Ryanair has established new bases in the Danish city of Billund, at Stockholm Arlanda in Sweden and at Turin in Italy. The Irish budget airline says it has stationed two aircraft at the Billund base to support the launch of 14 new routes, including eight summer and six winter routes. Destinations include Brussels Charleroi in Belgium, Memmingen in Germany, Gothenburg in Sweden, Lisbon in Portugal and Bari in Italy. Four aircraft stationed at the Stockholm Arlanda base will support the launch of 35 new routes, which includes 23 scheduled for winter and 12 for summer 2022, the airline says. Destinations include Barcelona in Spain, Liverpool in the UK, Vienna in Austria, Lulea in Sweden and Poznan in Poland. Ryanair has also deployed two aircraft at the new Turin base to support the launch of 19 new routes. Summer destinations include Copenhagen in Denmark, Malaga in Spain and Tel Aviv in Israel. New winter routes include Agadir in Morocco and Zadar in Croatia. The new Billund base will support 60 direct jobs, while Stockholm Arlanda and Turin bases will support 120 and 60 direct jobs, respectively.

Airbus has flown two A350's from Toulouse to Montreal to demonstrate the fuel savings that can be achieved through formation flying. During the 9 November trial, the airframer's A350-1000 flight test aircraft (MSN 59) followed its baseline -900 sibling (MSN 001) at 3km (1.6nm) distance in order to catch an updraft created by the lead aircraft's wake. Airbus says the trial confirmed that more than 5% fuel could be saved by follower aircraft in formation flight on long-haul routes. In 2016, the European airframer demonstrated the principle – inspired by large migrating birds, such as geese – with a pair of A380's, which were manually flown. For the A350 trial, aircraft were equipped with flight-control systems developed by Airbus that "position the follower aircraft safely in the wake updraft of the leader aircraft", the manufacturer says. It adds that the demonstration "proved that wake energy retrieval flight technology… can be achieved without compromising safety". Part of the airframer's "fello'fly" wake harnessing programme, Airbus notes that the trial was a joint effort with international air traffic management providers DSNA, NATS, Nav Canada, Eurocontrol and the IAA, and was supported by French civil aviation authority DGAC. "The next step is to get the support of the authorities so that this new operational concept can be certified," says Airbus. It views the formation-flight technology as an opportunity to reduce fuel burn and emissions "in the immediate term". Chief technical officer Sabine Klauke states that "collaboration across the industry will be key to making this happen". She adds: "We have received a strong level of support for this project from our airline and air traffic partners, plus regulators. The opportunity to get this deployed for passenger aircraft around the middle of this decade is very promising." Pilots of Scandinavian carrier SAS and Paris-based long-haul low-cost airline French Bee – both A350 operators that previously became partners in the fello'fly project – were on board the aircraft flown to Montreal, as observers, notes Airbus.

The summer surge of Covid-19 in the USA delayed the recovery of business travel by three to six months, American Airlines' president Robert Isom estimates. The more contagious delta variant of Covid-19 increased the rate of new infections and hospitalisation rates in the USA, which starting in July interrupted a resurgence of business travel in that nation that Isom expects to resume in early 2022, he said on 10 November during the virtual Baird Global Industrial Conference. Chief executives at American's top corporate customers have told Isom that their employees will return to offices at the beginning of 2022. "That trajectory [in business travel] that we had seen in [2021], growing from virtually nothing in January to 64% of 2019 levels in July, we're going to be back on that track as we get into 2022," Isom says. "And we fully expect that business travel will rebound to 2019 levels as we progress through the year and get to the end of 2022." The Fort Worth-based carrier's revenue from domestic business travel slid from 64% of 2019 level in July to 47% of 2019 level in September. American expects to end 2021 with its domestic business travel revenue down 50%. In contrast, the carrier expects its domestic leisure revenue will be 100% recovered by the end of 2021. American forecasts that it will close out 2021 with its total domestic revenue down 20%. Isom says that American is seeing "really good signs" for a recovery in long-haul international demand in the aftermath of the USA's 8 November reopening of its borders for fully vaccinated foreign visitors. "I talked to our London Heathrow team on November 8, and they had fantastic stories of nearly full flights coming out of that airport," Isom says. "We had 40,000 customers coming out of Europe on that first day back."