American Airlines has taken the pandemic as an opportunity to reemerge as the world's largest airline, a title it has traded back and forth with competitors during the last few years as Delta and United expanded their networks. But American Airlines has pulled ahead of rival Delta and is reestablishing routes and reconnecting with passengers to coincide with the uptick in summer travel. Based on flights scheduled, seat counts and how many passenger miles it has planned, American has been the biggest carrier in the world since April, according to airline schedule tracker Diio by Cirium. In fact, American's June schedule is about 21% bigger than Delta, its next largest rival. "American has been aggressive," said John Grant, the UK-based chief analyst for aviation data firm OAG. "You are very lucky in the United States to have a large domestic market." A handful of global rivals have traded the title of the world's largest airline during the COVID-19 pandemic as the ongoing outbreak upended the aviation world. At different times over the last 15 months, Qatar Airways, China Southern and Southwest have scheduled the most flights and passenger kilometres.<br/>
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After more than half a century in airplane seatback pockets, the American Airlines in-flight magazine American Way is going away. An airline spokeswoman said Friday that American will retire the magazine and its online version at the end of June. American says it’s the oldest continuously published magazine in the airline industry, dating back to 1966. American Way went from yearly to quarterly and then monthly, filled with stories about the airline, destinations it served, and an assortment of other features. There were also airport terminal maps and other information toward the back. It spawned imitators at many other airlines. The pandemic hastened the demise of in-flight magazines, as airlines pulled them last year to prevent people from thumbing through pages that had been touched by other passengers. Delta and Southwest dropped theirs, and BA stopped stocking paper copies of “High Life” while keeping the online version. But the days of the in-flight magazine were numbered anyway, as passengers began spending more time browsing other information and entertainment on their phones, tablets and laptops.<br/>
Japan Airlines is scrambling to turn around its air transportation operations hit hard by the novel coronavirus pandemic. The major Japanese airline is promoting the structural reform of its full service carrier business as it cannot expect a full recovery in the number of business travelers, even in the post-coronavirus period. Meanwhile, JAL is staying ahead of the curve. It is taking measures to cash in on the expectedrecovery in tourism demand in the post-coronavirus period, including additional investments in affiliated low-cost carriers. JAL President Yuji Akasaka spoke about the company's business strategy. Akasaka painted a downbeat picture of the FSC business outlook. Noting that the main customers of the FSC business had so far been business travelers, he said that demand from such customers would "certainly decline" following the scourge of COVID-19. "As more and more things can be done remotely, this understanding is shared by customers from any companies we have talked with," he said. "Since [FSC] demand declines, we need to scale back supply." JAL is already proceeding with the early retirement of large aircraft such as the Boeing 777. Akasaka indicated a policy of further cutting operating costs in the future by replacing large aircraft with fuel-efficient aircraft such as the A350, Airbus' mid-sized plane. Meanwhile, JAL is clearly going on the offensive in the LCC business. The carrier plans to make Spring Airlines Japan, a Japanese subsidiary of major Chinese LCC Spring Airlines, a consolidated subsidiary by the end of June. Akasaka said, "Although a recovery in demand [for air travel] depends on [COVID-19] vaccinations, tourism demand, especially in Asia, will recover earlier than business demand."<br/>