Icelandair: Moving in the Right Direction?

Hello and welcome to the airline Weekly Large. I'm your host Gordon Smith and I'm joined

as usual by J. Sheavitt. In part one, we're talking all things Icelander and in part two,

we crunch the latest capacity numbers and reveal the big airport winners and losers.

Hi J, how's it going? All right, it's still cold, still cold here in the northeast,

but getting a little bit better today, it's Tuesday morning. Tell you where's usually warm,

Las Vegas. Not always though, I did go there in November, many, many years ago and it was snowing

on our Grand Canyon tour. I didn't get to see a thing. So I kind of feel like, yeah, I was like,

have you been to the Grand Canyon? I have, but I haven't really. I saw the IMX center, I saw the inside

of the visitor sort of gift shop and that was pretty much it. I looked out into the great abyss

and it was just a fog of snowy whiteness. So maybe Jay, who knows, one day we'll get around to

to Las Vegas and Las Vegas, not as a spoiler for part two, but I dare say we might have a little

something involving that Nevada city in part two of our show, but part one, we're talking about

Icelander, that's right. Some long time airline weekly readers, very long time. And maybe remember

years ago, Easter call, Icelander, the cold weather Copa. And we did that because Panama City

is, if you think about it, just an ideal hub between North America and South America based on

the geography of Panama. Well, Iceland is kind of equally ideal and ideally located hub

for connections between North American and Europe. So they're kind of, you know, position

right in between two giant markets. Same way of Panama, same way of risk rate, if it's kind of the

same. However, I'm going to stop using that analogy because in one sense, it's very misleading.

Copa, as many of you know, is one of the world's most profitable airlines and has been for many

decades now, whereas Icelander very much isn't. And that is a good segue into discussing the numbers

that they reported this week. Icelander lost money, said a negative 17 million dollar

operating loss, which translated to a negative 1% operating margin. So it was only negative 1%,

but it's still a red number is never a good thing. What is going on here? Well, we can talk, you know,

in very broad and general terms that Icelander does face a very difficult competitive environment.

It is challenging, running an airline, even with a good hub, a well-located hub. When you're

competing against, you know, think about all of the carriers that fly between North America and

Europe. I mean, you've got your, you know, US big three, you've got the Canadian carriers,

you've got all your, you know, European carriers that fly transatlannically. So it is, you know,

in the day they've traditionally had a lower cost base than most of these rivals that I mentioned.

But Icelander is not exactly a very low cost place to do business. So they're able to get by and

you know, that you can go back, you know, historically, they've had years when they've done

decently well. But something's not working right now. It's just it's not they're not

able to to make the model work. And again, you know, this is not, then it's not that they're

in danger of going out of business or they're not, they're not posting spirit like, you know, negative

margins or anything. But the point is is that yeah, they're losing money. They're losing money.

I was going to say never, never nice to see a bit of red ink spill, especially looking at those

annual numbers, Jay. Let's drill into it in a little bit of detail. We look at currency

issues here, cost issues. What are the factors of play? Yeah. So let's go into some of the more

specific factors that they're talking about right now going, you know, as we're starting, 2026 here,

going into the getting close to the spring, you know, won't be too long down until the spring

season when things start to pick up. And of course, summer is when, you know, this,

they're the translating market really peaks, although it's been peaking a little bit further

deeper into the fall now as well. But so we're getting into that that spring period. They a couple

problems on the revenue side and we'll talk about the cost side. So they did say that the weaker

US dollar is definitely impacting demand from the US to both Iceland and to Europe via Iceland.

So they're definitely losing some of that business because of the currency. They were very clear

about that. They also talked about softer demand from Europe to the US, even though you might

say, well, if the currencies, you know, weaken the US, won't more Europeans go, but we kind of know

what's happening with US tourism right now. Fewer people are traveling for, you know, reputation of

reasons, whatever you want to, you know, however you want to describe that. But they did definitely

mention that on the other hand, there was some good news on the revenue side or demand slash

revenue side. The revenues are actually holding up better than the traffic numbers might suggest.

And that's because, surprise, surprise, premium is doing really well.

So yeah, you know, if I had a nickel for every time I said that, the Staga classes is their premium

product and that still continues to sell very well. So they actually over the last year,

they grew their revenues 11%. So the double digit, you know, this is not a question of, you know,

shrinking because their demand is going away. I mean, they're still able to grow the revenues,

but again, they're getting it on the premium side. And then let's also keep in mind,

something like 13, 14% of their total revenues come from cargo and aircraft leasing.

