Lufthansa Group has completed its acquisition of a 41% stake in Italy's flagship carrier ITA Airways through a €325 million capital increase, with the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) retaining the remaining 59%. The deal, initially agreed in May 2023, received European Commission approval in November 2024, says Lufthansa. ITA Airways becomes Lufthansa's fifth network airline, making Italy the group's newest home market after Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Belgium. The airline currently operates 99 aircraft, including 22 long-haul aircraft, serving approximately 70 destinations and carrying 18 million passengers in 2024. Key aspects include immediate integration plans, with joint customer programs launching in summer 2024. ITA Airways' frequent flyers will soon be able to use either the "Volare" program or Lufthansa's Miles & More program. Rome's Fiumicino airport will serve as Lufthansa's sixth and southernmost hub. Lufthansa chief Carsten Spohr states: "We look forward to continuing this success story of ITA Airways together. With our investment, we will now strengthen the Italian and European aviation market and the position of the Lufthansa Group as number one in Europe." Options for Lufthansa to acquire the remaining shares in ITA Airways have been agreed upon and can be exercised starting this year.

The US Department of Transportation has filed a lawsuit against Southwest Airlines for operating "chronically delayed flights", while Frontier Airlines has agreed to accept a fine for delays. A DOT investigation found that Southwest operated two chronically delayed services – one between Chicago Midway and Oakland, and another between Baltimore and Cleveland – which resulted in 180 flight disruptions for passengers between April and August 2022. Each flight was chronically delayed for "five straight months", it adds. The DOT defines a chronically delayed flight as a domestic flight that is operated at least 10 times a month and arrives more than 30min late more than half the time each month. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics estimates, based upon data submitted to DOT by Southwest, that the airline was responsible for more than 90% of the disruptions to the two chronically delayed services. "Regardless of the cause of the disruption for any specific flight, DOT rules provide airlines adequate time to fix their schedule after a flight becomes chronically delayed in order to avoid illegal unrealistic scheduling. Southwest failed to fix the chronically delayed flights," the agency says. Southwest tells Cirium it is "disappointed that DOT chose to file a lawsuit over two flights that occurred more than two years ago". It adds: "Since DOT issued its Chronically Delayed Flight (CDF) policy in 2009, Southwest has operated more than 20 million flights with no other CDF violations. Any claim that these two flights represent an unrealistic schedule is simply not credible when compared with our performance over the past 15 years." The filing of the lawsuit came on the same day that DOT fined Frontier Airlines $650,000 in civil penalties for operating chronically delayed flights from April to August 2022 and from December 2022 to April 2023. Half of the fine will be suspended if the carrier does not have similar violations for the next three years. Frontier declined to comment on the fines when contacted by Cirium. However, the consent order for the penalty includes the airline's assertion that "many of the flights at issue were delayed or cancelled as a result of uncontrollable events". It says agreed to the penalty "to avoid the additional expense, burden, and distraction of additional litigation". DOT says unrealistic scheduling for flights that are chronically delayed is "unfair, deceptive, and anticompetitive practice that disrupts passengers' travel plans, denies them reliable scheduling information, and allows airlines to unfairly capture business from competitors by misleading consumers". Earlier this month, the agency imposed a $2 million penalty on JetBlue Airways for operating multiple chronically delayed flights.

South African Airways is reinstating daily services between Johannesburg and Dar es Salaam from 20 January using Airbus A320s. It will be the third carrier on the route after Airlink and Air Tanzania which operate eight and five times weekly, respectively. SAA last operated flights to Dar es Salaam in March 2020. The move follows a recent expansion of the carrier’s network, including increased frequencies to Perth, Harare, Lusaka, Lagos, Accra, and Kinshasa, plus a new Lubumbashi route.