Skift Global Forum 2026: Aviation Preview

0:00Jay Shabat: Hello and welcome to the Airline Weekly Lounge. I'm your host Gordon Smith and I'm joined as usual by co-host Jay Shabat. In this week's show we're running through some of the aviation highlights from the upcoming Skift Global Forum.

0:28Jay Shabat: Hi Jay, how's it going? Okay, Gordon, how are you? Doing very, very well. We might not have an Airline Weekly issue this week, but we are still here with the Airline Weekly Launch podcast because we know that people, they plan their entire weeks around these 30 minutes, Jay. So we don't want to disappoint you even in the dog days of summer. But we thought for this particular episode, because we're recording here just a little bit earlier than normal because of the holidays, we're recording here on the 12th of August. We thought it'd be a great time, just over a month away until the SCIF Global Forum.

0:56Jay Shabat: If you're not familiar with what that is, basically all of Skift gets together in New York City in September. And it is an event quite like no other. This is not just an aviation event. This is right across the travel industry. So leadership from hotels, from OTAs, from airlines, of course, from travel distribution, from regulators, everything and everything. Plus a few sort of, I don't want to say random celebrities, but a few sort of curated additional guests from outside the travel industry, let's put it that way, who are relevant or may have a transferable tale to tell. So always full of surprises and always a great few days.

1:38Jay Shabat: This year is no exception, not an exhaustive list by any means. Go to live.script.com for the latest agenda because it is subject to change. change but as it stands here on august 12th you've got the ceos of uber airbnb hilton a call booking.com xpedia the list literally does go on um but like we said we're going to focus on some of the aviation highlights jay because we've got three main aviation related names joining us as it stands here as we're recording here um mark galaldo the air canada evp and chief commercial officer plus the president of cargo a title there the much simpler title of ceo of virgin atlantic corneal costa and we've also got the group ceo the newish group ceo of the catarayways group hamed ali al-catar let's kick off with air canada jay for the purposes of this conversation because we've had some latest quarterly numbers in from them just within the past 24 hours or so what

2:35Gordon Smith: were the headline numbers as as you saw them yeah right for our fresh hot off the press here we have And you may have mentioned it, Gordon, but we are speaking on August 12th, so a little bit in our ears here by the time you guys listen to it, just because of our summer schedule. But Air Canada, as we're talking here today, they just reported their earnings and they did fairly well. They had a 6 % operating margin, so they're not setting the world on fire by any means. It was 7 % last year. Nara Canada has a little bit of a different seasonal pattern than the U.S. airlines. They tend to peak in the third quarter.

3:16Gordon Smith: Winters tend to be tough for them. They've tried to address that by adding some more southern routes, you know, routes that would typically peak in the winter, things like Bangkok, maybe some South America stuff. But they're still a very, you know, summer-oriented airline. Now, last year, if you remember 2025, full year talking about here, It was a very disappointing year for them. They wound up only earning a 5.5 % operating margin. And a big reason for that was they suffered a strike during that super peak summer period last year. Now, interestingly enough, WestJet suffered. It was very, very brief, but they suffered a work stoppage this summer as well.

4:02Gordon Smith: So they're going to kind of the roles are reversed here in 2026. So Air Canada probably picked up some summertime business at least a couple of days worth from the West Chet strike. That's over. Air Canada is moving ahead. And then, of course, the other big news with Air Canada this morning, and I'll turn this over to you to talk about it because I know you've written about it, is Air Canada undertook a transaction involving their very valuable frequent flyer plan, their loyalty program. So turn it back to you to talk about that.

4:40Jay Shabat: Yeah, Aeroplan, not a huge name in Europe. I feel like people in Canada will be like, of course we know what Aeroplan is, but for some listeners in Europe or other parts of the world, they're like, Aeroplan, but this is a very big deal and a very lucrative program. uh put simply it's air canada's loyalty program it's frequent flyer program and yes as you say jay uh they are planning to sell a 25 stake in it uh to an investor group led by blackstone that enormous private equity firm but also quebec-based pension fund lacasse forgive me my pronunciation is not quite up to scratch there um i definitely won't be in the running for air canada ceo with

5:15Gordon Smith: my french pronunciation uh i was gonna say we have to forgive gordon because he's focusing on Portuguese, but good point. Yeah, no one's going to hire you to run Air Canada.