And they said those, those businesses are doing pretty well as also. So now switching over to the

cost, they definitely have cost problems. They were very, you know, open about that. They said,

you know, labor costs are just increasing, I believe they used to were, you know, unsustainably.

And they have a new round of labor negotiations coming up. So that always gets a little bit

precarious. They talked about emissions costs, you know, carbon credit, having to purchase carbon

credits, having to use sustainable aviation fuel, some of those environmental related costs,

have been going up a lot. And then of course, they did mention the exchange rate,

but usually when you have a weaker US dollar, that's, that's often a good thing for cost,

because if your currency is stronger, then you're purchasing those dollar-based, you know,

dollar-based costs like aircraft and fuel usually, you know, we'd get cheaper. And that's true,

but Iceland has a lot of their cost in the local currency because of just the labor that's

based there. So they did say that the dollar depreciation is actually a headwind on costs,

not a tailwind. And then keep in mind also that because they fly to, I mean, the US is just

their biggest market. So they're collecting a lot of their dollars and revenues. So it's never good

when you're collecting money that depreciates, right? So they're not happy about the weaker

dollar. So, and then, you know, as we said before, it's fear Americans are visiting because of it,

because it's just more expensive to visit. So yeah, that's a little bit about some of their revenue

problems and their cost problems going into 2026 or going into the peak season, 2026.

Thanks, that Jay. Interesting to mention Sagapremium as the high-end product. It definitely

isn't business class in the traditional sense. You're not looking at lifeboards, you're not looking

at all the bells and whistles that you would expect on a flag carrier crossing the Atlantic. This

is much closer to a premium economy product. And I still think, yeah, anecdotally, I've had

people might know who have traveled expecting the bells and whistles. And they said, you know,

it was very comfortable and it was much better than economy, but maybe a little bit of a knowledge

gap between what the expectation is versus the reality there in Sagapremium. But interesting

to hear that it's still popular, although you wonder how many of those are first times expecting

it to be a really, really nice product. And they're finding themselves in a sort of dentist chair.

Anyway, maybe they'll call it dental class, the mayor lying will come up with that.

Guarantee to make you smile. Sure that'll see. Hey, that's a great tagline there.

I'm in the wrong business. But yeah. But yeah, on the handful of occasions, I've flown

Iceland there just to Iceland. I haven't done the full transatlantic thing. The crew have been

absolutely outstanding from the most junior staffer right up until the senior person,

everyone in between. You do genuinely get the impression that, you know, this is an airline

that people are very happy to work for. And, you know, the cynic might argue, Iceland has got

the population of just around 400,000. And obviously, this is not an airline that is just serving

the local population as we've already suggested. You've got the inbound tourism and you've got the

transit traffic through as well. But I can't imagine if you do want to live in Iceland and you want

to be cabin crew or pilot or anyone else for that matter, you're going to be working for anyone.

But Iceland, especially with play and previously, wow, out of the picture, Jay, just to that point,

was there any sort of indication around the competitive landscape and how that's changed

specifically around other Icelandic carriers, namely play? They obviously left the market at the

end of last year. Any sort of indication that there's been a post of uptick for Iceland?

Yeah, well, you have to, when I mentioned that the revenues grew 11% last year. That's a full year

number. But for sure, play the demise of play at the end of last year. I was, I think, was September

or October. Those last couple months, definitely, that was certainly helpful, just as a disappearance

of wow was in 2019 and we're at whenever that was. And in fact, if you look at just the Q4 numbers,

I don't think I mentioned them before. But Iceland there actually did improve year-to-year in

the fourth quarter. So the numbers, they're still red numbers. I mean, this is the winter quarter

after all, negative 8% and then last year was negative 9%. So probably, play disappearing had

something to do with the year-to-year improvement. That, and as I mentioned before, the transatlantic

peak season does seem to be kind of pushing into that fall season, into that Q4. So that is

probably helped them as well. But then if you look around, you know, competitively, it's basically,

it's a European and North American market. I mean, it's, you're not really going to get any

carriers from other regions flying to Iceland. So on the US side, you do have United and Delta,

they're in the market and they serve a couple of different cities. It's Iceland. I want to say

off the top of my head that Delta flies from New York and Minneapolis and maybe Atlanta.

