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This year, United Airlines expects to have its busiest-ever Thanksgiving, with nearly 6m people flying with the airline during the holiday travel period. During the Thanksgiving period, from November 17 to November 29, United expects to carry more than 5.9m passengers, a 5% increase compared to pre-pandemic 2019 and 13% compared to the same period last year. The airline will operate an average of 3,900 flights per day, equating to about three takeoffs per minute. It has, therefore, added over 550,000 seats to meet the pent-up demand. United Airlines actually expects to serve more customers on the Sunday after Thanksgiving Day, November 26, compared to any other travel day since before the pandemic. Over 517,000 passengers will board United flights on this day, about 60,000 more than on November 27, 2022, the Sunday after last year's Thanksgiving. According to United's forecast, the days immediately after Thanksgiving remain the busiest. However, flights on off-peak days will have more passengers compared to 2019. On the Monday before the holiday, demand increased nearly 10% of 2019 levels, and only about 3% on the Wednesday before.<br/>

Eva Airways Corp. placed a major order with Airbus SE for the A350-1000 jet, extending this year’s successful run for the manufacturer’s largest widebody model as more carriers upgrade their fleets to manage longer routes. The carrier said in a Taiwan Stock Exchange statement that it plans to buy 18 A350-1000 planes, alongside 15 of the A321neo single-aisle aircraft. The total value of the deal is about $10.1b, though customers typically get steep discounts for big orders. The A350-1000 planes are set to replace Eva Air’s existing Boeing 777-300ERs. The airline currently has 34 of those planes in its fleet, including a dozen that are almost 20 years old. After a slow period during the Covid pandemic, Boeing and Airbus are enjoying a banner year for fresh purchases. Jet orders since January currently stand at the highest since 2014, according to aviation data provider Cirium. Eva Air President Sun Chia-ming said in November 2022 that the carrier is keen to shift toward larger widebodies from single-aisle jets as it eyes the retirement of its Airbus A330 planes by 2029. Those are being replaced by Boeing 787s. The airline has 87 aircraft in its fleet as of last month, mostly passenger jets and some freighters. Earlier this year, it added five 787 Dreamliners to its order backlog. The Eva accord brings Airbus’s order book on the A350-1000 within striking distance of 100 aircraft for the year. The model is the larger variant of Airbus’s most advanced aircraft, and customers had previously favored the smaller -900 variant. By the end of September, Airbus had 39 orders for that model for 2023.<br/>

Singapore Airlines shrugged off rising fuel costs to deliver its second-biggest quarterly profit on record as demand for flights kept airfares elevated. Net income in Q2 through September climbed 27% from a year earlier to S$707m ($522m), the carrier said in a statement Tuesday. Revenue rose 4.3% to S$4.7b. Demand remains strong in the rebound from Covid — including low-cost unit Scoot, Singapore Airlines’ passenger traffic totaled 8.9m in the quarter, up 42% from a year earlier. Group capacity is expected to reach about 92% of pre-pandemic levels on average in December. Singapore’s flag carrier warned that air travel returning to normal puts pressure on yields. It also flagged heightened geopolitical and macroeconomic risks that will “continue to pose challenges for the airline industry.” The price of oil soared about 28% during the quarter, squeezing airlines as jet fuel is one of their biggest costs. Singapore Airlines said its net fuel costs rose 13.6%. Passenger load factor, an indicator of how full planes are, was 88.6%, up 2 percentage points from the same period last year. Singapore Airlines shares fell 1.4% ahead of the earnings Tuesday, trimming their gain this year to about 13%. That’s still the fifth-best performer on the Bloomberg World Airlines Index, which is down 8% in 2023.<br/>

Air India is using the arrival of new aircraft to strengthen its network, while Sydney airport has seen Chinese carriers mount a strong return this year. Air India will add over 400 weekly flights on both its domestic and international networks under its new winter schedule that runs until March 2024. It also launching four international routes: Bengaluru-Singapore, Kochi-Doha, Kolkata-Bangkok, and Mumbai-Melbourne. The airline is also adding frequencies on several international services to Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia. The growth is enabled by the arrival of 30 new aircraft in the coming months: 20 Airbus A320neos, six A350s, and four Boeing 777-300ERs. “While modernising our fleet and introducing new products and services is a top priority in Air India’s ongoing transformation journey, we are equally focused on densifying and expanding our route network to capture the rapidly growing demand in the market,” says CE Campbell Wilson. In addition, Air India has a new interline partnership with Alaska Airlines, allowing passengers to connect to Alaska Airlines’ flights at six North American destinations, offering onward travel to 32 cities on the US carrier’s network. Meanwhile, Scoot commenced daily flights to Chennai on 5 November with A320 aircraft, giving the Singaporean low-cost carrier its sixth Indian destination. Vietnamese low-cost carrier Vietjet has also added to its Indian network, launching a three-times-weekly Ho Chi Minh City- Tiruchirappalli service on 2 November. Tiruchirappalli is the carrier’s fifth Indian destination after Ahmedabad, Delhi, Kochi, and Mumbai. Malaysia’s AirAsia X will commence a three-times-weekly service on the Gold Coast-Auckland route from 3 February, replacing its existing Sydney-Auckland service, which will cease on 31 January. The A330 operator has flown the Kuala Lumpur-Gold Coast route since its inception 16 years ago. “These decisions are made with thorough review and careful consideration of all relevant information,” says AirAsia X CE Benyamin Ismail. “Our network will continue to evolve based on a number of factors but primarily based on consumer demand.”<br/>