5:27Jay Shabat: I don't think I'm in the running for Tap Air Portugal either, but I did pass my language test. If anyone's a very committed listener to the show, you may remember about eight months ago, I mentioned I was practicing for my language test. So very, very, very off topic, but I did pass that.

5:39Gordon Smith: Your friend KLM or Lufthansa may be looking for someone to run Tap, so don't rule it out. I mean, we missed you this gift, Gordon, but for a job like that, maybe you can do dual roles. I don't know.

5:51Jay Shabat: I'll speak to the big boss. I'll see what they say. But just to round out that sort of group of investors, LaCasse, PSP Investments, and the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, catchy. The transaction is due to settle on August 17th, and Air Canada says part of the proceeds will go towards paying a$1.2 billion bond maturity. And you're reading some of the contracts and some of the details here. There is an option within this deal for them to get out of it, essentially, if they want. There is an option much later on. I think here we have here. The airline has retained the right to repurchase the investor group's interest between the fifth and the eighth anniversaries of the settlement at a price calculated to deliver the investors a 6.5 % internal rate of return net of distributions.

6:44Jay Shabat: so what some analysts are saying today is actually it's kind of like just like mortgaging your house a little bit you've got a great asset and you've got an opportunity to you know put 25 percent of it up for sale and buy it back five to eight years if you want and then there's others who are slightly more cynical and said actually this is a repeat of what air canada has done before take this very valuable asset leverage it and actually wait for it to to be devalued for whatever reason and then buy it back. So there's various different theories around the thinking here, but I think it's beyond doubt that this is just a shrewd financial move on their part without necessarily tapping into their cash reserves.

7:24Jay Shabat: You said, Jay, they didn't have a great quarter, but they've still got a decent amount of cash if they wanted it. So it's not necessarily that they're desperate here that they're selling the family silver. It's more perhaps an acknowledgement that they've got something here that could be tapped and give them some some options and a little bit more flexibility. A few quotes here from Air Canada leadership, the aeroplan president, Greg Landry, he said, the airline's still committed to being a majority owner, quote, ensuring continued control of the program while positioning it for the future growth and value creation.

7:58Jay Shabat: And that does speak, I think, maybe to some who are concerned more broadly about private equity generally when they buy things, they don't tend to always improve the customer experience, whoever that customer may be. So for right or for wrong, they do tend to have, not specifically these particular parties, but as an industry, there's a kind of feeling that when private equity gets involved or when external finances get involved, they can be often looking at the bottom line and stripping out some of the perks and some of the niceties which customers may have been used to. So the message from Air Canada HQ is business as usual, we're still running the tiller albeit with this a minority investment here and like i said jay this did coincide with the second quarter uh results the consortium is looking at around about let me get the exact numbers here i don't want to misquote anyone it's a big deal it's uh 2.5 billion canadian and sort of back of the envelope arithmetic would suggest that puts aeroplane and evaluation of a 10 billion canadian which is enormous actually larger than the market cap for air canada itself you might be wondering well that's why what's going on there surely a canada's got part of aeroplan but aeroplan itself is worth more it all comes down to equity after debt and jay you're more into the finances than i am but the 10 billion figure as i understand it is the the implied valuation of the program itself without acknowledging any of the the debt that at Canada at a group level holds.

9:30Gordon Smith: And that's why you've got the varying market caps there.

9:33Jay Shabat: But strip out the specifics. This is another example, if we needed it, of an airline's loyalty program being enormously valuable and almost, in some cases, depending on how you chalk it up, more valuable than the airline itself. Yeah.

