Airline News

It will be interesting to see whether American and United can continue discounting to the degree they've been doing now that Hurricane Harvey has added vigor to already-rising fuel prices. With the likes of little Norwegian Air bringing its low fares across the Atlantic, this promises to likewise raise blood pressure levels in legacy airline boardrooms.

This week in aviation, we took a global view. American may unbundle fares to Europe, Air China worries about visa denials, and United's president talks Gulf carriers.

There's no public data here, so it's hard to know how much of an issue this is. But generally, inbound tourism to the United States is important, so if fewer visas are being granted, it's probably not good for American businesses.

This Open Skies debate never goes away, does it? So far, the Trump administration hasn't treated it much differently than the Obama administration, at least publicly. We'll have to see whether it eventually takes a tougher stance.

Don't hate American Airlines if it unbundles fares on some transatlantic routes. By flying discounters like Wow Air and Norwegian, travelers have shown how much they like cheap no-frills airlines. American needs to give the people what they want — $99 one-way fares to Barcelona.

This week's aviation news went global. KLM started accepting WeChat Pay, a staple for Chinese consumers; Air Berlin's bankruptcy dented the European market, and Qantas suggested a 20-hour nonstop.

There have been so many advances in aviation in the past couple of decades that there are almost no routes between major world cities a modern airliner cannot fly. Sydney to New York and London are two of those routes. But perhaps not for long.

KLM is a little less reliant on Chinese customers than other major airlines, but it's good to see the Dutch carrier taking the chance on a new way of accepting payments. We're betting it'll work out well for KLM. And we suspect other airlines will follow.

We know it takes a long time to retrofit airplanes. And we know airlines hate to remove planes from service. But we wish Alaska could work faster to add speedy Wi-Fi. Three years is a long time to wait.

Yes, Americans do make video calls in their everyday lives. But they make them using machines they own. Do airline passengers want to resolve issues by using one of five kiosks in an airport terminal? Perhaps some do, but we're betting many will find the phone just as useful. This seems like it would have a been a novel announcement in 2009.