AirAsia X will start a thrice-weekly service from Kuala Lumpur to Tashkent from 15 October. Data shows that the airline will operate Airbus A330-300s on the route, and it will be the third operator after Batik Air Malaysia and Uzbekistan Airways. "Our mission has always been to make medium-haul travel more accessible and affordable, and we are excited to extend this offering to travelers from Uzbekistan with our entry into Tashkent. The strong performance of our Almaty route has reaffirmed the potential of Central Asia, prompting us to grow further in the region," comments AirAsia X chief executive Benyamin Ismail. AirAsia X started flights to Almaty in March 2024 and currently operates five weekly services there. The carrier has 18 A330-300s in service and one in storage.

Certification by the US Federal Aviation Administration of the Max 7 and 10 variants of Boeing's 737 programme will likely be achieved in 2026 and not this year as previously expected, Boeing chief executive Kelly Ortberg has indicated. The US airframer has been working on finalising the anti-icing design for the engine inlet on the two variants. Ortberg on 29 May during the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference had said that the Max 7 and 10 were "slated to complete the certification this year". Ortberg disclosed on 29 July during an earnings call that work on the anti-icing solution is taking longer than expected. "We now are expecting certification in 2026," Ortberg says. "We don't expect a material impact to our production plans, and we're prepared to build other 737 models for our customers." "We just haven't closed the design," he adds. "We went through some testing, and this is a very delicate area that we're dealing with around the inlet of the engines, and [we] can't cause any perturbation to the airflow into the engines. "We found some issues with the design implementation we had, so we're going to have to back up and make some additional design changes to get through that de-icing requirement. Basically, the engineering design did not yield it in the time frame that we were anticipating, and so we still have work to do." Ortberg's confirmation of the certification delay follows Southwest Airlines chief executive Bob Jordan's disclosure during a 24 July earnings call that he expected the Max 7 to be certificated by the FAA "maybe first half of 2026, which would put entry into service for us, at earliest, late in '26". Southwest has by far the most Max 7s on order, with 305 expected, followed by Allegiant Air, with 24 on order, fleets data shows. Eleven additional Max 7s are on order, four of which are to be delivered to Luxair, with the remaining customers unannounced. United Airlines has the most Max 10s on order, with 167 expected, followed by Ryanair (150), American Airlines (112), and Delta Air Lines and Pegasus (100 apiece).

United Airlines and JetBlue are set to implement their "Blue Sky" collaboration, having completed the US Department of Transportation's regulatory review of the interline agreement closed by the two US carriers in May. "JetBlue and United appreciate [US Transportation] secretary Duffy, assistant secretary [Daniel] Edwards and the entire team at the DOT for their review of Blue Sky," the carriers say. "JetBlue and United will share more details in the coming weeks as implementation of the Blue Sky collaboration begins." The Blue Sky scheme establishes an interline arrangement for JetBlue flights departing New York and Boston, and for United's international flights, and links the airlines' loyalty programmes. United and JetBlue will also offer each other's flights on their respective websites and booking apps. Additionally, New York-based JetBlue will provide to United access to JFK slots for up to seven daily round-trip flights beginning in 2027. Additionally, JetBlue and United will exchange eight flight timings at the Chicago-based carrier's Newark Liberty International hub. United stopped JFK operations after October 2015, reviving them temporarily amid the Covid crisis, Cirium schedules data shows. The US major last operated JFK flights in October 2022. "It's important for us," United chief executive Scott Kirby said about United's return to JFK during a 17 July earnings call. "We've become the premier flag carrier of the United States and – being able to be in JFK – it's hard to really complete that unless we're there."