9:49Gordon Smith: And two things I just want to say about that is, one, just regarding that last point about the valuation of these programs, do keep in mind that the loyalty programs are just, their value is heavily dependent on what the airline flies. So, you know, it starts getting a little tricky. If an airline flies some routes to some leisure destination that loses money, but that makes the frequent flyer program more valuable, it's hard to say that one is, you know, by itself is more valuable than the other. So just, yeah, keep those, when you hear those valuation quotes, you know, just keep dead of nine is that there's a lot of codependency there.

10:24Gordon Smith: And then the other thing I was just going to add to what you said is really just for context is that the first time that, and you mentioned this in the article that you wrote this morning, the first time that Air Canada divested, in that case, control of their loyalty program, one, it was a bigger state. It was a controlling state. And then do remember that they were in bankruptcy at that time, 2005-ish. So it was out of desperation. This is a very, very different context where they're doing it out of a position of strength. So that was just completely different. In fact, they pretty much regretted doing it the minute after they did it.

11:08Gordon Smith: And, you know, they kind of had to, but because they were just, you know, you're in bankruptcy, you need cash in 2005. It was a very different time than we're living in in 2026. But, yeah, do keep that in mind. There are a few other programs around the world that were kind of forced, if that's not too strong a word, into selling their loyalty program. Virgin Australia, I think, was another one. Aeromexico was another one. And in all cases, an airline always regrets selling control of their loyalty program. But this is very different. Obviously, Air Canada, like I said, they're doing it from a position of strength.

11:47Gordon Smith: They know what they're doing. They structured it in a way where they're not going to lose control. They're not going to compromise their direct relationship with their customers. And you just said as well that they do have an option to buy it back if a couple of years from now they decide like, wow, we don't like the way it's all gone or for whatever reason they want to do it. So yeah, two very different times, two very different contexts.

12:15Jay Shabat: Yeah, absolutely. And just bringing it back to the Global Forum, next month we will have Mark Gallardo on stage with us, Jay. uh if you are i'm not quite sure who's going to be doing the interviewing yet uh these scenes can be a little fluid depending on the on the casting and who's there and so on but if you were sitting in my shoes and you've got mark across the skift stage from you what would be your burning question for the chief commercial officer of air canada oh yeah that's a good one um yeah i mean just off the

12:43Gordon Smith: top of my head uh i mean one of them i kind of kind of mentioned before is it would just be interesting to know their latest ideas on how to smooth out some of that seasonality because that's always been a little bit of a challenge for them is, well, what happens if you don't have an amazing six weeks in the summer, then your whole year is kind of shot. So that's, how are some of those efforts to de-seasonalize the airline coming along? Are there any plans to do anything deeper with any of their allies? I mean, they've already got pretty extensive joint ventures with United and Lufthansa. So not sure.

13:22Gordon Smith: I think they had something going with Air China that might be, I don't really know if that's dormant. I don't know. So off the top of my head. And then of course, they've got a very... So one thing I mentioned how Air Canada was bankrupt in 2005. Then just a couple of years later, 2008, 2009-ish, during that financial crisis, they came very close to going bankrupt again. So the 2000, that first decade of the 2000s was really awful for them. The 2010s was really when they got their act together and they devised this whole sixth freedom strategy, which has worked wonders for them. Sixth freedom, that's just an industry term that we're talking about traffic that's coming from country A to country C through your hub in your home country, country that hub B.

14:15Gordon Smith: So if you're going from Nashville to Delhi, if you're going from Raleigh-Durham to Delhi, these may not be huge O &Ds, origin and destination markets by themselves, but you start adding them up and you're talking about real money here. So that's been very, very successful for them. They've had a lot of success adding markets from Quebec to Francophone regions. I mean, Canada is a very immigrant-heavy country. A lot of that is tied to people in French-speaking countries immigrating to Montreal, Quebec. So a good example of that, Morocco, some of the other West African countries where they speak French.

