Ticket sales from the UK to USA have slowed sharply since early November, with bookings flipping from being significantly ahead of a year earlier to notably behind, Cirium's advance-bookings data indicates. From London airports Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton to New York's JFK, Newark, La Guardia and Stewart, advance-bookings data for June travel shows a relatively strong bookings trend from the start of September until early November. In the week to 21 October, for example, there was nearly a quarter more daily bookings made from London to New York for June travel than a year earlier. Cirium does not publish the number of bookings made, within its advance-bookings data – only the changes. However, for over a month in the period since early November, daily bookings from the UK appear to have grown more slowly than normally. They rose 22% in the week to end-December, versus 7 November, where a year earlier they had risen 64% over the same timeframe. Since then, bookings this year have risen by 107%, against an 135% increase in 2024. Currently, there are around 14% fewer daily bookings being made for June travel from London to New York this year than in 2024, the data shows. This means that sales for June travel have flipped from being stronger in the period up to early November to being slower afterwards. Searching the same data for bookings between London and Los Angeles shows a similar trend. Daily sales to the Californian city for June travel were 62% higher in the week to end-December than in the week to 7 November 2024, against a corresponding increase of 84% a year earlier. It is impossible to specify a cause of the trend. The change does coincide with the re-election of US president Donald Trump, but many other factors could be having an influence, including the general economic landscape, pricing, the timing of holidays, and whether consumers are choosing to book earlier or later in the cycle. A look at the same booking trends between the London airports and other destinations indicates that bookings activity outside the USA seems comparatively stable. Daily sales from London to Toronto Pearson for June travel, for example, rose 49% in the period from 7 November to end-December 2023, and 45% a year later. Likewise, bookings to Bangkok showed an 80% rise for June travel between the weeks ending 7 November and 31 December 2023, and an 81% rise a year later. A similar trend is visible in Europe. From London to Rome, sales for June travel were in 2023 up 19% in the week to end-December compared with 7 November. In 2024, the corresponding percentage increase matched exactly, and the number of daily sales was extremely similar to a year earlier. This appears to indicate that the fallback in sales from the UK is limited to the US market. Advance-bookings data tracks sales from the three largest global distribution systems, and not direct sales with airlines. It thus captures around 40% of the market.

South Korean hotel operator Daemyung Sono Group will take management control of T'way Air after agreeing to buy a larger stake in its parent company, T'way Holdings. Filings with the Korean Exchange show that T'way Holdings' largest shareholder YeaRimDang Publishing and its affiliates agreed on 26 February to sell a 46% stake in the company to Sono International for W250 billion ($173 million). In turn, T'way Holdings has a 28% stake in T'way Air. The sale is expected to be settled on 31 March, the disclosure adds. South Korea's Chosun news agency reports that Daemyung Sono already holds a 26.8% stake directly in T'way Air, and that it has signed a contract to take management rights of the airline. Other reports indicate that Daemyung Sono has an indirect stake in rival carrier Air Premia and has expressed interest in merging the two airlines. T'way has been a large beneficiary of concessions that Korean Air has had made to satisfy competition regulators to clear its recent acquisition of a controlling stake in Asiana Airlines. That has allowed the low-cost carrier to expand its widebody fleet to include five ex-Korean Air Airbus A330-200s, which have allowed it to launch flights to Barcelona, Frankfurt and Paris-Charles de Gaulle. Fleets data shows that Korean Air is also wet leasing a Boeing 777-300ER to T'way, which along with a fleet of four a330-300s, 26 737-800s and two 737 Max 8s takes its in-service fleet to 38 aircraft.

Ryanair Group has removed restrictions on the buying of its shares by non-EU nationals, having surpassed a regulatory threshold that says it must be at least 50% owned within the bloc. The Irish airline has imposed restrictions on the purchase of its stock by non-EU nationals since 2002, extending this to UK citizens at the start of 2021 as the country left the EU. At the same time, Ryanair said shares held by non-EU nationals would be treated as restricted shares, barring their owners from attending the airline's general meetings and stripping them of voting rights. In September 2024, with EU ownership of the airline approaching 50%, it announced plans to review these policies to broaden its appeal to shareholders. Following that review, the airline has decided it is "in the best interest of the company and shareholders" to end the purchase restrictions, meaning that both EU and non-EU nationals can now invest in its stock listed in Dublin or the USA. Ryanair will continue to curtail the voting rights of non-EU shareholders, however, "until such time as the board determines that it is possible to vary or remove such restrictions without there being any risk to the airline licences held by the company's subsidiaries”. These decisions have been taken following "feedback from investors representing a significant majority of the company's issued share capital, and the company's regulators", it adds. Ryanair notes that it could reintroduce the purchase prohibitions if necessary to remain in line with the ownership regulations, highlighting that newly issued share capital should be at least 20% EU-owned. The airline also plans to update the market "on the proportion of the company's issued share capital held by EU nationals", it says, without providing a timeline.