Brian Sumers

Air Canada and United still dominate the majority of U.S.-Canada routes, so it's hard to see how anti-trust immunity helps consumers. But it certainly would make the airlines more formidable competitors.

Lufthansa Group has been more insulated from low-cost competition than most of Europe's legacy airlines. That's quickly changing, and the company needs to get its plans in order. It must find a way to turn its Eurowings operation into a more nimble competitor with lower costs.

Many of the world's airlines know they're not as good as retailers like Amazon in targeting offers for individual passengers. A lot of carriers want to improve, so they can get the right offer in front of the right person at the right time. But it won't be easy, since airlines often have clunky computer systems.

It's nice to see United Airlines on the offensive again. Look for more flights on bigger jets in key business markets from United, which has fallen behind American and Delta in some important urban markets.

Let's give some credit to United CEO Oscar Munoz for his honesty about problems with airline IT systems. Yes, he was speaking with employees, and not the public, but many CEOs aren't this candid when they meet with workers. Former United CEO Jeff Smisek certainly wasn't.

The Obama Administration's decision to block Qantas' application for antitrust immunity with American came as a surprise to most observers. The Trump administration's Department of Transportation would normally be likely will rule otherwise. But this new administration is unpredictable, so it's hard to say for sure.

Starting next month, TSA will limit the number of travelers who receive access to Precheck security lanes without joining the program. But the TSA is being cagey about exactly what this means, so we'll have to wait until February to see how this affects airport lines.

Yet again, Southwest is choosing not to copy United, American and Delta. Its independent strategy has worked well for the last five decades, so why change what works?

JetBlue is a publicly traded corporation, and it has little choice but to reduce capacity when revenues fall because that's what investors expect. But this isn't great for travelers. They would prefer JetBlue discount its fares to to fill seats when demand falls.

A three-month delay isn't that big of a deal, but the timing isn't great for Hawaiian. The airline would have preferred to have some of its new A321neos in service by the fourth quarter, when demand for Hawaiian vacations picks up.