Business
Summer travel isn’t as easy as it used to be for airlines
A passenger looks at aircrafts at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia on July 2, 2025.
Charly Triballeau | AFP | Getty Images
Making money in the summer is not as easy as it used to be for airlines.
Airlines have drawn down their schedules in August for a variety of reasons. Some travelers are opting to fly earlier, in June or even May, as schools let out sooner than they used to. Demand for flights to Europe has also been moving from the sweltering, crowded summer to the fall, airline executives have said, especially for travelers with more flexibility, like retirees.
Carriers still make the bulk of their money in the second and third quarters. But as travel demand has shifted, and in some cases customers have become altogether unpredictable, making the third quarter less of a shoo-in moneymaker for airlines.
Change of plans, pricier tickets
Airline planners have been forced to get more surgical with schedules in August as leisure demand tapers off from the late spring and summer peaks. Labor and other costs have jumped after the pandemic, so getting the mix of flights right is essential.
Carriers across the industry have been taking flights off the schedule after an overhang of too much capacity pushed down fares this summer. But the capacity cuts are set to further drive up airfares, which rose 0.7% in July from last year, and a seasonally adjusted 4% jump from June to July, according to the latest U.S. inflation read.
U.S. airlines’ domestic capacity is down 6% in August from July, according to aviation data firm Cirium. The same period last year, they cut domestic capacity just over 4% compared with just a 0.6% downsize between the months in 2023, Cirium said. From July to August in 2019, airlines cut 1.7% of capacity.
Carriers that bet on a blockbuster year were left disappointed earlier in 2025 when consumers weighed President Donald Trump‘s on-again, off-again tariffs and economic uncertainty. To attract more customers, many airlines slashed prices, even for flights in the summer peaks in late June and July.
Demand has improved, airline executives said on earnings calls in recent months, but carriers including Delta, American, United and Southwest last month lowered their 2025 profit forecasts compared with their sunnier outlooks at the start of the year.
Further complicating matters, some travelers have been also waiting until the last minute to book flights.
“It really was, I would say, middle of May, when we started seeing Memorial Day bookings pick up,” JetBlue Airways President Marty St. George told investors last month. “We had a fantastic Memorial Day, much better than forecast, and that really carried into June. But it does have the feeling of people just waited a long time to make the final decisions.”
There’s always next year
Now, some airlines are already thinking about how to tackle ever-changing travel patterns next year.
“Schools are going back earlier and earlier but what you also see is schools are getting out earlier and earlier,” Brian Znotins, American Airlines‘ vice president of network planning and schedule, told CNBC.
Public schools in Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas, returned on Aug. 5, and Atlanta public schools resumed Aug. 4. In 2023, more than half of the country’s public school students went back to classrooms by mid-August, according to the Pew Research Center.
Southwest, with its Texas roots, ended its summer schedule on Aug. 5 this year, compared with Aug. 15 in 2023. American, for its part, is shifting some peak flying next year.
“We’re moving our whole summer schedule change to the week before Memorial Day,” Znotins said. “That’s just in response to schools letting out in the spring.” Those plans include additions of a host of long-haul international flights.
“We are a year-round airline,” he continued. Znotins said the carrier has to not just make sure there are enough seats for peak periods, but know when to cut back in lighter quarters, like the first three months of the year.
“For a network planner, the harder schedules to build are the ones where there’s lower demand because you can’t just count on demand coming to your flights,” Znotins said. “When demand is lower, you need to find ways to attract customers to your flights with a good quality schedule and product changes.”
American said its schedule by seats in August was on par with July in 2019, but that this year it was 6% lower in August from July.
American forecast last month it could lose an adjusted 10 cents to 60 cents a share in the third quarter, below what analysts are expecting. CEO Robert Isom said on an earnings call that “July has been tough,” though the carrier says trends have improved.
The capacity cuts, coupled with more encouraging booking patterns lately, are fueling optimism about a better supply and demand balance in the coming weeks.
“The mistake some airlines make, you tend to try to build a church for Easter Sunday: You build your capacity foundation for those peak periods and then you have way too many [employees],” said Raymond James airline analyst Savanthi Syth.
She said it was unusual to see airlines across the board pruning their summer schedules before even the peak period ended, but she is upbeat about demand, and fares, going forward.
“Time has passed and people are getting a little more certainty on what their future looks like and they’re more willing to spend,” she said.
