The popstar said she was postponing a show in Argentina’s capital scheduled for Friday until Sunday because of heavy rain, writing on X, the platform formerly called Twitter: “due to the weather being so truly chaotic it would be unsafe to try and put on this concert.”
The Chile account of LATAM Airlines, the largest carrier in South America, reached out to customers on X: ”#AttentionSwifties: we know your planes changed so starting today we are updating our flexibility policy for those with flights from Buenos Aires” for Saturday or Sunday.
The Chie-based carrier said it is waiving both ticket-change fees and differences in fare if travelers can fly anytime until Nov. 17 after Swift’s show at Argentina’s largest stadium was postponed.
Some customers complained to LATAM on social media, however, that they were having trouble finding seats and that the carrier told them about the waiver too late. The airline didn’t immediately comment on whether it is adding additional flights.
Major airlines are rolling out strategies that executives say could translate to lower costs and more efficient operations, even if the time savings on paper look negligible.
Some of these tools will be put to the test during what’s expected to be a busy holiday season, a year after a meltdown that stranded thousands of passengers at the end of 2022. Many of the improvements are being made behind the scenes.
American Airlines last year started using new technology to assign flight gates at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, the world’s second-busiest airport and American’s biggest hub, where it operates out of 135 regional and mainline gates.
The new procedures, replacing a near-manual hours-long process, allowed the airline to avoid many of its planes crossing from the east side to the west side of the sprawling airport, saving an average of two minutes of taxi time per flight, adding up to about 11 hours saved a day, American said.
“It took the nightly process of gating the airline from four hours to about 10 minutes,” said American COO David Seymour.
The so-called Smart Gating program has been expanded to Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Miami International Airport, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and most recently, in May, Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, Seymour said, adding that the airline is considering using the technology in Phoenix as well.
The gating technology in other airports aims to avoid gate congestion that could delay flights from departing or parking upon arrival.
“If you try to do late-minute gate changes as planes arrive … you could get out of sync with your caterers and fuelers,” Seymour said, adding that the tools American built are tailored for each airport’s issues.
In the first eight months of the year, 76.4% of American’s flights arrived within 15 minutes of their scheduled arrival times, which the Transportation Department considers on time. That performance ranks American third among major U.S. carriers for on-time arrivals, an improvement from fifth place during the same time period last year.
Short taxi times and other improvements can help airlines save fuel, one of airlines’ biggest costs. American said its new gating program saves it 1.4 million gallons of fuel a year, equal to about $4 million based on fuel prices at major U.S. airports this month.
Southwest Airlines has also experimented this year with ways to expedite boarding, trying everything from better signage to music on the jet bridge to keep travelers moving. For years, Delta Air Lines flight attendants and gate agents have used digital messages during boarding, to send alerts for issues such as full overhead bins.
Discount carrier Frontier Airlines is aiming to speed up boarding and deplaning through pathways outside jet bridges. The company has started using stairs directly onto and off the plane, taking advantage of a second door on the carrier’s Airbus jets.
“If you want to board an airplane faster, use two [gates] instead of one,” CEO Barry Biffle said.
The Denver-based airline is in talks with several airports to increase that type of boarding, without a traditional jet bridge. Biffle estimated that the carrier could have a third of its flights using stairways for boarding and deplaning in about two years.
Biffle said that could save as much as 10 minutes off the turn time, the amount of time it takes for a plane to park, deplane, reload and depart.
Robert Mann, who has worked at several airlines and is president of aviation consulting firm RW Mann & Co., said how airlines use the time savings will be key. Baking it back into the schedule could mean airlines wouldn’t have to block off as much time for a flight, he said.
An American Airlines spokesman said that as the airline becomes more efficient, in future schedules, it could allot less time for each flight, increasing the airline’s ability to add more flights.
The headset, which starts at a price of $3,990, is similar to those from Meta, Microsoft and Apple. It comes as various major tech companies are betting big on virtual and augmented reality, a space they see serving as the next big shift for technology, with an impact of a similar scale to that of the invention of the internet or the mobile phone.
