Flight attendants at American Airlines are picketing ahead of a possible strike. Boeing got no orders for its 737 Max planes for the second month in a row. A hedge fund wants Southwest Airlines’s CEO out, but he says he’s not going. Plus, rankings of U.S. airlines by passenger volume and legroom.
Take a moment to catch up on what’s been happening in the world of airlines.
Singapore Airlines will be offering money to passengers who were on an especially turbulent flight last month.
After a piece of fuselage fell off a Boeing 737 Max 9 earlier this year, the company has been working harder to strengthen its safety culture through training. The Wall Street Journal reports that a wave of pandemic-era retirements among its workforce meant that the people putting planes together were younger and less experienced in the field, with executives saying that led to production problems.
United States-based airlines carried more than 941 million people to various international and domestic destinations last year, according to data from the Department of Transportation. The data enthusiasts at StatsPanda recently looked into the stats to figure out which carriers had the largest chunks of that total.
American Airlines could soon have a strike on its hands. Negotiations to prevent it are ongoing.
Boeing is still having a rough go of things as it tries to build itself back up after its door-plug blowout scandal. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the plane manufacturer only recorded four new orders for its passenger jets in May, with none of them being for the company’s 737 Max moneymakers. That would be the second month in a row in which that model received no new orders.
It looks like the activist hedge fund that is trying to force changes at Southwest Airlines has a fight on its hands. Southwest CEO Bob Jordan told reporters that if Elliott Management wants him out of the company, they will have to find a way to fire him.
When people get on an airplane, they like having enough room to be comfortable. But not all airlines have the same amount of room. The travel news website Upgraded Points pored over data about how much legroom is on each of the big U.S. airlines and ranked them.
Flight attendants for American Airlines picketed Thursday at 30 airports across the United States and in Guam to raise pressure on the airline’s management to finish negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement and avert a strike. The demonstrations will take place at many major airports, including LaGuardia Airport in New York City, Los Angeles International Airport, and Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
The increased federal government scrutiny of Boeing in the wake of its door plug blowout scandal continues apace.
Boeing is in a lot of trouble after a door plug blew out on an Alaska Airlines-operated 737 Max 9 plane, but a Bank of America analyst says the plane maker is “too big to fail” and that the challenges in front of it are not too big to overcome. It and Airbus are the only players able to field orders for commercial jetliners, and that should make it easier for Boeing to survive.
