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American Airlines Thursday posted a $19m profit for the last three months of 2023, topping Wall Street estimates on the top and bottom lines. Shares of the company rose more than 10% on Thursday. Here’s how American performed in the fourth quarter of 2023 compared with Wall Street estimates compiled by LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv: Earnings per share: 29 cents adjusted vs. 10 cents expected. Revenue: $13.06b vs. $13.02b expected. For the last three months of 2023, American Airlines reported net income of $19m, down nearly 98% from $803m the year prior. Earnings per share decreased to 3 cents from $1.14 in the fourth quarter of 2022. Adjusting for one-time items, including the impact of a new labor agreement with the airline’s pilots, American earned 29 cents per share. In its Q3 earnings report, the airline had estimated it would break even for the December period. “We’re really pleased with the results, we closed out the year strong,” CEO Robert Isom said Thursday. “At American, we’re focused on reliability, profitability and really strengthening our balance sheet. We’ve done all of those ... I think that we’re going to have a really busy first and second quarter, and I think the time to buy is right now for travel. It’s going to be a busy year.”<br/>

The chorus of Boeing critics grew louder as more top airline executives called out the planemaker over a series of quality lapses that have grounded aircraft and upended the operations of numerous carriers. “We’re going to hold them accountable,” Robert Isom, CEO of American Airlines Group Inc., said on a conference call Thursday to discuss quarterly results. “Boeing needs to get their act together. The issues they’ve been dealing with, and going back some years now, is unacceptable.” Isom and Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan joined counterparts at Alaska Air and United Airlines who have expressed frustration privately and publicly in recent days over the crisis engulfing the aircraft builder. A Boeing 737 Max 9 plane suffered a serious safety accident during an Alaska Airlines flight earlier this month, prompting authorities to ground the model and step up scrutiny of the company’s manufacturing.<br/>

Alaska Airlines said Thursday that the weekslong grounding of the Boeing 737 Max 9 will cost the carrier $150m. The FAA grounded the planes a day after a door plug blew out during an Alaska flight on Jan. 5. Late Wednesday the agency said it approved inspection instructions that would allow that type of aircraft to return to service. Alaska said Wednesday that the first Max 9 flights would resume as early as Friday and that it would gradually return the aircraft to service through early February. Both Alaska and United Airlines, the two US carriers that have the Max 9s in their fleets, said they found loose bolts on several Max 9 planes during preliminary inspections shortly after the accident. Alaska on Thursday forecast full-year adjusted earnings per share of between $3 and $5, including the hit from the Max grounding. Analysts polled by LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv, were predicting adjusted earnings of $4.93 a share on average. Alaska said before the grounding, it expected to grow capacity from 3% to 5% this year, but, “given the grounding, and the potential for future delivery delays, the Company expects capacity growth to be at or below the lower end of this range.”<br/>

Royal Jordanian has taken delivery of its first two Embraer 195-E2 aircraft from a commitment for eight of the regional jet family. It firmed orders for the Pratt & Whitney PW1900G-powered aircraft in May last year following a memorandum of understanding signed with the airframer in October 2022. The first two examples were handed over to the carrier at Amman on 25 January and are leased through Azorra, which will also supply four E190-E2s. Royal Jordanian ordered another two E195-E2s directly from Embraer. The aircraft feature Royal Jordanian’s new livery, which the carrier describes as “modern and youthful without changing the main elements of RJ’s identity”.<br/>

Judges at the World Court will hand down a judgment on Wednesday in a case in which Ukraine accused Russia of violating an anti-terrorism treaty by funding pro-Russian forces, including militias who shot down a passenger jet, and discrimination. In the case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the U.N.'s top court, which was launched in 2017 and predates the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv says Russia equipped and funded pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, including militias involved in shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, killing all 298 passengers and crew, in July 2014. Ukraine also says Russia breached a U.N. anti-discrimination treaty by trying to erase the culture of ethnic Tatars and Ukrainians in Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Russia denies systematic human rights abuses in Ukrainian territory that it occupies. It also says it has met its obligations under the U.N. treaty against financing terrorism. Judgments of the ICJ, also known as the World Court, are final and without appeal but the court has no way to enforce its rulings.<br/>

Cathay Pacific made “significant progress” in recovering passenger travel demand in 2023 – with passenger traffic sharply improving from the previous year’s lower base – even as it acknowledged its “ongoing” operational challenges. In traffic results for the full year, the Hong Kong-based carrier reported a six-fold jump in passenger volume to nearly 18m in 2023, its first year of operations since pandemic border restrictions eased. Full-year traffic grew about four-fold year on year, with the sharpest increase seen in Northeast and Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, Cathay saw capacity grow by more than three times, leading to a 12.1 percentage point increase in passenger load factor to 85.7%. For December, Cathay carried over 1.7m passengers, about twice the number compared to the year-ago period. Traffic grew 89% year on year, outpaced by a 94% rise in capacity. Cathay chief customer and commercial officer Lavinia Lau says the airline saw “overwhelming demand” for short-haul travel during December, pointing out that Japan and Southeast Asia were “especially popular”. “We [also] saw good demand for travel from the United States and the Southwest Pacific in the first half of December. The demand for travel from the United Kingdom was particularly strong as it coincided with the peak period for international students returning to Hong Kong,” Lau adds. However, Cathay does not mention the operational snags it encountered over the Christmas and New Year period, which saw it abruptly cancel up to 40 flights a day. <br/>