Airlines are inundating customers with credit-card offers, hoping to widen a lucrative and steady revenue stream as they rely more on income beyond fares. Every major US carrier earned more from credit-card and loyalty programs in Q2 than during the year-earlier period, financial disclosures show. For many airlines, those increases outpaced overall sales growth. Much of the revenue comes from the credit cards associated with loyalty programs, though the programs don’t necessarily require customers to have a credit card. “It is amazing how much it continues to grow,” said Kurt Stache, senior VP for marketing, loyalty and sales at American Airlines Group. Revenue from American’s loyalty program grew 7% to $1.4b in Q2, while overall revenue at the world’s top airline by traffic rose 4%. The loyalty program accounted for 12% of the carrier’s overall sales, roughly flat from a year earlier. Banks buy miles from airlines and award them to people who sign up for new cards and cardholders who make purchases on everyday items. The more cardholders spend, the more miles they rack up—and the more cash the issuing banks pay the airlines. Cards not tied to a particular airline work in a similar way, but the banks pay airlines when holders convert points to miles. Story has more.<br/>
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Asia-Pacific carriers are continuing to benefit from strengthening demand despite the threat of trade protectionism, according to the region’s major airline industry group. “The solid pattern of growth seen in the first half of the year” extended into July, with Asian airlines “reporting further increases in both international passenger traffic and air cargo volumes” for the month, Association of Asia-Pacific Airlines (AAPA) DG Andrew Herdman. The global economic outlook “remains positive” in the short term, “despite some concern that uncertainties over future trade policy could undermine business confidence internationally,” Herdman said. “Both the US and China have announced expansionary fiscal measures, which should stimulate domestic demand … and hopefully mitigate any adverse impact from new tariff barriers.” International passenger traffic “showed sustained [year-on-year] growth” in July, AAPA said. Demand rose 7.3% compared to the previous year, with capacity climbing by 5.7%. This caused average load factors for the month to increase by 1.2 points to 82.7%. <br/>
China’s top three airlines are poised to show this week that they’ve been hard hit by a jump in crude prices and the yuan’s depreciation. Combined net income at Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines probably fell more than 50% to 4.95b yuan ($727m) in H1 2018, based on the median of estimates in a Bloomberg News survey of analysts. Chinese carriers aren’t allowed to lock in fuel costs -- the largest expense for Asian airlines -- through hedging. On top of that, with major expenses including aircraft purchases being paid for in dollars, Chinese airlines are vulnerable to a weakening yuan as they have “insignificant” currency hedging in place, according to Toliver Ma, an analyst at Guotai Junan Securities. Story has charts showing what’s in focus when the airlines report results this week. <br/>
Police have arrested a man they say jumped a fence and ran onto a runway at Los Angeles International Airport. Airport police Officer Rob Pedregon says the man was spotted running across the runway at about 1:40 p.m. Monday near a Delta jet that was preparing to take off. A passenger, Chad Ridgely, tweeted that the man started doing pushups before he was arrested. Pedregon say the intruder is a middle-aged homeless man with mental health problems. The officer says he scaled a 10 ½-foot-tall perimeter fence topped with barbed wire with a concrete barrier at the base. The runway was closed about 20 minutes and the plane was given a mechanical check before it was allowed to depart.<br/>
Royal Schiphol Group, operator of Amsterdam Schiphol, has said that the two sides in an ongoing industrial dispute at the airport must get together “with extreme urgency” to avert a threatened 24-hour strike. Two unions representing security staff have informed the Group that they intend to take industrial action Sept. 4, after failing to reach agreement with their third-party employers over improvements to salaries and working conditions. The security staff have been staging brief, 15-minute stoppages over the past six weeks, said the FNV Security and CNV Professional unions, but these have failed to achieve any results. FNV director Mohamed Gafki said the union had been in contact with the airport’s operators to alert them to the proposed withdrawal of labor, “because a 24-hour strike has consequences for the airport and air traffic. Agreements can now be made to arrange things properly. Travelers can be informed in time, tickets [can be] rebooked, flights cancelled, and so on.” A Schiphol spokesperson said Monday that it was still uncertain what the precise effect of a 24-hour walkout on the airport would be and it was studying several scenarios. The airport was “considering its legal options with regard to the CNV and FNV trade union’s announcements.” <br/>
State-owned airport operator PT Angkasa Pura I has offered several incentives, including free landing fees for one year, for airlines that open new routes to airports under its management. Currently, AP I operates 13 airports in central and eastern Indonesia. “We're offering free landing fees for one year to airlines that open new domestic routes, except to the I Gusti Ngurah Rai airport in Denpasar, the Juanda airport in Surabaya and the Adisutjipto airport in Yogyakarta,” said AP I marketing and service director Devi Suradji in Balikpapan Monday. Devi added that the free landing fee was also offered for airlines that opened new international routes, except to Ngurah Rai International Airport and Adisutjipto International Airport.<br/>