The situation!
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- March 22, 2026
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The situation!
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Ultra-low-cost carriers have some of the newest, most fuel-efficient planes in the industry, but if travel demand in the United States falters as a result of growing macroeconomic uncertainty, paying for the new planes could become a barrier to profit. US carriers on Tuesday said that they were seeing stronger-than-expected spring travel demand. Still, as the US-Israeli war on Iran has pushed US jet fuel prices above $200 per barrel, legacy carriers are starting to trim capacity like United Airlines or could park aircraft to save on costs, a luxury that Frontier Airlines may not have. Frontier said it saw an improvement in demand in the first quarter as it filled gaps left by Spirit’s contraction on the West Coast. The company’s adjusted revenue per available seat mile, a proxy for pricing power, was trending higher before the fuel spike, a company spokesperson said. Greater fuel efficiency is a clear advantage as airlines’ largest expense after labour is jet fuel. On Thursday, jet fuel surpassed $200 per barrel, according to Kloza Advisors principal analyst Tom Kloza, compared to about $105 before the conflict began. Frontier started 2026 committed to raising its aircraft utilisation rate to cut costs and lower fares for customers. Frontier said it has the most fuel-efficient fleet in the US and that its fuel burn per passenger is 40% below its peers. “We start from a better place on a per-passenger basis, given the high-density business model we have, and the predominance of new aircraft in the fleet,” said James Dempsey, Frontier CEO, at the JP Morgan Industrials conference. But low-cost carriers’ success depends on keeping the planes moving. The most fuel-efficient planes are the newest and most costly, and if demand starts to waver, it is financially tough to park them, said Michael Linenberg, Deutsche Bank research analyst in a note. “It is far more ‘expensive’ for an airline to idle a new aircraft rather than an older one that is fully depreciated and financially unencumbered,” Linenberg said, adding that if fuel prices more than double, operating an aircraft that is 15% more efficient than the older generation does not even come close to offsetting the financial pain. Spirit, aiming to emerge from bankruptcy later this year, decided to return to lessors or sell most, possibly all, of its newer, more fuel-efficient Airbus A320neo aircraft, aviation industry analyst Henry Harteveldt said. The decision reflects the higher ownership costs of these newer jets, he said, which were too expensive for the airline to retain in its fleet. Spirit declined to comment. Frontier has also made moves to cut its fleet size, terminating the leases on 24 jets currently in service. It also deferred the induction of 69 A320neo jets, which were expected to be delivered between 2027 and 2030. The Denver-based carrier’s full-year fuel expenses fell 11% to $929mn in 2025 in part due to a 10% decrease in fuel costs. But Frontier’s aircraft rent expense rose 11% to $748mn in the same period, as it brought on new aircraft. A company spokesperson said Frontier was confident in its ability to weather the current volatile fuel environment. Dempsey this week said that Frontier was “following suit” other airlines in raising fares. As of December 2025, about 85% of Frontier’s fleet was the more fuel-efficient Airbus A320neo family aircraft. Christopher Anderson, a professor at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, said carriers with newer fleets face pressure to generate sufficient cash flow to service those aircraft. The issue is not new, added Tom Fitzgerald, TD Cowen equity analyst. “Even prior to the fuel spike there was a dynamic where ultra-low-cost-carriers with newer planes were lowering utilisation and facing the headwind from parking expensive new assets,” he said. Newer planes also come with a higher maintenance bill, Fitzgerald said. “The fuel efficiency gains of the new generation engines came at a price of durability.”
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Office workers toiling with blocked Internet. Teenagers continually forced to switch VPNs. Taxi drivers struggling to find their way around Moscow without online navigation. The Kremlin is flexing its muscles over the Internet. The government is periodically jamming the web in regions across Russia, while restricting messaging services Telegram and WhatsApp and taking down dozens of virtual private networks that can be used to swerve bans on sites and apps. Over the past week, mobile Internet has been completely down every day in parts of central Moscow, St Petersburg and other major cities, according to Reuters reporters in those areas and eight senior foreign diplomats in Russia. “These measures are taking place,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters when asked about restrictions to messaging apps and Internet service. “They are partly related to the fact that a number of foreign companies refuse to comply with the norms of Russian legislation, and partly due to security measures against the threat of Ukrainian drones.” Attack drones can use cellular networks to aid navigation. Russia’s online clampdown this year has been accompanied by the introduction of new laws which oblige mobile operators to cut off any client at the demand of the Federal Security Service and give the agency powers to create a network of pre-trial detention centres under its own jurisdiction. The broader aim of the bolstering of online powers is to help the Kremlin shore up domestic control in the context of the war against Ukraine, according to the diplomats who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Should the conflict drag on, it could increasingly strain popular support, the envoys said. Should the war end, Russian officials are likely keen to prepare for any dissent that may ensue, they added. One said Moscow had assembled powers that gave it the option to enact a “great crackdown” online. The end of Moscow’s war in Afghanistan in 1989 caused major social ructions in Russia with returning veterans fuelling a wave of lawlessness that blighted the 1990s. The chaos was compounded by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. “Russia’s leaders and security services remember 1991 and they remember what happened to Russia and what happened to them when Moscow stopped a big war in Afghanistan: the country collapsed, the security services were split apart — it was a disaster,” said Andrei Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist who is an expert on the security services. “What is happening now is that the security services are trying to create a situation in which — if Putin signs a peace deal or if Putin goes for a protracted war — it would not destroy the whole thing.” Two Russian sources with knowledge of the online