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Rail quietly wins the freight recession
While trucking argues about tariffs and shipping worries about Panama, America's railroads are having the best year almost nobody is talking about. Association of American Railroads data for the week ending 15 August put total US traffic at 525,099 carloads and intermodal units, up 2.4 per cent year on year. Through 32 weeks, carloads are up 2.7 per cent and intermodal is up 3.8 per cent, with the combined total 3.3 per cent ahead of 2025. Eight of ten carload categories gain
5 hours ago2 min read
Trucking gets caught in the crossfire as Ottawa and Washington stop talking
Cross-border carriers spent last week believing a deal was close. By Monday they were watching their share prices fall. Talks between the US and Canada collapsed late on Friday, and among the sticking points, according to reporting from Bloomberg, Reuters and Politico, were tariffs on medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. Negotiators had been working toward cutting the standard auto tariff to 15 per cent from 25; Canada wanted that relief extended to Class 3 through 8 trucks and d
5 hours ago2 min read
Kirby wants JFK back, and he's shopping for slots to get it
Ten years after American Airlines pushed him out and United hired him the same day, Scott Kirby is still competing against his old employer in the market that matters most. This time he intends to win New York. In an interview with CNBC published over the weekend, the United chief executive said the carrier expects to return to JFK through its Blue Sky partnership with JetBlue as early as next year, and that he wants a meaningfully larger footprint than a codeshare would deli
5 hours ago2 min read
Panama pulls the drawbridge, and US East Coast cargo starts heading west
In May, the Panama Canal Authority told Reuters it had no plans to limit transits this year. As recently as 5 August it repeated that draft adjustments would leave daily crossings untouched. On Thursday it reversed course, capping transits at 34 a day from early September and 32 from the 15th, down from the roughly 35 to 36 the canal has been averaging since June and a normal capacity nearer 40. The trigger is rain that never came. Cumulative rainfall across the canal watersh
5 hours ago2 min read
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Five Years On Top: What Delta's Punctuality Record Says About the Industry
Earlier this year, Delta Air Lines was named the most punctual airline in North America for the fifth consecutive year. This was according to Cirium’s On-Time Performance Review, with 80.9 per cent of its 1.8 million flights in 2025 arriving within 15 minutes of schedule. The number needs context. It represented a 1.7 percentage point lead over the nearest competitor, achieved with more than four times the flight volume, and made Delta the only US carrier in Cirium's global t
Aug 102 min read
Why Your Flight Is Late
Your evening departure is sitting at the gate. The sky is clear. Here is what is actually going on and why almost none of it is a decision your airline made today. Start with the good news, because it rarely gets said. Most flights still arrive on time, and airlines got noticeably better at handling baggage and assisting passengers with wheelchairs last year. The yardstick everyone quotes is a strict one: a flight is late if it reaches the gate more than fifteen minutes behin
Aug 63 min read
What's Actually Behind America's Flight Delays
The controller pipeline ran dry. Jet fuel doubled in five weeks. And the regulator began capping traffic at major airports because the airspace could no longer safely absorb it. Between them, those three explain this summer far better than any story about a single carrier's failings. The shortage of controllers As of June 2026, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was running roughly 3,000 certified air traffic controllers short of its own staffing target, around 10,800
Jul 313 min read
FAA Set to Hand Air Traffic AI Contract to Boston Startup, Snubbing Palantir and Thales
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is poised to award Boston-based Air Space Intelligence (ASI) a closely watched contract for its AI-powered air traffic management tool, according to multiple people familiar with the deal. It would be a remarkable coup. ASI, which counted just over 150 employees as of April, is set to beat out software heavyweights Palantir and Thales, which are the only other vendors bidding for the work. The win would catapult the young company to
Jun 193 min read
‘We owe it to the victims’ families and the American flying public’ | Interview with Rep. Sharice Davids on aviation safety reform after Flight 5342
Sharice Davids is the Democratic representative for Kansas’s 3rd District, covering much of the Kansas City metropolitan area. She sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and has played a leading role in Congress's response to the midair collision of American Eagle Flight 5342 with a US Army Black Hawk helicopter on 29 January 2025, in which 67 people were killed. Davids helped lead the bipartisan ALERT Act, which passed the House last month by 396 votes
May 64 min read
'MH370 disappearance shows how ruthless democracy's enemies are' | Interview with aviation journalist Jeff Wise
Jeff Wise is a journalist specializing in aviation, technology, and psychology who has written for Businessweek, Psychology Today, and...
Aug 16, 20244 min read
A High Flying Career: Flight Attendant Kara Mulder on the Evolving Landscape of Aviation
Kara Mulder, an accomplished flight attendant and the creative force behind the popular Flight Attendant Life blog, has leveraged her...
Aug 17, 20234 min read
With Summer Travel Almost Here, the FAA Remains Leaderless
In another twist in the saga of complications and chaos that has been plaguing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), it has recently...
Apr 12, 20233 min read
Newark Airport Dispute Exposes Political Risk to US Aviation
One of America’s busiest international airports found itself at the centre of political confrontation. The Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin threatened on 28 May that the Trump administration could soon stop processing international travellers and cargo at Newark airport as local law enforcement in the Blue State of New Jersey refused to assist federal immigration officials. With fans gearing up for the FIFA World Cup this summer, questions over international
Jun 83 min read
The Right Policy at the Wrong Moment: Why Family Seating Fees Should Wait
When a parent books a flight for themselves and a young child, most assume the family will sit together. For many travellers, that assumption does not survive contact with the booking page. Across several major carriers, seating a parent next to their child can mean an extra charge, a gamble on whatever is left at check-in, or an awkward negotiation with strangers at the gate. A long-running effort in Washington has sought to put an end to that. The question now is not whethe
Jun 44 min read
Duffy’s Xbox Controllers
How the FAA's gaming pitch drew a record 12,350 applications in a single hiring window The United States Federal Aviation Administration has spent the better part of a decade wrestling with a chronic shortage of air traffic controllers. This month, it tried something unorthodox: it asked video gamers to step up. The response was overwhelming. On 17 April 2026, the FAA opened its annual hiring window for trainee air traffic controllers with a recruitment campaign built around
Apr 223 min read
United Airlines and Its Flight Attendants Have a Tentative Agreement. We Have Been Here Before.
On 26 March 2026, United Airlines and the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA) announced a tentative agreement covering approximately 30,000 cabin crew members. On paper, it is a landmark deal. The airline says it will make its flight attendants the best-paid in the American airline industry, with top hourly wages reaching $100 by the end of the contract's five-year term and immediate pay increases kicking in the moment ratification is confirmed. The total package is su
Apr 33 min read
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