Alaska Air Group intends to focus on using artificial intelligence (AI) on the safety and operations side of its business, the company's chief executive has noted on an earnings call. Ben Minicucci said on 24 July during Alaska's second-quarter earnings call that his company started using AI in this way "well before anybody else in 2018, 2019" for its flight planning "with a company called Flyways". That related to the safety and efficiencies of its flight plans, he adds. Minicucci was responding to a question from an analyst, who asked where Alaska is making investments in "machine learning". "How do we think about the multiyear productivity story? I guess how many years off in the future is it before we might see AI in the cockpit, for example?" asked Daniel McKenzie of Seaport Research Partners. Minicucci adds that Alaska is "looking at how [AI] improves operations, our safety data, and the other thing is we're looking at initiatives that put really the guest experience at the centre of it all, and those are the things that really excite us a lot". He goes on to say: "So that's where it's going to be our focus now, whether that's in call centres and improving the experience of call centres, the experience in lobbies, the experience through the app. Those are all things we're looking at in terms of improving the guest experience and, in parallel, how do we improve safety and operations." He concludes: "So that's all our thinking around AI. That's where we want to drive it. That's where we think we can have the biggest bang for our buck with this exciting new technology."

Airbus in April reaffirmed its intention to achieve by 2027 a production rate of 75 aircraft per month on its A320-family programme. "A320-family production is progressing well towards the previously announced rate of 75 aircraft per month in 2027," the European airframer said in a fact sheet released three months ago. Simon Finn, head of aviation research at Japanese bank MUFG, views that target with a measure of urgency. "The industry requires Airbus to hit Rate 75 [on the A320-family programme]," he said on 23 July during a webinar hosted by Cirium Ascend Consultancy. "It's going to need that number of aircraft," he says, adding: "Rate 75 is another staging point along the way – it's going to have to go past that in time."

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has granted a one-year exemption to install and use additional barriers on new commercial airplanes to protect against unauthorised access to the flight deck. "This will allow time to facilitate FAA certification and install the barriers," the agency says in a statement. It explains that the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 mandated the additional barriers, and the agency worked with aviation stakeholders to develop standards. The FAA adopted the Secondary Barriers Final Rule in June 2023, requiring US airlines to install the barriers on all newly manufactured aircraft within two years of the rule's effective date, the FAA adds. It notes that Airlines for America had requested a two-year delay.