Unlike consumer offerings from companies such as Meta, Varjo’s headset is intended for enterprise use cases. For example, a pilot working for a major defense contractor could use it to train in a virtual reality simulation. Or, a surveyor could use it to map out the landscape of a big construction site.
The XR-4 headset has two 4K displays and a 50% wider field of view compared with previous-generation devices. It also comes with brighter displays and a wider color palette than earlier devices.
“There’s a few things that are simpler technically in the XR-4,” Varjo’s chief product officer, Patrick Wyatt, told CNBC on a call. “We now have one screen per eye which has pushed the resolution right to the limits of that screen, so taking out some costs that way. But most importantly, it’s just a question about scale.”
The XR-4 also has two 20-megapixel cameras on the front to enable so-called pass-through mixed reality. This is where the user can see the world around them through actual lenses embedded in the headsets, as opposed to being completely immersed in a virtual world. It’s similar to what Meta offers on its headsets and what Apple plans to include on the Vision Pro.
The idea is that users can overlay digital objects in this environment on top of the physical world. CNBC tried out Varjo’s previous headset, the XR-3, in Helsinki in 2022 and its headset enabled the reporter to go into a virtually rendered kitchen and interact with cupboard doors and touch the surface.
Varjo has raised a total of more than $160 million of funding from investors including Apple supplier Foxconn, private equity firm EQT, autos giant Volvo and venture capital firm Atomico. The company did not disclose its valuation at the time of its last round when it raised $40 million from investors.
The airline has been facing weak off-peak demand and last month said it will have to ground an average of 26 Airbus A320neo aircraft for inspections of engines made by RTX unit Pratt & Whitney after that company disclosed a manufacturing defect in August, straining its capacity.
The airline had already paused training for new pilots and flight attendants, CNBC reported last month. It has also restricted expense budgets and tweaked its network, including a plan to exit Denver.
“Now, we’re taking the next difficult step – enacting an Early Voluntary Out program for salaried Team Members,” Christie wrote in the memo. The company had a similar plan during the height of Covid pandemic. “Based on the success of that plan, we’re implementing a similar set of opportunities to help us right-size our organization for our current fleet and business constraints.”
JetBlue Airways is in the process of trying to acquire Spirit, a deal the Justice Department has already sued to block with a trial that’s set to wrap up in the coming days in Boston.
Hindman recently provided CNBC with a look at how the ag giant thinks about AI ahead of the CNBC Work Summit on December 6. This Hindman has been edited for length and clarity.
CNBC:Let’s start with the big picture. I know John Deere has been working on automation for years now and that improving efficiency has been at the heart of the company since John Deere himself introduced the steel plow in 1837. How have advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning specifically changed the way John Deere is innovating now?
Hindman : Ever since the steel plow, we’ve had one goal in mind: to help farmers do more with less to meet the basic needs of our ever-growing population. Especially as they face challenges like constantly changing weather conditions, limited land suitable for farming, and continued workforce shortages.
We see AI — specifically computer vision and machine learning — as essential to helping farmers address these challenges. Computer vision helps farmers see beyond human capacity, and machine learning helps them make more accurate decisions at a tremendous scale.
The best example of this is our See & Spray technology. To keep plants healthy, farmers must kill weeds because they steal the vital nutrients plants need to grow into a healthy crop. Before AI, farmers had to spray the entire field to get rid of the weeds. But today, See & Spray can detect where every weed is in the field and apply herbicide only where it’s needed. And the machine continues to teach itself with images collected to become even more accurate in new scenarios, such as new field conditions, different plant growth stages, and plant diseases.
As AI continues to evolve, we’ll create smarter, more efficient, and more automated machines. They will help farmers care for every plant in every square foot of their field. It will make every job on the farm more productive and profitable. AI will also help us reach our goal of creating a fully autonomousproduction cycle for corn and soybean farmers by 2030. This means crops can be planted, sprayed, and harvested with autonomous technology. To reach this goal, we’ll continue deploying AI — along with robotics, sensors, data, and connectivity — to meet our customers’ most pressing needs.