Can't remember. United does a few different cities as well. America is not in the market. I think

they once flew to Iceland, but they're not in the market now. When some of it is, it's a market

that you can't really, you can't fly triple seven there. It's too big. So if you look at

United and Delta, they'll fly like seven five sevens, maybe a few six sevens, mixed and that's

one limiting factor. You don't really even see, I don't think too many seven eight sevens in

that market. I might not be any as far as, you know, unless Alaska, Alaska is now flying to

Iceland. I presume they're using the 77, although it might be a 330. I don't know off top of my head.

We can, we can cheat. We can, we can, we can look here and see who is, what is Alaska flying

to Iceland? Yeah, I'm not sure that route started. Yeah. I think I still to, still to come,

this coming, this coming season. Oh, I pot. Hey, I got thrown a curveball there. It's actually

the max eight. They can do that all the way from looks like they can do all the, it seems like a

longer distance and it is Seattle, Tarekavik, but just because they're, they're Seattle so far north

and it's because, because of the way the, yeah, the, the circumference of the earth, you could

actually do a max eight. So there you go. Whether you'd want to is another question, but

yeah, in dental class, we won't talk about consumer preferences now. We'll just, we'll settle on,

yeah, just being fascinated here that they can do an air body, which is, which is kind of cool.

And then, yeah, of course, Iceland air itself is really, it's all 757s for many years. A few 767s

mixed in the 766 wide body, of course. And now they're transitioning to to maxes and to A321s.

They're going to get the LRs pretty soon. I think by this summer, and then they, they have XLRs

on order as well, but they're not coming until 2029. So that's a ways off. Those will for sure

enable some more US routes. They already go pretty deep into the US with, with narrow bodies.

I mean, we talked about, I think a few episodes ago, Gordon remember, we talked about Nashville.

I do. Yeah, they go to the South West Partnership.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. So they have, they have that. And yeah, they, so they kind of

hit a lot of Pittsburgh, you know, some of these secondary markets. So it's a good way, you know,

sure, if you live in New York City or Boston or, you know, some big city with a ton of European

service, yeah, you can use Iceland, but it's going to be, you know, you have a lot, a lot of options.

But for a place like Pittsburgh or Nashville, it really is a, you know, it's a great,

Iceland there is a great option because there's just not, you're going to have to connect somewhere

probably. They're very few other alternatives. So you can, you can presume that they get,

you know, pretty good yields on on a route like that. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, assuming the

demand is there, that's the, the other side of the coin there is that, you know, is there enough

demand to fill the plane. And, you know, it's a little bit of how they think about these US routes.

But yeah, sure, expect, expect more as some of these longer range planes arrive.

Absolutely. I always think it's, you have to have a secondary city on at least one site

for this to make sense as a, you know, not to go down the consumer pathway again. But if you're

living in London and you want to get to New York, it makes absolutely no sense to mess around in

Reykjavik, never mind everything around loyalty and alliance and options and everything else there.

But if you're in, let's say Glasgow, Scotland, and you don't have a nonstop link or at least a

year on nonstop link to New York, let alone Nashville, Pittsburgh, that's where there's really

those coming to play because you're going to be changing somewhere. And I would personally,

far rather, again, using that Glasgow, Scotland example, get my journey off in the right direction.

I don't want to be backtracking hundreds of miles south to Heathrow, or even to Skippall,

or Charles de Gaulle, and then find four hours later I'm flying right over Scotland again

to get to North America. If I can start my journey, head over the Atlantic, I feel like I'm making

some good headway. And then like we said, you're going to be changing somewhere, Reykjavik's not a

bad place to do it. We haven't discussed North Atlantic. That's the other sort of, you know,

they're not as big as they used to be, they're doing a lot of charter stuff. They've obviously got

the Indigo wet lease as well, doing chargers, I think, P&O cruises in the UK, doing stuff from,

you know, the likes of Manchester over to the Caribbean to pick up cruise traffic there. But North

still with a sort of fledgling Atlantic offering there for the very, very price-conscious consumer.

