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Delta and United Airlines were ordered by a federal judge to face a consumer antitrust class action accusing major US carriers of conspiring to drive up domestic airfares by reducing the number of available seats. In a decision on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington, D.C., said passengers offered a "fair amount" or circumstantial evidence of a conspiracy to reduce seating capacity in order to boost profit. "Defendants engaged admittedly and openly in the practice of capacity discipline on domestic flights, with the effect that diminished capacity resulted in higher industry profits," Kollar-Kotelly wrote in a 70-page decision. Two other defendants, American Airlines and Southwest Airlines, previously settled for a respective $45m and $15m. Neither admitted wrongdoing. The lawsuit began in 2015 after the US Department of Justice started investigating airlines for potential anticompetitive practices, and continued even though no charges were brought. Passengers said that a conspiracy beginning in 2009 to enforce what the carriers called "capacity discipline" artificially inflated ticket prices and reduced flight choice. Delta and United called their seating capacity reductions a legitimate response to reduced demand, rising fuel prices and the 2008 global financial crisis. United called it "perfectly rational Economics 101." Both carriers went through bankruptcy not long before the purported conspiracy began, with United emerging in 2006 and Delta emerging in 2007.<br/>

As numerous US airlines revised their Q3 results estimates due to higher fuel prices and lower-than-expected bookings, United Airlines remains committed to the financial guidance it published in July, touting its hub-and-spoke network as well as its United Next strategy. Speaking at an investor conference on 13 September, United’s Mike Leskinen, vice-president corporate development and investor relations, said that the Chicago-based carrier is already reaping the rewards, despite higher costs in recent weeks. In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on 6 September, the airline had said that while fuel has risen about 20%, it stood by its earnings estimates, adding they are “consistent with guidance provided” on the company’s Q2 results call on 19 July. Leskinen attributes that in part to the airline’s hub strategy. Comparing Q3 earnings updates from other airlines to their Q2 results shows “how much … each carrier changed revenue expectations and that tells you that there is a very different magnitude of impact on those carriers running point-to-point networks and trying to grow the map”, he says. In the past days, Spirit, Frontier, Southwest and Alaska Airlines have all revised down their Q3 revenue expectations. Higher fuel prices and softer booking trends in the early part of the three-month period are the primary reasons they have given. Leskinen notes that United, meantime, has “not seen any dramatic change in bookings”. “We have seen all the reports coming out today [and] the magnitude of what we have seen from peers was as shocking to us as it was to all of you,” he tells the conference. The airline had a banner summer for international travel, the trends of which, he adds, are likely to continue. “The domestic market doesn’t seem like a demand problem, it seems like a supply problem,” he says. International travel, however, “feels strong and has stability” with the airline seeing the most robust demand for travel across the North Atlantic to Europe. <br/>

Lufthansa expects to continue operating its recommissioned Airbus A380s through the late 2020s or early 2030s due to factors including delayed deliveries of new Boeing 777-9s. That is according to the airline’s CE Carsten Spohr, who on 12 September says bringing the Airbus jumbos back online will allow Lufthansa to expand internationally even as supply chain and quality issues depress Airbus and Boeing’s new-aircraft delivery rates. “Late 20s, early 30s,” Spohr says when asked how long Lufthansa expects to continue operating its Rolls-Royce Trent 900-powered A380s. “It depends on demand, and when Airbus and Boeing are able to deliver other airplanes.” During the Covid-19 pandemic, Lufthansa grounded its then 14-strong A380 fleet. It eventually sold six of the jets. The airline then decided on an A380 reprieve. In June, Lufthansa pressed one of the jets back into service as part of a plan to recommission six. But in recent weeks, Lufthansa’s top brass decided to expand the active fleet to include all eight of its A380s. It expects to have the eight in service in 2024. “The eight we own will all be back… including with a new business [class] product,” says Spohr. Lufthansa now operates three of the jumbos on routes including Munich to New York and to Boston, and by 2025 plans to deploy them to additional destinations like Delhi and Washington-Dulles airport. Spohr describes the double-deckers as a valuable tool that will allow Lufthansa to backfill some capacity that it expected to have – but does not – because Airbus and Boeing are not making good on delivery promises.<br/>

Trouble with Pratt & Whitney PW1100G turbofans and broader aerospace industry supply chain problems might drive up fares and will delay at least some carriers’ carbon-reduction plans. That is according to Lufthansa CE Carsten Spohr, who says the current state of the aerospace manufacturing industry could make ticket bargains hard to find in the next year. “I do believe that prices will be stable at least, or go up,” Spohr says on 12 September in Washington, DC. He notes that the global airline industry’s supply of new aircraft is limited by production troubles and delivery delays, and that demand meanwhile continues ramping up. “Prices are defined by the market… The demand has been continuing to be strong around the world… Growth of supply will be constrained” for the foreseeable future, Spohr says. Industry conditions will also “make it more challenging to meet our [carbon-reduction] targets”, he adds. That is because Lufthansa, like other airlines, has been relying more heavily than expected on older, less-efficient jets. Spohr says Lufthansa now intends to keep some of its first-generation A320ceo narrowbodies flying longer than previously planned. It is doing so because about half of its A320neo-family jets will be grounded in the coming year, a consequence of potentially defective disks inside the jets’ Pratt & Whitney PW1100G turbofans. P&W on 11 September said an average of 350 of PW1100G-powered aircraft will be grounded at any one time through 2026 for inspections and disk replacements. <br/>