Importantly, we’re also developing these solutions for machines already in the field to make them more productive. An example of this is the ability to retrofit See & Spray technology onto a sprayer built in 2018. With this approach, farmers with older machines can benefit from the newest technologies at a lower upfront cost and pay only for what they need through a “solutions as a service” model. This makes it easier for farmers to adopt and implement new technologies.
CNBC: Apart from some of the obvious benefits to farmers themselves, what are some of the global implications of these technological advances? Thinking of things like decreasing food insecurity in places where growing is particularly difficult, reduced carbon footprints, water conservation.
Hindman: The global population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050, and as diets improve, farmers must double crop production to provide enough food for everyone. But with constantly changing environmental conditions, it is harder for farmers to depend on past knowledge and experience. And, global agriculture employment has declined over the past decade, down to 26% of total employment in 2021 compared to 43% in 1991. So, farmers have more work to do with less predictability and less help.
However, farmers are the original stewards of the land and know it is important to protect land and resources for future generations. Technology helps them meet current demands without sacrificing sustainability. Going back to See & Spray, since farmers can precisely spray weeds rather than their entire field, they reduce herbicide use by approximately 66%. Similarly, farmers can reduce starter fertilizer use by 60% by using sensing technology during planting. Just looking at corn production, fertilizer accounts for a large portion of total greenhouse gas emissions. By integrating technology with agriculture machines, we’re seeing an immediate, measurable impact on our environment.
CNBC: The adage that “every company is a tech company” has never felt more apt. Talk to us about your approach to recruiting, hiring, and retaining talent? What’s the pitch to data scientists, coders, and software engineers who might otherwise be looking at Big Tech jobs? Why John Deere?
Hindman: Technology, like AI and autonomy, isn’t a new concept at Deere. It is essential and already in fields with farmers today. But that’s only possible because of our heavy investment in innovation and our commitment to hiring and working with the best tech talent. That’s what makes recruiting and developing diverse teams of talent essential to our strategy and core values. It’s also what drives us to be an engineering and data-centric organization.
For data scientists, software engineers, and other tech-centric workers considering their next career move, I recommend pursuing a job in agriculture technology – and specifically at Deere – because it’s an opportunity to create something that benefits everyone in the world. You can innovate with existing technologies like IoT, connectivity, robotics, and sensors, or you can get ahead of the technology curve and bring new use cases to life. Regardless of what you’re working on, you’re reminded of our purpose at every meal.
On December 6, join the free, online CNBC Work Summit to hear from leaders and experts working in the AI space on how this emerging technology will transform the business of work as we know it. Learn more here.
“It will never happen again,” Bob Jordan said at an event Thursday at the Wings Club in New York.
Last year, Southwest canceled close to 17,000 flights over the crucial Christmas and New Year’s holiday period as it failed to recover from severe weather that gripped most of the country. Rival carriers were also affected but recovered more quickly.
Southwest struggled with staffing issues as storms left flight attendants and pilots out of position for their next flights, thousands of passenger bags piled up and planes were behind on de-icing.
The carrier has been stocking up in de-icing and other winter-weather equipment to prepare for the season throughout the year. It has also upgraded technology.
“Winter will not be perfect,” Jordan said. But he added that the airline is prepared for the season, pointing to a quick recovery after heavy snowfall in October at its key airport in Denver.
The DOT said the fine is 30 times larger than any fine it has issued for consumer protection violations. It includes a $35 million cash payment to the government, which Southwest said will be paid over three years. The agency ordered Southwest to set up a fund to compensate future travelers for flight disruptions in the airline’s control. The airline also received credit for $33 million for giving travelers affected by the disruption frequent flyer miles.
“Today’s action sets a new precedent and sends a clear message: if airlines fail their passengers, we will use the full extent of our authority to hold them accountable,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a news release.
Southwest didn’t provide enough customer assistance during the meltdown or give prompt flight change notifications, the DOT said.
“DOT’s investigation found that Southwest’s call center was overwhelmed, which at times led to a full call center queue and meant customers got a busy signal upon calling the customer service telephone number,” the agency said.