I saw some one-way fares online, Jay, going from Orlando, Florida across to the UK. And it wasn't

even sort of the depths of January or something. It was sort of, you know, Easter holiday sort of

time. And it was from 109 US one way. And we've discussed this before. What sounds like a great

fair, the Joe public as the consumer usually rings alarm bells for us. Yeah, the alarm bells were

going off there in my head. Yeah, when you see prices that low, you wonder if, you know, you're just,

they're desperate to sell fill seats, but yeah, but it would find out. Yeah. In the North

Atlantic example, you, as you mentioned, they're kind of moving over to that charter model now more

because they realize the the schedule service is just, you know, very difficult. The old Norwegian

found that out the hard way. Oh, yeah. Flying those transatlantic reads from London and Oslo.

And you're going to make, I'm following into the North Norwegian traffic game. I'm going to

mention Argentina. I'm not going to do it. Otherwise, otherwise, we're going to be, otherwise,

we're going to be here for another 10 minutes discussing the browsing cons of starting a low-cost

carrier in Argentina. That is fun. I didn't think that was a good idea. It was maybe just a little

ahead of its time starting in our low-cost carrier in Argentina. I am not falling down for this

trap, Jay. No, no, no, this will be an hour-long forecast, otherwise. Going to the

allowably lounge archives, if you want to hear Jay and I's perspectives on the pros and cons

of Norwegian serving the Argentine market back in 2018-19, I think that was. Anyway, anything else

you want to mention on Icelandell with a little bit more detail in this week's issue?

Yeah, I want to say you made a great point about the market like Glasgow's perfect for what

Icelandell can do for you as far as giving you a convenient, attractively priced connection.

I just, you said something off in my head. I was thinking about how when you are flying

from a secondary city to another secondary city, I'm another continent. That gets

very interesting, too. Let's say you need to fly from Glasgow to maybe even some place

smaller than Pittsburgh. Huntsville, Alabama, just for example, Glasgow and Huntsville. People

have to do that. Huntsville is a big space economy. They have rocket companies and stuff.

You'd be surprised what people have to do. That's where the alliances, the joint ventures come in.

They do what they do really well. If you're Air France, KLM, and Delta, or through a virgin Atlantic

in the mix there, or Lufthansa, American British Airways, they just have so many different

options. You can literally get anywhere because of just by double connecting and through the

sometimes single connecting. But the point is they have just multiple hubs throughout

those confidence and get you anywhere at regional networks. I didn't want to take this conversation

back to Copa, but if you think about what they do really, really, really well is take people

from places like Guatemala doesn't have so much service to Salvador, Brazil, or Rio de Janeiro,

Brazil. That's what they do really, really well. Connect people in places or between points that

otherwise don't have so much service. Well, I went off on a tangent there. Sorry. We never go off on

tangent. That's not like you, Jay. That's not like me. All right, let me return to. What are

our lines we're talking about again? Oh, yeah, Iceland there. That's the one. You said it,

not me, but dental class. They're going to be burning effigies of me in the streets of

Reykjavík tonight. Yeah. Well, they're going to get the last laugh here because they said that

saga class is actually performing very well. We joke, I'm sure it is a very good product. I think

you said some of your colleagues have flown it and found it to be good. I know I have people

that I know have flown saga class and found it to be a very good value as well. All right.

C and C add, I made up for your insult there. We'll see what kind of hate mail we get from

Iceland. No, I do want to, and let's take it back to be serious for a moment. I just want to give

you what's looking ahead to 2026, what's going on for Iceland there. They still remain confident

that this 2026, they're going to be able to finally break that profit streak, make some money

this year. They are undertaking a lot of restructuring efforts, you know, cutting costs in this

way and that way. They do have a couple of new routes coming, nothing new announced for the US

yet for this summer, but they do have three European markets, Faro. You may have heard of that

in a country called Portugal. You also may have heard of. They're also going to fly to Venice,

and they're going to do a good dance in Poland. So kind of staying, you know, with it within Europe.

And overall, they only plan to increase capacity to percent this year. It's going to be a little

bit more on the conservative side, maybe play more for yields. And they did say that January,

the numbers are in, and quote unquote, the January numbers showing, quote unquote, very promising

start to the year. The man remains strong on the two and from markets. That's means, you know,

directly to Iceland and from Iceland. And then they're also seeing some good load factors and yields

overall. So that presumably means they're connecting stuff as well. I think that's all I've,

oh no, one more thing that I will say about Icelander is that they are aggressively pursuing

partnerships. You already brought one important one up in Southwest Turkish Airlines is another one

that comes to mind where they're trying to get more people to come to Iceland from, let's say,

the Middle East, Turkey, Africa, and Turkish Airlines is able to help in that regard.