14:59Gordon Smith: So they've done a lot of reasons. some. Those are just a few of the reasons how they were able to turn things around and create a much more stable airline during the 2010s. During the 2020s, obviously, the decade starts off with COVID. That was horrible. Canada was late in kind of normalizing after COVID. So they were, you know, a little bit behind, Canada was a little bit behind their U.S. peers when it came to recovery. Then, of course, 2025, as I mentioned, they had the big strike. The relations, the difficult relations between the U.S. and Canada has been trouble for them. More trouble, I would say, for WestJet and some of the carriers, Porter Airlines.

15:40Gordon Smith: Some of the carriers are more dependent on U.S. tourist traffic. I think Canada's U.S. traffic is more business-oriented. That's held up better. But certainly, they will tell you that last year, after this whole Liberation Day tariffs, that the Trump administration announced in March, April time period, that was really rough for the summer period. A lot of U.S. outbound travel, and the U.S. airlines will tell you this too, there was a lot of negative sentiment, a lot of market fears. If you remember the stock market momentarily went down a lot after that Liberation Day announcement. So I just, you know, kind of took you, I'd realize you, this was not your question directly, but I just wanted to kind of take you up to the present when air canada is presenting at skiff forum i think that's just a good you know background for everybody to have for those who are attending um and listening in uh so uh but just to go back to your original question another one that i'd love to hear uh more about from them is how they intend to deploy so many of these new aircraft that they're getting um they're just you know when you're so much of their turnaround as i mentioned is based on long haul expansion and so when you're getting these xlr planes when you're getting 787 tens when you're eventually getting a through 51 thousands uh that's that's exciting i mean there's probably a few places few airlines in the world that are less exciting or sorry that are more exciting than the Air Canada, you know, being an Air Canada network planning, because you're having all these new aircraft types coming in, and just, you know, the world is your oyster.

17:23Gordon Smith: You can deploy them around the world. So it'd be kind of interesting to hear what their thoughts are about aircraft deployment.

17:30Jay Shabat: I agree. Network planning, a fascinating part of Air Canada. So much more we will discuss with Mark on the SCIFT Global Forum stage. but let's get into the break because we've got virgin atlantic and also cataraways to discuss in part two before the break a quick reminder to send any questions or comments that you might have for us to podcasts at skip.com that's podcasts with an s at the end and please don't forget to follow or subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening or watching and if you are enjoying the show please rate us five stars or leave us a post for review so we can continue to spread the word about the airline weekly lounge don't go anywhere we'll be right back hello and welcome back to the airline weekly lounge i'm gordon smith joined as usual by co-host jay shabbat part one we were discussing air canada's upcoming appearance at the skift global forum uh the chief commercial officer and president of cargo mark gallardo there uh will be joining us in new york between september 22nd and 24th but that's not all from an aviation point of view as it stands we're currently going to be joined by cornell costa the ceo virgin atlantic as well as Hamad Ali Al-Khata, the new-ish group CEO of Qatar Airways.

18:33Jay Shabat: Jay, let's start with Virgin Atlantic because that is an airline that we don't get quarterly numbers from. The arithmetic there is a little different. We've got a 49 % shareholding from Delta, but it is still a majority owned in Europe. And we've all become experts in European majority ownership rules over the past few weeks with Castle Lake and Apollo and their interest in EasyJet, a key consideration there, but nonetheless a fascinating airline and actually arguably an opportunity to get into a little bit more detail with the CEO of an airline who isn't always over the hot coals of the analysts every quarter.

19:11Jay Shabat: An opportunity to maybe dig a little deeper in a way that we don't normally. So really, really exciting to have Cornel join us. You might be thinking, Cornel Costa, who's that? He replaced Chiweiss as the CEO of Virgin Atlantic a few months back. So I think this is going to be one of his first onstage appearances, Jay.

19:29Gordon Smith: On you go. Well, you were just talking about Corneal's recent arrival to Virgin Atlantic. I just realized that we forgot to mention an important fact about Air Canada. They do CEO coming in as well from SAS. So yeah, I started throwing that in there. I realized that's kind of an important discussion point when we're talking about Air Canada, but go on.

