Brian Sumers

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.

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.

If this works at scale, it'll be appreciated by travelers in hub airports, where there's often not enough time to grab food between flights. But reliably delivering food to passengers waiting at gates is logistically difficult, if not impossible. We'll see if these new services can pull it off.

Over in Italy, no one wants to let Alitalia go. The Italian national carrier is also bankrupt, but keeping the airline is a matter of national pride. There's no such love for Air Berlin. It'll probably disappear, and that'll be OK.

In the not too distant future, we expect bots will be sophisticated enough to handle almost all customer service inquires sent via text message. But we're not there yet, so it's refreshing Hawaiian Airlines is going with an all-human approach.

Norwegian wins lots of awards, and they're well-deserved. But investors aren't sure the carrier will produce major profits any time soon. The problem? It may be growing too quickly.

It's not clear whether United or Frontier will win this battle in Denver. But what is nearly certain is that passengers will be the beneficiaries. They'll likely find cheaper fares.