A group of US House and Senate lawmakers on 10 March sent a letter to federal regulators, asking them to review the proposed merger of Frontier Airlines and Spirit Airlines and “to oppose it if you determine it will threaten competition in the airline industry or ‘the public interest’”. The lawmakers in their letter to the US Transportation department and the antitrust division of the Justice Department warn that the proposed merger “could lead to higher prices and lower quality for consumers, and lower wages for workers”, stating that previous airline mergers drove fare increases. “Pilots, flight attendants, and other workers in the airline industry would lose an alternative employer, and Spirit-Frontier would face less competitive pressure to offer better compensation and labour conditions to their employees.” The merger proposed in February is valued at $6.6 billion and would create the fifth-largest US carrier by capacity size if approved. Frontier and Spirit have declined requests to speculate on the chance of regulatory approval. Signatories of the letter to regulators included Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Ben Ray Lujan; and Democratic House representatives Rashida Tlaib, Mondaire Jones, Katie Porter, Jan Schakowsky, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The only non-Democrat included was senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont who caucuses with the Democrats. Combining Frontier and Spirit could create a company that is four times larger than the next-largest ultra-low-cost carrier, according to the letter, adding that the two airlines would face less pressure to improve customer service. “As has often been the case with airline mergers, the resulting Spirit-Frontier carrier could hurt consumers in numerous ways, consolidating market power for the airlines and reducing choices for travellers.” US president Joseph Biden in July 2021 directed federal agencies to re-evaluate their antitrust oversight in a bid to maintain competition, workers’ rights, and consumer rights. By doing so, he signalled a shift away from the policies of former US president Donald Trump, who eased or eliminated long-established regulations at numerous agencies. The Justice Department has sued to halt the codeshare partnership between JetBlue Airways and American Airlines that focuses on flights from Boston and New York City, which was approved in the final days of the Trump administration despite anti-competitive concerns voiced by critics including Spirit Airlines. Combining the two ULCCs would create a leisure powerhouse yet it remains to be seen whether it would enable them to dominate a significant range of markets, JP Morgan analyst Jamie Baker said in a research note in February. The network of the combined airline would include 86 nonstop markets in the USA that overlap, Baker says, yet “none will consolidate to solely the combined entity”. The merged airline would have a 24% market share on those US routes, Baker reports, yet it would “emerge as the dominate operator in a handful” of markets including the Tampa to Cleveland route where it would have a 77% share of traffic.

Cathay Pacific chairman Patrick Healy does not think Hong Kong’s future as an international hub will be diminished by the “extremely challenging operating conditions” it currently faces. “The start of [2022] is even tougher than the last. The emergence of the highly transmissible Omicron variant has led to the tightest restrictions that Hong Kong has implemented today,” Healy said during a 9 March press briefing on Cathay’s 2021 full-year results. He stresses: “[None] of this fundamentally alters the fact of Hong Kong’s future as an international city and aviation hub. The future long-term outlook for Hong Kong as an international aviation hub and Cathay Pacific’s role at the centre of that remains fundamentally unchanged. “Although I wouldn’t want to downplay the difficulties and operational challenges associated with the current situation, the fact remains that these are fundamentally short-term in nature and don’t change our full confidence in the long-term future of Hong Kong as a place to do business and as an aviation hub.” As a group, Cathay reported an operating loss of HK$1.4 billion ($179 million) for 2021, a significant improvement on its HK$18 billion loss a year ago. The group’s revenue declined 3% year on year, to HK$45.6 billion. Passenger revenue fell 64% to HK$4.4 billion but cargo revenue rose 28% to HK$35.8 billion. Similar to its late-January update, Cathay expects the current restrictions will result in a cash burn of HK$1-1.5 billion per month from February, reversing its marginally cash-generative second half of 2021. The airline’s liquidity balance at the end of 2021 stood at HK$30.3 billion, versus HK$28.6 billion at the end of 2020. Cathay attributes its ability to maintain a “stable level of liquidity over such a turbulent period” to its strong second-half performance and two bond issues in the first half of 2021. The Hong Kong government has also extended the drawdown period of a HK$7.8 billion loan facility to June. “Our strong liquidity position gives us great confidence that we can overcome the ongoing challenges and emerge from this crisis as a more efficient and competitive airline than we were before,” Healy says. Given the current restrictions, Cathay says it is “trying [its] best to maintain passenger and cargo networks as far as possible and will try to increase cargo capacity as much as practicable”. The airline expects to operate at about 2% of passenger flight capacity and “less than one-third” of cargo flight capacity against 2019 levels as long as the tightened crew quarantine requirements and flight bans to key markets remain in place. Asked to provide an update on Cathay’s Boeing 777-9 orders, chief operations and service delivery officer Greg Hughes said the airline was “absolutely committed to the Boeing 777-9 programme”. The airline has 21 777-9s on order and expects deliveries to begin in the fourth quarter of 2025 and run through 2028.

Members of Delta Air Lines’ pilots' union plan on 10 March to picket outside of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International airport to demand that the airline provide more convenient schedules for flight crews, the Air Line Pilots Association states. The ALPA pilots’ union says its members will protest “Delta management’s scheduling practices that have caused pilots to fly long and often fatiguing trips”. That picket will not disrupt the airline’s operations at its Atlanta hub, Delta says. “All of our pilot schedules meet or exceed safety requirements set by [the US Federal Aviation Administration] as well as those outlined in our pilot contract,” Delta says. “As we continue to deliver industry leading operational reliability and recover our network, we are also balancing ways to improve schedules for our pilots. All of our people, including our pilots, are working hard to restore our airline and deliver for our customers as we emerge from the pandemic. We are grateful for and proud of their efforts.” Pilots at the Atlanta-based mainline since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic have flown “record amounts of overtime”, ALPA says, asking for management to address scheduling concerns. “Delta is trying to operate more flights with fewer pilots, leaving no wiggle room for weather delays and operational strains,” the union says. “We are spending more time away from home than ever to ensure that we can operate a reliable schedule for Delta customers.” The recovery of domestic US travel has coincided with staff shortages and record-high passenger violence directed at flight crews, driving labour unions to call for better conditions and benefits, including more flexible flight schedules. Pilots are in high demand as airlines compete to recruit new flight crews amid a domestic US travel recovery, potentially increasing the bargaining power of unions. Addressing the push to hire and recall pilots during an earnings call on 13 January, Delta chief executive Ed Bastian said “we are not having any problem at all at Delta hiring and getting great pools of candidates”. “That’s viewed as the premium airline that employees, in general, but particularly pilots, want to come work for, which we’re thrilled at,” Bastian said of Delta. Scheduling practices have also caused dissent at American Airlines among members of its Allied Pilots Association union. That union’s spokesman Dennis Tajer said in November 2021 that a “convergence of dysfunctional scheduling practices” complicated American’s efforts to minimise cancellations during 2021. A lack of scheduling flexibility for American’s pilots, Tajer said, deterred them from offering to fly more shifts when they had free time or were offered extra pay.