19:55Jay Shabat: Yeah, yeah. Michael Russo leaving the airline, retiring at the end of August. And Anko van der Boeuf, currently the CEO of, say, Scandinavian Airways. Airlines, I should say. I don't like it when people mix up airways and airlines. So I'm going to hold myself to a higher standard there. Airlines. He is not joining until January. So there's going to be an interim arrangement when the leadership team are accountable to the board. So a little bit of an unusual situation there.

20:21Gordon Smith: But yes, Jay, great point. anchor joining in a few months time.

20:25Jay Shabat: But back to Cornel Coster, Virgin Atlantic is a fascinating carrier and a carrier that has, you know, obviously got Virgin's origins at its heart, you know, sort of the slight renegade, the maverick going up against the old legacy carriers, particularly when it was launched in the 1980s. And you had Branson with his 747 going across to New York and really putting two fingers up to British Airways at the time. And also just the broader rules and regulations around transatlantic travel. This was something fresh and something quite, I don't want to use groundbreaking. I'm going to use groundbreaking because I genuinely think it was, or at least it was trying to be.

21:05Jay Shabat: It was shaking things up in a way that few other airlines have done, particularly on the North Atlantic, even things like introducing what we know is premium economy class it's a little bit of a hot debate as whether it was ever or virgin atlantic but it was both them in the very early 90s who pioneered that that middle ground which we all know and many of us loves especially the revenue managers love nowadays jay but more recently you've got uh some developments of virgin atlantic uh you know joined sky team and uh before delta i think was it and a singapore airlines there was a 49 ownership there so it's always had

21:41Gordon Smith: this very large minority partner, at least going back a couple of decades.

21:48Jay Shabat: But despite having very well-heeled minority partners, it's always struggled to make really significant amounts of cash. And as an Outlooker, you can say, well, it's just kind of Branson wanting it as a bit of a trophy project. This is an airline that is part of the Virgin Empire, and it can afford to not make huge of months of money, as long as it sort of pays its way roughly, you kind of imagine brands and saying, I love the airline, let it do what it wants, as long as it doesn't hemorrhage cash. But the issue is that it hasn't been making even that sort of net even levels. It has been losing cash, even notwithstanding the COVID years that were tough on everyone, Jay.

22:30Jay Shabat: And when you do have a major minority partner like Delta, previously Singapore Airlines, they're going to be expecting some ROI from their investment, and you might not have the same sort of frivolous nature that you might have with Branson. What's your take on what Virgin is doing, how Virgin is doing it, and maybe the path forward for them towards sustained profitability?

22:53Gordon Smith: Now, by the way, let me just say Virgin Atlantic, one of the largest airlines I've never flown. I've just never had the opportunity. Have you flown them yourself?

23:01Jay Shabat: Yes, I've flown on Virgin a few times. And actually, it was the first airline I flew out of Star Alliance round the world ticket back in 2008. So I did a round the world trip.

23:10Gordon Smith: Navigated the globe. Can I call you Magellan or?

23:14Jay Shabat: Come in San Diego. I've been called worse. Yeah, sort of going right around the world, Phileas Fogg style. And it was a Star Alliance ticket, which was£1 ,200 in 2008, which I thought was pretty good value given the quality of the airlines that we were flying on. So worked for six months and then traveled for five months between high school and uni, very common in the uk to to do that and yeah i i still remember the start of the itinerary i need to get my my paperwork out but it was the first flight was on a 747 from heathrow to jfk on virgin atlantic and yes even though you're sitting in the cheap seats you still feel like a million dollars there because you're basically a school kid on your way to new york on virgin atlantic and you just feel fantastic but yeah other airlines if anyone's really interested we did air new zealand down to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands and then across to Auckland and then down to Melbourne.

24:03Jay Shabat: And then we took Vietnam, not Vietnam, I was in Vietnam with Singapore, through Singapore and then Singapore onwards on a very, very early A380. So that was 2008, August 2008. So that was our very first A380 flight. But that is a podcast discussion for another day, Jay. But if anyone's very, very keen to know about it, I will tell them all about it. But yes, your question, have I flown Virgin Atlantic? Yes.