It's all I got an ace on there. And thank you, Jay, before I have any

angry guys, we jeans taking to the postbag as well. We should say that United Airlines announced

the restart of their service from Glasgow to New York, Newark. And there was a press release

going through my inbox just a little in the week. They are actually increasing it.

22% they say, in available seats, summer, 2026, that's going to be flying from Glasgow to Newark.

So there we go. It will be the only nonstop service between Glasgow and the US.

Great. Still plenty money on the table and options for Icelander there. I don't think they're

going to be too worried by that. That sign that that market probably is doing pretty well.

Yeah, I always feel sorry because they got Edinburgh just down the road and that's stealing everything.

You know, you got American taking even the XLR across there. But that is for another day, Jay,

another discussion. But notably the United Route to Glasgow, that's going to be on a max 8 as well.

So just showing that these narrow bodies with more efficient engines are really proving their worth.

Right. So much more we could discuss more detail on Icelander in the next issue of airline weekly.

Before we go into the break, a quick reminder to send any questions or comments. Please

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or leave us a positive review. So you can continue to spread the word about the airline weekly

lounge. Don't go anywhere. We're going to be talking airport capacity trends in part two.

Hello, and welcome back to the airline weekly lounge. I'm Gordon Smith, joined as usual by

coach Jay Shabbat. Part one, we were discussing Icelander plus almost about 15 other topics. It was

incredible how you can just start with just one airline and just sort of expands into literally

dozens of others, Jay. Part two, we are going to take a look at some of the latest capacity trend

data for global airports. And before we get into the nitty gritty of the conversation, Jay,

just for our audience, set the parameters of how we have, first of all, the methodology to the

data source, but also just how we've come to this set of numbers. Sure. So this is all the numbers

that we're going to present here are using Serium, DOMe, the data company. And what I did was I ran

for the second quarter, the all the airports in the world with commercial air service. And I kind

of chopped off everything with the top 50. So the 50 largest, I think about, you know, at lane

on number one, Dubai and you know, Chicago, whatever, all the other top ones. So the top 50.

And then I looked year to year again, the second quarter, I don't know, excuse me, a second quarter

and rank them, which ones are growing the fastest, which ones are shrinking. So we have that list

compiled and we can go through them a little bit. Sounds good. Yeah. Yeah, we can start with the,

again, of those top 50, what was what's going to be the fastest growing market in fast growing

airport in the second quarter? And the answer is we still don't have the budget for a drum row, Jay,

you're going to have to make it yourself. You could do with your pen or something, your pen and

pencil there. I would need at least two pens to do that. We don't have another budget for one.

Yeah, just the one we, we, Jay, little known fact, Jay and I actually share a pen. We, we send

across the Atlantic each week. I virtually, yeah, it's my week for the pen. All right, Jay,

for the time of our misery. Okay. Yeah. So I will, I will do the honors here. It is Chicago,

oh, hair. And I think that some of our listeners, particularly those in the US, are not going to be

surprised by this. We all know about the war that's underway now between American and United

at a hair. Both are the hub carriers there. And American is really trying to build that,

that hub back up to where it was, you know, pre pre COVID. So they've added a lot of new service.

And then United in turn has retaliated with a lot of new service of their own. And they've also

American acquired some gates from spirit and more recently United. It's going to require some more

gates, some gates from spirit. But if you look at, you know, United and American, the year of a year,

their seat counts for, for Q2, both up 21%. So a ton, a ton of growth there. You have to believe

that's going to put a lot of pressure on their Chicago margins, you know, United will argue that,

yeah, we might get a little bit, but we are the, you know, we're the dominant player here. And we're

not seeing too much share shift. And we're, we're doing fine. American, you know, also kind of says,

oh, well, this is, this is an investment. It's, it's, we're going to, we're going to make money here,

eventually. Well, I don't want to put words in their mouth. I didn't quite say that. I don't think

they admit that they're, they didn't specifically say they're losing money now or anything one way or

another. But you have to believe, you know, it is, it is kind of kind of messy for them. Chicago

hair at this point. And then, you know, you don't know how long can they continue like this? Well,