The airline also didn’t provide refunds or reimbursements in a timely manner, the DOT said, citing an audit of the process.
Southwest canceled nearly 17,000 flights during the year-end holiday period last year after it failed to recover as rivals also did from a severe winter storm, stranding some two million people and costing the airline more than $1 billion. It paid more than $600 million in reimbursements and refunds to customers alone.
Speaking at an industry event in New York last week, CEO Bob Jordan vowed that last year’s holiday meltdown “will never happen again,” just days ahead of the busy holiday travel period.
The carrier’s executives have touted a host of improvements this year that they say will help it avoid a repeat of last year. Southwest purchased additional de-icing equipment and upgraded crew scheduling technology that last year fell short of what it needed to reschedule pilots and flight attendants during the disruptions.
“We have spent the past year acutely focused on efforts to enhance the Customer Experience with significant investments and initiatives that accelerate operational resiliency, enhance cross-team collaboration and bolster overall preparedness for winter operations,” Jordan said in a news release Monday.
Southwest is the last of the largest U.S. passenger airlines to strike a deal that is set to give pilots big pay hikes.
The five-year deal is worth about $12 billion, Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, told CNBC on Tuesday. In comparison, larger rival United Airlines’ new four-year pilot contract is worth about $10 billion, according to the aviators’ union.
Southwest’s pilots will need to approve the contract. CNBC reported earlier this month that the company and the union were close to a deal.
If the agreement is approved, pilots would get 29.5% pay increases upon the contract’s signing.The deal would bring the hourly rate for a 12-plus year captain to $368.47 an hour and new first officer’s pay to $135.20 an hour by 2028, according to the union’s summary of the agreement.
The airline said it was “pleased” to reach the agreement in principle for the company’s nearly 11,000 pilots.
“The AIP is a key milestone in the process, and we look forward to the next steps,” it said in a statement.
American, United and Delta finalized pilot deals earlier this year that were worth billions and gave aviators double-digit pay hikes. The Covid-19 pandemic derailed negotiations across the sector, pausing pay increases across the highly unionized industry even when demand returned and inflation hit multidecade highs.
Once the contract becomes amendable, Southwest pilots would get 2.5% annual bonuses until the airline and union reach a new agreement.
FedEx pilots rejected an preliminary deal earlier this year, while UPS pilots’ union is set to start negotiations in mid-2024.
As travel demand snapped back, pilots, flight attendants and other aviation workers have pushed for not just higher pay, but also better working conditions such as more predictable schedules.
The new pilot contract would also improve pay for pilots who are on reserve, which requires them to stand by for an assignment.It also would include more generous retirement packages and per diem allotments for pilots.
Southwest’s flight attendants recently rejected a preliminary deal in a vote, though the union has said there will be a re-vote, citing complaints about technical glitches in online voting.
The company said it expects a low-single-digit decline in revenue for the fiscal year, down from a previous forecast for flat sales year over year. Analysts had expected a revenue drop of less than 1% in the current fiscal year, according to LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv.
It’s the second consecutive quarter FedEx has lowered its sales outlook.
The company’s Express unit, its largest, was especially challenged in the quarter with lower demand, surcharges and customers shifting to cheaper services, FedEx said.
“In the remainder of [fiscal] 2024, we expect revenue will continue to be pressured by volatile macroeconomic conditions, negatively affecting customer demand for our services across our transportation companies,” FedEx said in a filing. Its fiscal year ends May 31.
The company said, however, that operating income would improve thanks to its cost-cutting plan.
Here’s how FedEx performed versus Wall Street’s expectations:
For the three-month period ending Nov. 30, FedEx reported net income of $900 million, or $3.55 a share, versus $788 million, or $3.07 a share, a year earlier. Adjusting for certain items, the company posted earnings of $1.01 billion or $3.99 per share, up more than 25% from a year earlier but below analyst forecasts.
The company credited cost-cutting initiatives for its higher profit. Revenue fell 3% to $22.17 billion from a year earlier.