24:28Gordon Smith: But you haven't. Good, good story. Yeah, I'm sure I will at some point. But yeah, just for whatever reason, just never came up in my travels. But yeah, to your question about Virgin Atlantic's business, as you mentioned, they do have a very esteemed brand and product. But they've just struggled. Since their origins, they've always struggled to make money. uh they um their their profit margins are always uh very slim even in a good year and that continues up up to the present uh they um into 2025 as as you mentioned gordon these this is not because they're not publicly traded their stock is not tradable on an exchange they uh do not have to uh they're not required to report quarterly earnings uh so they don't but they do report annually.

25:22Gordon Smith: So we do have their annual numbers. And 2025 was another just very poor year. They lost money at a net level, at the operating level, which excludes the interest and the taxes, just 2%. And that's not going to... They're spending a lot more on that, if you consider all the investments, all of what they're investing. So 2 % is, yeah, just a very weak quarter. So why did they, you know, have a weak quarter specifically last year? Well, they mentioned, you know, I talked about it with it, with our Canada. This is literally a quote from their 2025 annual report. They said, you know, we had a rough 2025 after Liberation Day in the U.S.

26:11Gordon Smith: The U.S. point of sale demand was noticeably weaker than forecast in our plan, which depressed our operating profit contribution. If the U.S. market goes sour for Virgin Atlantic, it's pretty much all over because they're very, very heavily dependent. They have other routes too. But I want to say a few things about their route network. And let me say this first. Two of their biggest problems historically, and I wrote about this extensively in the book, in my history book about Delta, Glory Lost and Found, if anybody really wants to go back and familiarize yourself with the history of Virgin Atlantic.

26:50Gordon Smith: You can go read that if you haven't already. But two very big challenges for them was their fleet was all messed up, almost Lufthansa-like. They had all these four-engine 747s. You mentioned you were on one. The 340s, not economic, these four-engine planes. That was a huge problem for them. Another big problem is that they didn't connect. They didn't have any alliance partners. You can get to London, but nothing really beyond. They would try these little things. You remember Little Red, Gordon? You remember that?

27:19Jay Shabat: I do, because it served my home city of Aberdeen. So it was on Aer Lingus Dampley's aircraft, I want to say. And they served, I think, Iron Brew, which is a Scottish national soft drink. The old fact is that it's one of the few countries in the world that outsells Coca-Cola in terms of the best-selling soft drink. I'm not sure if that's still true. But yeah, I do remember Little Red and yeah, I remember it fondly because it shook up the BA establishment on that route. That was, if anyone really wants to get into the weeds, a BMI remedy route. When BMI, British Midland, was taken over by BA after Lufthansa divested it.

28:02Jay Shabat: I think that's correct. There were some competition issues and I think there were some routes in the Middle East. and also there was some in uh uk there was edinburgh and aberdeen um in scotland that if any operator wanted to to take them off uh ba's hands they they could little red tried it fly b did it as well for a little while and they're both no longer with us so uh yeah again another story for another day but we we digress i do remember little red are you sure i'm the one that wrote the history book that's it's that was impressive i mean that was that was very

28:38Gordon Smith: I made a mistake by asking, Gordon, do you remember? I should just assume that you do because that was very detailed. I'm impressed.

28:45Jay Shabat: It's only detailed if it was correct. So I'm sure there'll be someone in the inbox who says, well, actually, they weren't damp least, they were wet least or something else. They weren't serving iron brew. They were serving whatever else. But yeah, that's in principle, the BMI relief routes, which I think are still open to anyone that wants them.

29:03Gordon Smith: Yeah, no, I'm willing to bet my bottom dollar that it was all correct. I think that was pretty precise there with your memory. So, yeah, I was just making a point there about the connectivity that they lacked. So I mentioned the fleet. I mentioned the connectivity issues. Dave, they've done a lot to address both of those issues, and they're much less of a problem today. If you think about their fleet, it's 787-9s, great aircraft. It's A330. I think they have a few some of the old legacy a330s left. They'll they'll be gone by 2028 But they have the a230 neo, you know perfectly fine aircraft and twin engine and then they have the a350 1000

29:49Jay Shabat: Which is a you know very Heathrow Airport.