American just, you know, keep stick to their guns. Or at some point, well, they eventually,

you know, say, look, we, we can't sustain these kind of what I'm presuming to be losses

and pull out. Then, you know, the other option is that they, they really do just, you know,

make a lot of improvements and attract more passengers and steal some share from United. But

based on what we know about consumer sentiment, you know, United versus American now,

I think that's going to be tough to do. I mean, United is, is just seems to be very entrenched

there and doing very well there and very well like there. So that's, yes, Chicago battle. Don't

forget about Southwest either. They are, you know, they have one of their biggest operations

down the road south of the city in Midway Airport. So yes, to a certain extent, it's serving

a little bit of a different market. But Chicago, you know, Chicago, Chicago, Chicago, Chicago,

Chicago, they are certainly feeling that as well.

Kotten the, Kotten the Crusoe has. Yeah, there's your title for next week. And yeah, just

once we've been on AJ, received an education from American, speaking just about to your point

to Chicago expansion. American is investing in a new app rules club. Oh, yeah. So that's,

that's never cheap doing anything outside is never cheap. So clearly another indication that

spending more than 10,000 square feet, the new lounge will eventually replace the existing

large and concourse hell. That absolutely tells you that they are, you know, not even remotely

thinking about pulling out after they're willing to invest that kind of money they're in for the

long run. But yeah, we'll see if they can, you know, make that work. Now one interesting,

you know, one interesting twist to this story, something that's been, you know, becoming more of

a topic recently is that with these credit cards, you know, these co-branded loyalty credit cards

becoming so valuable to the airline, you know, you have to, you can't ignore the fact that, you know,

the more relevant you are in Chicago, the more options you have in Chicago, the more service you

have, the more credit cards, sometimes you're going to get and that's going to make you money. So,

you know, you wouldn't invest in a hub just for that reason, but I think we're getting to the

point where the numbers are so big that you can't leave that out of the conversation anymore.

Completely. And then I believe they talked about that in their last earnings call. I believe

they said that their advantage card signups in Chicago have been trending very well.

Got it. All right. So much more we could discuss in Chicago. And I dare say we will be revisiting

that in a future podcast, Jay, but back to the Apple capacity numbers. Who else with a notable

entries there on your chart? Yeah, I'll mention without just for sake of time, we won't go into all

the details of why these airports are up so much. But Bogota and Columbia, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia,

Kunming in China, Newark back in the US, Jakarta, Chengdu in the New Airport in China,

and Hong Kong. All those airports are named are in the top 50 in terms of capacity. And they're

all growing by double digits in the second quarter. And again, we could spend for hours talking about

why. Bogota, I think some of that is some new low cost carriers. Jet Smart is in the market now.

Kuala Lumpur areas you build up, you know, you can go through, but we'll, you know, I know, I know

you want to talk to me for another two hours, Gordon here, but I think some of our listeners have

better things to do. So let's, why don't we go down to, why don't we go down to the losers?

Yeah, I was going to say tiny, tiny little side note. I always remember the ayatocode for

Chengdu. So I had some amazing Chinese food. And actually some of the best dishes weren't dark or

chicken or pork or beef. They were tofu based. And the airport code is TFU. And that always

said that that just triggers a little tofu Chengdu, little thing in my head. So you never

have me forgetting the, the airport code for Chengdu. Well, I'll, I'll, I bet you never forget

the code for Nashville after I tell you that it sounds like a banana BNA.

All right, all right, all right, all the losers.

All right, we can do this all day if you want as well. I mean, it's just, yeah,

they'll be very, very slow week in the airline business when we just go through our

quirky ayatocodes. But yeah, by the way, I spent a, I had a wonderful, I spent a week in Chengdu

once teaching an ayatocross for Sichuan Airlines. It was a really, really cool city. And have you

actually been there? Did you, you said you went to, uh, being to, being to the region, but I guess,

you know, China being as big as it is. The region is, is fairly subjective, but it's had some

great food, including some great Thai to, yeah, some great tofu-based dishes.

