Flightline 58 - January 5, 2026

TSA screeners cleared 77,333,090 passengers in December, a slight .07 percent drop from December 2024. For all of 2025, TSA saw 905,660,718 passengers, which was up .2 percent from 2024 (which had an extra day as well).

Greek air traffic was disrupted on January 4, 2026 when a nationwide collapse of radio frequencies knocked out key communication channels between pilots and controllers, forcing authorities to ground flights across the country and suspend arrivals and departures while only limited overflights were allowed. The problem began mid-morning and stranded thousands of travelers during a busy holiday travel weekend, with officials saying the cause of the interference was still unclear and highlighting weaknesses in Greece’s aging air traffic control infrastructure. Operations gradually resumed by the afternoon after aircraft were shifted to backup communication frequencies, with departures climbing back to around 45 flights per hour by late Sunday. Authorities emphasized that safety was maintained throughout the disruption, which is now under investigation as calls grow for modernization of critical air navigation and communications systems.

A slew results and statistics from 2025 are now being reported by various outlets, and we will go over them in our next few issues. OAG reports that global airline capacity peaked on Friday, August 1, when scheduled seats climbed to 19,833,642, marking the busiest air travel day of the year and exceeding the highest point seen in 2024 by more than 555,000 seats. At the other end of the spectrum, the slowest day in 2025 occurred on Tuesday, January 28, with 15,200,778 seats scheduled worldwide.

In 2025, the aviation industry saw a surge in high-density domestic corridors, with nine of the top ten busiest routes located in the Asia-Pacific region. To maintain this level of frequency, many of these routes utilize high-capacity widebody aircraft to move thousands of passengers hourly. The following routes averaged over 100 flights per day throughout 2025:

United Airlines has secured approval from Brazil’s antitrust authority, CADE, to invest about $100 million in Azul (AD), increasing its ownership from roughly 2 percent to around 8 percent as part of Azul’s ongoing Chapter 11 restructuring process. The expanded stake deepens the long-standing strategic partnership between the two carriers, which already includes codeshare and commercial cooperation agreements. The capital injection is intended to bolster Azul’s liquidity and support debt reduction while flight operations continue.

Here is an interesting little tidbit: the Boeing 757-223 that ferried captured Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro to New York on Saturday was N874TW. This aircraft, now operated by the Department of Justice (DOJ), was delivered new to American Airlines (AA) as N616AA in September 1989. It was withdrawn from use (wfu) in July 2012 and joined the DOJ within a few years.

Alaska Airlines (AS) is grappling with acute staffing pressure after more than 540 flight attendants called in sick on a single day, marking a new internal record and raising the risk of schedule disruptions as flu activity surges nationwide. While cancellations have so far remained limited, delays have been significant, with more than a third of the airline’s schedule impacted on one recent day. Alaska has begun offering incentives for off duty and holiday pickups to stabilize operations, a tactic mirrored across the industry as JetBlue, Spirit (NK), and Frontier (F9) activate higher level contingency plans amid sharply elevated sick call rates. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention reports flu activity is elevated and rising across the US, underscoring continued operational risk for carriers during the winter peak.

During 2025, the first full year of combined Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines (HA) operations, the two carriers transported over 55 million passengers across 486,000 flights. This growth was bolstered by the addition of 21 new domestic routes and an aggressive international expansion from the Seattle (SEA) hub with new service to Seoul Incheon (ICN), Tokyo, Reykjavik (KEF), Rome (FCO), and London Heathrow (LHR).

Turkish Airlines (TK) announced a $2.3 billion investment to build what it says will be the world’s largest cargo terminal and a new in-flight catering facility, likely at Istanbul given its dual major airports and central logistics role. The project is expected to create about 26,000 jobs and significantly expand the carrier’s cargo capacity and support infrastructure. Turkish Airlines highlighted the development as part of its growth strategy; the airline aims to be among the top five global carriers by 2033 while expanding its fleet and network. The carrier already handles around 2 million tons of cargo annually. 

Mumbai, India (BOM) plans to suspend dedicated freighter operations for about ten months between August 2026 and May 2027 to allow a full rebuild of its cargo aircraft apron and related airside infrastructure, which the operator says is worn out. The work forms part of a broader program that also includes resurfacing the main runway, constructing a new taxiway to access the secondary runway, and demolishing existing cargo facilities, with officials stating that relocating freighters elsewhere on the airfield is not feasible given passenger traffic levels and space constraints. The planned shutdown has raised concerns across India’s cargo community, as the Mumbai hub handles more than 850,000 tonnes of freight annually, while the recently opened Navi Mumbai (NMI) is viewed by industry groups as not yet ready to fully absorb displaced freighter volumes.