29:52Gordon Smith: It's a everybody, you know if you're flying from Heathrow you like the biggest aircraft possible because you The number of slots are limited So you want to get the biggest bang for your buck your biggest aircraft out of each individual slot you hold so So, you know, they're all good on fleet now. Connectivity, as you mentioned, you know, Delta is, they basically operate a joint venture with Delta. They're getting very close to other Sky team members as well. Air France KLM is very close to them. SAS now that they're part of the Air France KLM family. They've gotten close with Indigo in India now that they serve Manchester and London.

30:31Gordon Smith: So they're better. Now, Heathrow is not the greatest connecting market. It's not a hub like quite as powerful connecting-wise as a Paris or an Amsterdam or Frankfurt just because it is so congested. And the geography is a little bit different, a little bit more challenging for certain itineraries. So not a ton of connecting. but regardless you know they have those issues uh in a much better situation now than they used to but they're still just not um you know they're just just not cutting it with the margins um few other as you contemplate that and think about why a few other things i just want to point out so this is a little bit overlooked i think about virgin atlantic they are a very heavy leisure airline, a very heavy beach airline.

31:22Gordon Smith: So you think of them, oh, they're flying, you know, all day between London and New York, which is true. It's a big part of their business. Um, you know, other, other big, uh, business routes to Washington, Boston. Uh, but about half, roughly half of the destination destinations that they serve across the Atlantic are either Caribbean leisure routes or Florida. So, you know, you're Orlando, Miami, what else do they have uh tampa uh what do they do in the caribbean are they in san juan oh they get around

31:57Jay Shabat: i don't think they're in san juan actually but they they do quite a lot of the you know so far as brits you know so we think of the sort of paradise caribbean islands but also a decent amount of vfr traffic as well jay which uh you know decent uh decently large uh caribbean diaspora there and plenty of uh plenty plenty of historical connections between uh the two regions so yeah they carry it's not just holiday makers it's also the the bit of the vfr and a bit of business as well going into uh sort of cayman islands and other bits and pieces there the grenadines uh st vincent it does change quite a lot it seems like every other month i see some schedule changes around what they're doing there we're intost lucia we're out ofst lucia etc etc but for all intents and purposes the take-home message is they've got a decent caribbean footprint yeah

32:40Gordon Smith: that was another point i wanted to make uh that says a good segue because uh they they do have a record of they've just been in so many routes that haven't worked. They're always trying new things. And I was just kind of poking around in the Syrian database this morning, looking at, you know, these are all cities that Virgin Atlantic at one time flew, but don't fly today. Again, this is just a sample. Chicago, Hong Kong, Sydney, Nairobi, Accra, Austin, Cancun, Tokyo, Narita, Islamabad, and even Newark. I was surprised we were even out of that. so uh you can see they they uh just i mean give them credit for trying things if they don't work they pull them that's you know always always a good sign but it's a bad sign that they you know they they try really hard i think the latest uh kind of attempt the latest experiment let's call it is with soul which kind of makes sense yeah totally makes sense because that's a big sky team market right you know we talked about how they're getting you know they're so close with delta and air france klm korean air is very much you know in that family as well so they'll get a lot of connectivity flying to seoul i think the other one is phuket down in thailand um there you go again another another big leisure route uh so you know keep all that in mind by the way virgin atlantic holidays i mentioned how leisure is so important to them 16 almost a fifth of their entire revenues just from just from virgin holidays that's their tour packaging uh arm where you know people are buying not just the airline ticket, but also the hotel and maybe some other travel services.

