Holiday air travel bookings are expected to cap off a strong year for Delta Air Lines (DAL). “I expect our fourth quarter to be a record for the company both in revenues as well as in demand,” Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said. Delta estimates that 6.2m to 6.4m passengers will fly using its service during the Thanksgiving holiday travel period between Nov. 17 and Nov. 28. For comparison to pre-pandemic demand, the airline carried 6.3m passengers during the same period in 2019. Delta has reported record earnings in recent quarters, and the catalysts have been multifaceted, as passengers seek premium travel experiences, embark on journeys to international destinations, and exercise hybrid work policies in locations away from the office. “As a full-service carrier, whether it's international, business, premium, we have a healthy mix of revenue streams all contributing to the record performance,” Bastian said, echoing Southwest CEO Bob Jordan's comments to Yahoo Finance about robust travel demand. TSA passenger throughput in 2023 so far has outpaced the travel numbers in 2019 year to date. Volumes have surged as passengers travel for corporate events, vacations, and Taylor Swift and Beyoncé concerts.<br/>
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China Southern Airlines says it will honour customers' tickets after a glitch on Wednesday evening saw flights to Chengdu for as low as 10 Yuan or NZ$2. Instead of reneging on the offer, the airline honoured the mistake and allowed the tickets to be used. In a statement, it said, "All flight tickets that have been paid and issued during the system glitch will be valid and travellers can use them normally." Accidents like these happen frequently, but not all airlines honour them. In 2015, American Airways mistakenly sold round-trip business fares from the US to Beijing and Shanghai for between $0 and $20. In 2018 British Airways cancelled tickets advertising flights to Tel Aviv and Dubai for as little as NZ$2. In the same year, Air New Zealand sold tickets from the United States to New Zealand for US$100 (NZ$136.25) only for the airline to send out emails saying they would be cancelled for being too cheap. Unfortunately, for customers travelling between China and New Zealand, it seems that the glitch did not affect those routes. It is unknown how many tickets were bought before the error was discovered.<br/>