Business
Trade talks: India, EU wrap up 14th round of FTA negotiations; push on to seal deal by December – The Times of India
India and the 27-nation European Union (EU) have concluded the 14th round of negotiations for a proposed free trade agreement (FTA) in Brussels, as both sides look to resolve outstanding issues and move closer to signing the deal by the end of the year, PTI reported citing an official.The five-day round, which began on October 6, focused on narrowing gaps across key areas of trade in goods and services. Indian negotiators were later joined by Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal in the final days to provide additional momentum to the talks.During his visit, Agrawal held discussions with Sabine Weyand, Director General for Trade at the European Commission, as both sides worked to accelerate progress on the long-pending trade pact.Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal recently said he was hopeful that the two sides would be able to sign the agreement soon. Goyal is also expected to travel to Brussels to meet his EU counterpart Maros Sefcovic for a high-level review of the progress made so far.Both India and the EU have set an ambitious target to conclude the negotiations by December, officials familiar with the matter said, PTI reported.Negotiations for a comprehensive trade pact between India and the EU were relaunched in June 2022 after a hiatus of more than eight years. The process had been suspended in 2013 due to significant differences over market access and tariff liberalisation.The EU has sought deeper tariff cuts in sectors such as automobiles and medical devices, alongside reductions in duties on products including wine, spirits, meat, and poultry. It has also pressed for a stronger intellectual property framework as part of the agreement.For India, the proposed pact holds potential to make key export categories such as ready-made garments, pharmaceuticals, steel, petroleum products, and electrical machinery more competitive in the European market.The India-EU trade pact talks span 23 policy chapters covering areas such as trade in goods and services, investment protection, sanitary and phytosanitary standards, technical barriers to trade, rules of origin, customs procedures, competition, trade defence, government procurement, dispute resolution, geographical indications, and sustainable development.India’s bilateral trade in goods with the EU stood at $136.53 billion in 2024–25, comprising exports worth $75.85 billion and imports valued at $60.68 billion — making the bloc India’s largest trading partner for goods.The EU accounts for nearly 17 per cent of India’s total exports, while India represents around 9 per cent of the bloc’s overall exports to global markets. Bilateral trade in services between the two partners was estimated at $51.45 billion in 2023.
Business
Telcos network costs rise: Gap between expenditure and revenue exceeds Rs 10,000 crore; COAI flags rising network investment burden – The Times of India
The gap between telecom operators’ network expenditure and revenue continues to widen, prompting industry body COAI to defend calls for higher mobile tariffs, citing the increasing financial burden of network deployment on service providers.Speaking at the India Mobile Congress, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) Director General, SP Kochhar, told PTI that while the government has provided significant support to telecom operators through policies such as the right of way (RoW), several authorities continue to levy exorbitant charges for laying network elements.“Earlier, the gap until 2024 for infrastructure development and revenue received from tariffs was around Rs 10,000 crore. Now it has started increasing even further. Our cost of rolling out networks should be reduced by a reduction in the price of spectrum, levies etc. The Centre has come out with a very good ROW policy. It is a different matter that many people have not yet fallen in line and are still charging extremely high,” Kochhar said.He also defended the recent cut in data packs for entry-level tariff plans by select operators, stressing that the move was necessary given competitive pressures.Kochhar pointed out that competition among the four telecom operators remains intense, and there has been no significant trend suggesting that consumers are shifting towards low-cost data options.“There is a need to find ways to make high network users pay more for the data. Seventy per cent of the traffic which flows on our networks is by 4 to 5 LTGs (large traffic generators like YouTube, Netflix, Facebook etc). They pay zero. Nobody will blame OTT but they will blame the network. Our demand to the government is that they [LTGs] should contribute to the development of networks,” Kochhar said.He added that the investments made by Indian telecom operators are intended for the benefit of domestic consumers and are not meant to serve as a medium for profit for international players who do not bear any cost.
NEW DELHI: Equity investments in India’s real estate sector jumped 48 per cent year-on-year to $3.8 billion in the July-September period (Q3), a report said on Friday. This growth in inflow was primarily fuelled by capital deployment into land or development sites and built-up office and retail assets, according to the report by real estate consulting firm CBRE South Asia.
In the first nine months of 2025, the equity investments increased by 14 per cent on-year to $10.2 billion — from $8.9 billion in the same period last year.
The report highlighted that land or development sites and built-up office and retail assets accounted for more than 90 per cent of the total capital inflows during Q3 2025.
On the category of investors, developers remained the primary drivers of capital deployment, contributing 45 per cent of the total equity inflows, followed by Institutional investors with a 33 per cent share.
CBRE reported that Mumbai attracted the highest investments at 32 per cent, followed by Pune at around 18 per cent and Bengaluru at nearly 16 per cent.
Anshuman Magazine, Chairman and CEO – India, South-East Asia, Middle East and Africa, CBRE, said that the healthy inflow of domestic capital demonstrates the sector’s resilience and depth.
“In the upcoming quarters, greenfield developments are likely to continue witnessing a robust momentum, with a healthy spread across residential, office, mixed-use, data centres, and I&L sectors,” he added.
In addition to global institutional investors, Indian sponsors accounted for a significant part of the total inflows.
“India’s ability to combine strong domestic capital with global institutional participation will remain a key differentiator in 2026 and beyond,” added Gaurav Kumar, Managing Director, Capital Markets and Land, CBRE India.
CBRE forecasts a strong finish for the investment activity in 2025, fuelled by capital deployment into built-up office and retail assets.
For the office sector, the limited availability of investible core assets for acquisition indicate that opportunistic bets are likely to continue gaining traction, the report noted.
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