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American Airlines lost $931m in the final three months of last year, as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus has pushed back the industry’s rebound, the company said on Thursday. After a year of recovery punctuated by setbacks, airlines are now focused on returning to profitability in 2022. Industry executives are hoping for a robust spring and summer driven by rebounds in corporate and international travel. “Over the past year, we have experienced periods of high travel demand countered by periods of decreased demand due to new Covid-19 variants,” American’s CE, Doug Parker, said Thursday. “This volatility has created the most challenging planning environment in the history of commercial aviation.” Omicron forced airline workers to call in sick at record rates over the holidays, compounding problems caused by winter storms and contributing to tens of thousands of cancellations during one of the year’s busiest travel periods. But American notably performed better over that period than its peers. Over the two weeks starting on Dec. 25, American canceled just under 1,500 flights, compared with more than 4,300 at Southwest, more than 2,500 for United and more than 2,000 for Delta. The cancellations represented 4% of American’s schedule, versus 9% for Southwest, 8% for United and 5% for Delta. Omicron will continue to weigh on demand in January and February, American said. The airline expects capacity, as measured by seats sold and distance flown, to be about 8 to 10% less in the first three months of this year than in the same period in 2019. Revenue is expected to be down 20 to 22%. American is more optimistic about the rest of the year, expecting capacity to be down only about 5% in 2022 from 2019. The airline also hopes to start turning profits again this year. The company said domestic and short-distance international travel had nearly recovered to prepandemic levels, while corporate travel within the United States was about 70% restored. Long-distance international travel continues to lag behind but is expected to improve as Omicron infections decline and vaccines are distributed abroad.<br/>

American Airlines Group Iexpects to receive all 13 of its tardy 787 Dreamliners this year, offering some relief for Boeing Co. investors -- if not travelers. Most of the jets will arrive too late for the crucial summer travel season. The airline’s update provides insight into a key issue for Boeing a week before it reports earnings: the resumption of Dreamliner handovers that have been largely halted since October 2020 amid a rash of tiny production flaws. American still expects to take the first of the popular wide-body in April, as it indicated last month, and signaled that no new delays have cropped up in the last six weeks. Boeing has compensated American for some of flying it’s lost because of delivery disruptions and has committed to covering the costs of any additional delays. “We’ve had some really good discussions with Boeing,” Derek Kerr, American’s chief financial officer, said on a conference call to discuss Q4 results. “We’re on track to hit that mid-April time frame.” That’s reassuring for investors waiting for Boeing to start generating cash from the more than 100 Dreamliners stuck in storage. The planemaker has repeatedly pushed back its schedule as it uncovered more of the “structural non-conformities” and other defects from its supply chain.<br/>

An American Airlines flight to London returned to Miami after a passenger refused to follow the federal requirement to wear a face mask, according to the airline. The airline called Miami police, and officers escorted a woman off the plane at Miami International Airport Wednesday evening without incident. A spokesperson for the Miami-Dade Police Department said American Airlines staff dealt “administratively” with the passenger. The woman was put on American’s internal no-fly list pending further investigation, an airline spokesman said. Airlines have frequently banned passengers for the duration of the pandemic if they refuse to follow mandatory mask requirements designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19. American said there were 129 passengers and 14 crew members on the plane. Pilots turned the Boeing 777 around less than an hour into the transatlantic flight, according to tracking service FlightAware. Airlines reported nearly 6,000 incidents involving unruly passengers last year and 151 in the first two weeks of this year, according to the FAA. Most of them involved passengers who refused to wear masks.<br/>

American Airlines is suing the Points Guy travel site for letting frequent flyers manage their miles outside the carrier’s own website. The airline accused the Points Guy of violating its trademark as well as privacy rules associated with its AAdvantage loyalty program. It asked the federal court in Fort Worth, Texas, for an order stripping all American links and customer data from the site. The Points Guy is accessing and using airline data “in a way that does not comply with our standards of use of confidential information,” Andrea Koos, a spokeswoman for Forth Worth-based American, said Thursday in an emailed statement. “We take customer data and proprietary information incredibly seriously, and want to make sure it is protected and secure.” Started as a blog offering tips on how to best accumulate and use airline miles, the Points Guy has expanded considerably in recent years with credit card reviews and travel news. It launched an app in September that lets users track all of their mileage programs from different airlines in one place. The Points Guy preemptively sued American last week in Delaware, seeking a court ruling that it’s legal for consumers to input and manage their own frequent flyer data on a third-party site. In a statement on Thursday, the site said it filed suit after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the airline. “We fundamentally believe that if you want to let us track your points in a safe and secure manner, then you should be allowed to do so through our app,” Brian Kelly, founder of the Points Guy, said Thursday in an emailed statement. American is seeking unspecified damages that include all “ill-gotten revenues and benefits” the Points Guy has generated from AAdvantage customers and its use of the airline’s marks and proprietary data, according to the suit filed Monday.<br/>

Airbus on Thursday raised the stakes in a dispute with one of its largest customers, Qatar Airways, over grounded and undelivered A350 jets by announcing it had revoked a separate contract for 50 smaller A321s the airline needs to open new routes. The move is expected to deepen a dispute that moved closer towards a rare courtroom clash on Thursday, with a procedural hearing over Qatar’s claim for $600m in compensation over A350 flaws penciled in for the week of April 26 in London. Airbus revealed it was walking away from the contract for A321neos in skeletal arguments presented during a scheduling session over the A350 dispute at a division of Britain’s High Court on Thursday, people familiar with the matter said. “We confirm we did terminate the contract for 50 A321s with Qatar Airways in accordance with our rights,” an Airbus spokesman said following a filing setting out provisional arguments. Qatar Airways is expected to fight the A321 contract’s termination, having said it plans to take delivery of the jets even though it is refusing to take more A350s until a dispute over surface erosion on the larger planes has been resolved. The A321 order stems from a deal first signed some 10 years ago which was then worth $4.6b at list prices. It was later modified to switch 10 of the A321s to a newer version. Qatar Airways has said the A321s will help it launch flights to new markets where there is currently not enough demand for larger aircraft, but which are out of reach of smaller A320s.<br/>