas, Minneapolis/St Paul.
• Air Algérie received its first B737-8
• airBaltic needs $170 million…maybe try Scott Kirby?
• Boliviana is leasing 10 new Embraers.
• Brussels Airlines named Lorenza Maggio as CEO.
• Cabo Verde Airlines expects to begin 1x weekly service to Recife this fall.
• Cathay Pacific is adding its CX code onto Iberia flights from Madrid to two destinations in Brazil and one in the Dominican Republic.
• Cebu Pacific is adding Starlink by next year.
• China Airlines is updating the business class on its B787 fleet.
• Delta is permanently dedicating gate A25 in Atlanta to Braves outfielder Andruw Jones who will be inducted into the Hall of Fame next weekend. Delta originally wanted to do this at an E gate, but Andruw wasn’t having it.
• Fiji Airways is considering adding Premium Economy.
• JetBlue is pulling out of both Antigua and Daytona Beach.
• Kenmore Air named Cape Air COO Andrew Bonney its new CEO.
• KLM is being fined by the Danish government for what it called misleading SAF marketing.
• Korean earned a $170 million operating profit but a $65 million total net loss of during in Q2.
• LAM is spending €30.2 Million on five new aircraft.
• Lufthansa‘s Miles & More program is going through a dramatically ridiculous rebrand.
• Philippine Airlines expects to push its next widebody order to both Airbus and Boeing.
• Qantas operated the first trial cargo flight into the new Eastern Perth Western Sydney Airport.
• Singapore Airlines has a new lounge in Melbourne.
• TAP plans to add 24 new aircraft over the next two years.
• United is adding service to Charlottesville (1x daily), Knoxville (2x daily), NW Arkansas (1x daily), and Omaha (1x daily) from Newark. All four begin September 24.

Do you realize that if you are sitting on the toilet at 11:59PM, and the clock strikes midnight.

It’s same shit, different day.