34:18Gordon Smith: They also have a cargo operation, which is about 7%. That's probably doing well right now. So, you know, final thing I'll say about Virgin is, you know, I mentioned 2025 was a really rough year. 2024 was a little better. 2025 is very rough. 2026, obviously the fuel situation is much, much, much, much worse. Uh, the revenue situation is better. They do carry some of that connect traffic that crosses the Atlantic. You know, uh, I, I think I even mentioned if with air Canada, how air Canada does like a Vancouver to India through Toronto. Well, they'll do stuff like that. They'll do not Vancouver per se, but they'll do, uh, you know, New York through London to, uh, to, to India, or, you know, I think they serve like three or four places in India.

35:04Gordon Smith: So they do some of that connectivity to Johannesburg. They serve there to the Maldives to, are they still in the Seychelles? I have to look at some of these. Nigeria as well. Nigeria as well. Now, Nigeria doesn't fit what I'm going to say because it's too far west, but they do serve a lot of those markets, connecting markets that could go over the Gulf. So South Africa being one of them, India being the other. So if you're going from Washington, D.C. to India to South Africa, you could go through Dubai, you could go through Doha. But of course, we know what's going on with the hubs this year. So they probably captured some more of that.

35:45Gordon Smith: They probably benefited from that. So that may be – put that in the plus column for them in 2026. But just as I said before, fuel has got to be a huge challenge.

36:01Jay Shabat: Absolutely. A question that will be top of mind when we speak to Cornel Costa on stage of the Skiff Global Forum in New York.

36:07Gordon Smith: Lots to talk about. Yeah, lots to talk about. Oh, yes.

36:09Jay Shabat: Lots, yeah. I know.

36:11Gordon Smith: Just to repeat what you said before, Gordon, it's always a little bit even extra interesting to talk to airlines that are in public because they're not delivering as much information to the market. So, Gordon, I don't know if it'll be you on stage interviewing him, but you'll have no shortage of questions uh interesting questions to ask whoever it is jay they need you in your ear

36:34Jay Shabat: um you can feed them uh various questions and little tidbits there um we're not going to get to cater always in this episode but i promise we will revisit that in a future episode because i want to do it justice i don't want to rush it it's such an interesting airline especially with the new management team in place so we'll reflect on cater always very very soon and certainly before the global forum but if this has piqued your interest on the global forum go to live.skiff.com for the latest agenda and also if you are familiar with the the concept of what we do in new york in september it's even better this year so i'm just looking at the the website now live.skiff.com and you've got the skiff global forum but there's also the live tourism summit there's the creator summit there's the meetings forum and there's also the women leading travel leadership exchanges not all of those will be relevant to everyone but what i'm saying is go check out live.skiff.com because there is a lot going on with Skift in New York City in September.

37:31Jay Shabat: Various details there. Tickets are selling very, very fast. And there is a price increase as well. Let me see when this is. The final price increase for the Skift Global Forum is going to be on September 4th. So you've still got time, but not a huge amount of time if you want to look in the best available price. And not to be confused with the Skift Aviation Forum, which is also in New York City, and that's obviously J &I's baby. we are there at the TWA Hotel on November 12th and that's a day Pure Play Aviation but still a great set of aviation speakers

38:02Gordon Smith: No excuses for anybody listening watching this no excuses to not come that one

38:05Jay Shabat: No excuses for not coming if you're listening to this show you should be there and if you're on Airline Weekly Subscriber you should have a promo code for the Skift Aviation Forum to get a discount ticket if you don't have one speak to your subscription contact and we can get that across for you Jay thank you for that discussion decent detail on both Air Canada and Virgin Atlantic and like we said we will revisit Cats Airways another day Jay and a reminder if you are waiting for your next issue of Airline Weekly that will be on Monday August 31st but thanks for your patience whilst we are on our summer schedule great thanks to Jay for joining me this week thanks as always to our producers John, Monica, Kelsey and Will and wherever you are in the world thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time bye for now Whether you're listening to us on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts, please remember to subscribe, rate us five stars, or leave us a positive review.

38:55Jay Shabat: This really helps us get the word out about the Airline Weekly Large, so we can continue to bring you this podcast every week, absolutely free of charge. And if you're watching us on YouTube, be sure to subscribe to the Skiff channel and hit the notification bell to find out whenever a new video drops.