Delta Air Lines made an operating profit of $614 million in the first quarter of 2024, reversing its loss of $277 million in the same period last year. The US major notes that "robust demand" improved its domestic results, adding that it achieved a company record for domestic unit revenue, which grew 3% year on year. Domestic revenue totalled $8 billion, up 5% year on year. The Atlanta-based carrier expects the revenue trend to continue in the second quarter amid a normalisation of its capacity and fleet management. "Coming out of Covid we had to allocate the resources that we had available," Delta president Glen Hauenstein said on 10 April during an earnings call. He adds: "[These were] once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to take leading positions in places like Boston and Los Angeles at the expense of rebuilding our core hubs. And we're still not done building our core hubs. And so our ability now to go back and to put seats back into our core, where our cost structure is most advantaged and where our profitability is highest, is where we're focused for the rest of this year." Delta's core domestic hubs include Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis/St Paul, New York JFK and LaGuardia, Salt Lake City and Seattle. The carrier generated $13.7 billion in first-quarter operating revenue, up 8% year on year. Operating expenses rose 1%, to $13.1 billion. Delta raised capacity 7%, while its load factor increased by two percentage points to 83%. It ended the first quarter with liquidity of $7.4 billion and an adjusted net debt of $20.2 billion.

Ryanair will serve Copenhagen in Denmark, Fuerteventura in Spain, Marrakesh in Morocco, Prague in the Czech Republic, Sofia in Bulgaria, and Tirana in Albania from Bristol as a part of its summer schedule, bringing the total number of routes to 36. The Irish budget carrier says the expansion is supported by the deployment of the airline's five Bristol-based aircraft, representing a $500 million investment in Bristol. The move will help support over 1,400 local jobs, including 150 pilot, cabin crew and engineer jobs.

South African Airways (SAA) is advertising for a new permanent chief executive and four other senior executives, following its failed acquisition by the Takatso consortium last month. The airline says that, following the failure of the transaction, “the board has deemed it necessary to have a properly constituted and permanent executive team to pilot the airline’s strategic plan into the future.” The company’s interim chairman, Derek Hanekom, describes this is as a “positive and decisive” step that will provide stability to the company as it fleshes out its plans for growth. “The interim executive management team has admirably rebuilt the airline as it emerged out of business rescue with the understanding that their posts would remain interim positions until a new controlling shareholder appoints its management team,” he states. “All of them, including the interim [chief executive], John Lamola, supports this development as a necessary and natural step in strengthening SAA’s position in both the local and international aviation markets.” A notice on SAA’s website invites “suitably qualified applicants”, “including the present incumbents”, to apply for the roles of chief executive, chief commercial officer, chief human capital officer, technical chief executive and head of the airline's catering business, in the period to 26 April. The South African government had been seeking to offload a 51% stake in the carrier, holding talks with Takatso for around three years. However, the two sides were unable to reach an agreement over an updated valuation. The government envisages that the airline will increase the number of routes that it flies from around 19 currently to 40 over the coming years, with a corresponding increase in its fleet. SAA suffered from weak financing and substantial losses even before the pandemic hit, requiring significant government intervention to keep it afloat. It was in a period of business rescue, where it was overseen by a turnaround specialist, from December 2019 to April 2021, during which it was restructured and shed much of its fleet.