Definitely. Yeah, yeah, cool, cool city too. Okay, so the bottom of the list, uh-oh,

the very, um, I call them losers, but that's kind of like a mean connotation. I don't want,

we already, we already, uh, angered Iceland there. So I'm not going to, uh, call Las Vegas a

loser, but that is the last one on the, that's the worst one on the list. There are Las Vegas is

actually down 7% their seats. And again, not really too huge of a surprise there. The biggest

factor is spirit, just really, you know, just pulling a tremendous amount of capacity out of their

year, year, year. There are some other reasons to a legion, which is based there is not growing

there. And if you've been, you know, reading, I know we talked about, or wrote about a legion,

and was it a March recent issue or maybe two issues ago? I can't remember, but

a legion talks about Las Vegas as a, as a market that's kind of lost some of its lostter.

You know, it used to be a superstar year round market. And now it's, uh, you know, it has its peaks,

but I think for reasons of affordability and for another reason I'm going to mention the second,

I think it's like I said, lost some of its strength. There's another important reason also why

lost Vegas airport has lost quite a bit of capacity. And that's all the Canadian carriers have been

just really downsizing a lot. And we know we kind of talked about how fewer Europeans are visiting

the United States. Well, that's very, very true to an extreme when we're talking about Canadian

visitors, Canada, you know, visit to the US way, way down. And if I quickly pull some numbers

from Sirium DOMe here, we can see WestJet as an example, their seat counts are down 28% in Q2.

And then we have Porter down 38% and Air Canada a little bit less, only 2%. I remember

Air Canada is doing a little bit, you know, dealing a little bit more in business traffic,

which is less affected than leisure traffic. And, you know, Vegas is not known as a business

market, but there are, you know, business conventions, things like that. So they're a little bit less

on the on the Air Canada side, but yeah, huge drops there. So for all the Southwest, by the way,

we're huge, you know, huge in Las Vegas, they're also down a bit. So for all of those reasons,

Las Vegas is at the bottom of the list here. Interestingly enough, for our frontier is actually

up 23%. So you can see there, you know, trying to find spots where others maybe, you know, as others

go away, maybe we can fill in some vacuum, vacuum capture, some stuff that's getting left behind.

By the way, speaking of frontier, we are talking today on Tuesday. Frontiers actually doing their

fourth quarter earnings tomorrow. By the time everybody's listening to this, you'll have heard that

could be very interesting. Wonder if they say anything about the Las Vegas market. So that is

Vegas. Any questions about Vegas or were we, did we sufficiently explain what's going on there?

Suficient as we would say in Portugal. Okay. Oh, yeah, you had your, I forgot to ask you about your

Portuguese language skills. I know you were tested this weekend. Ask me in seven weeks when I get

the results. What? Yes, we'll talk more offline about that. Okay. Other big airports that will

be negative in Q2, Shenzhen, big city in China, southern China, basically on Hong Kong's doorstep.

Tokyo Haneda Airport. We talked a lot about Japan last week if you remember that. Charlotte in the US,

Shanghai Pudong Airport. That's the big international facility. Jetta, which is an interesting one. I

haven't looked specifically what's going on there, but we're going to be seeing a lot of big growth

in Saudi Arabia for sure and upcoming quarters. And then JFK, New York JFK here in the US is down

as well. So those are your, your negatives. You always have to, you know, be a little bit mindful of

seasonality when you're doing quarters with the first and second quarter switch. You do sometimes

have that Easter shift kind of affect things a little bit. I want to say Easter is a little bit

earlier this year than it was last year, but it still falls in April, which is Q2. I think you're

going to get a little bit of bleed over the sort of the outbound Easter. You'll get a little bleed

into Q1, but that's not really meant shouldn't, you know, meaningful, meaningfully affect an entire

quarter's worth of sea capacity numbers as we're talking about now. Thanks for crunching those numbers

for us, Jay. Much appreciated. Before we go, just a quick reminder that we've got some upcoming

skipped events for your diary, go to live.skift.com for all the details. But some highlights for you,

we've got the skipped India intelligence summit, which is March 26th in New Delhi, India with

the skipped Asia Forum Bangkok Thailand, which is April 28th. And we've got the skipped data

and AI summit. I returned to New York City on June 3rd, many, many more, including our global forum

and much, much more later in the year, but they're the ones for your immediate attention,

live.skift.com for all the details there. And that's also importantly where you can go.

If you want to read more about the skipped idea awards, entries are open now for 2026 live.skift.com.

Jay, thank you for that. Bit of a mixed session, looking at airports in Iceland and everything

in between. That's all we've got time for this week. Thanks to Jay for joining me and thanks

always to our producers, John Monica and Will, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for listening

and we'll catch you next time. Bye for now.

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