clampdown said Moscow had studied the experience of other countries, particularly China and Iran, and had tasked authorities with developing a way to block swathes of the Internet, both mobile and fixed, while controlling online communications. KREMLIN TARGETS MESSAGING APPSAfter the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia imposed the most repressive laws seen since Soviet times, bolstering censorship powers and the influence of the FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB. This year, Moscow has further ratcheted up security. President Vladimir Putin, who served as a KGB officer from 1985-1990, marked the fourth anniversary of the Ukraine war on February 24 by attending the FSB’s annual meeting in Moscow. He told the agency to step up the fight against terrorism — in which he included attacks from Ukraine — while strengthening the “information and digital space”. Kremlin spokesman Peskov said that all measures were lawfully taken to ensure security amid the Ukraine conflict, which Putin casts as a confrontation with the West.Two Russian officials close to the Kremlin disputed that the moves against the Internet and messaging apps were repressive, casting them as essential to improve security and ensure national unity against an attempt by the West to sow discord. Russia’s state digital and communications watchdog, Roskomnadzor, did not reply to a request for comment. The eight diplomats said Moscow’s Internet crackdown this year went much further than they had seen before in the country. Mobile Internet has been periodically shut down in some Russian regions for months, often after major Ukrainian drone attacks. By mid-January, Russia has blocked from than 400 VPNs, 70% more than late last year, according to Kommersant newspaper. In recent weeks, the crackdown has intensified in Moscow, according to the diplomats and Reuters reporters, and the government has also moved against Dubai-based Telegram and US service WhatsApp. Last month, Russia slowed down Telegram, which has more than 1bn active users and is widely used in both Russia and Ukraine, and investigated its billionaire founder Pavel Durov as part of a criminal case involving accusations of terrorism. Russian officials said Telegram had been penetrated by Ukraine and Nato member intelligence agencies, and that Russian soldiers had died as a result. Telegram has denied it has been penetrated and said Moscow is trying to force Russians to use Max, a state-backed messenger app that schools and universities have been told to use for parent and student chat groups. “Each day, the authorities fabricate new pretexts to restrict Russians’ access to Telegram as they seek to suppress the right to privacy and free speech,” Durov told Reuters. “A sad spectacle of a state afraid of its own people.” The Kremlin also completely blocked WhatsApp last month for failing to comply with local law. The app’s owner, tech giant Meta, decried the move as a backwards step for people’s security in Russia. Some young Russians vowed to evade the clampdown by switching to different VPNs as services were banned, not for politics but simply to engage with Western apps such as Instagram and Snapchat, which are restricted in Russia. “If these quite old politicians want to block everything, why have they not made any Russian apps that are interesting?” said Andrei, who declined to give his second name due to the sensitivity of the situation.
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Johannesburg boasted grand public buildings and luxury hotels, but decades of state neglect and the exodus of wealthy residents and businesses have left the inner-city crime-ridden and crumbling.South Africa experiences some of the world’s highest
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Greenlandic candidates competing for two seats in Denmark’s election next week hope to leverage the unprecedented attention brought to their island by US President Donald Trump to wrangle concessions from its former colonial power. Trump’s
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The dangerous heat wave shattering March records all over the US Southwest is more than just another extreme weather blip. It’s the latest next-level weather wildness that is occurring ever more frequently as Earth’s warming
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President Donald Trump doesn’t need the SAVE America Act to pass. He only needs the debate to continue. Every minute spent arguing about voter suppression repeats the underlying premise — that noncitizen voting is a
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I have been living in Abu Dhabi for almost 10 years. But before coming to Abu Dhabi, I had worked and lived in Sharjah for many years. I had left Sharjah a decades ago, but
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The old world is over. This is Nigel Farage’s time. That’s the message pressed by the Reform UK leader and his allies who are betting that the powerful brand of populism that drove his successful Brexit campaign a decade ago can carry him all the way to 10 Downing Street. “The world is changing,” Farage told Reuters as Reform starts fleshing out its party’s proposed policies, which include carrying out mass deportations, ditching international human rights treaties and slashing overseas aid. He contrasted the comparatively warm welcome he’d received at the annual gathering of political and business leaders in Davos this year with the hostility he recalled in the past. “I would say a third of the delegates I met there were genuinely interested in who I was, what I was, what I was trying to do,” he added. “And next year it will be 50%.” Reform is riding high in UK opinion polls, with a significant lead over Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s governing Labour. The support has bolstered Farage’s case that the party, which has existed in its current form for five years, could win power at the next election, due by 2029. Farage said Reform’s plans would rip up what he sees as the orthodoxy of a liberal establishment responsible for “a progressive, woke ideology” that has left Britons ashamed of their country. He compared himself to his friend Donald Trump, as well as Hungarian leader Viktor Orban and Argentina’s Javier Milei, as figures bringing “very, very big changes” to the world. Traditional politicians are being left in the dust, Farage said in an interview at the launch of Reform’s manifesto for Wales in the city of Newport on March 5. “Keir Starmer is stuck in a mindset that is 15 years out of date,” the 61-year-old added. While Farage is a highly divisive figure in Britain, his campaigning and political acumen have seen him forge, from the crucible of the 2016 Brexit referendum, one of the most potent of the patriotic populist movements sweeping the globe. He and Reform nonetheless face a stiff challenge to convince voters they are ready to lead the country, having little prior experience of government and counting only eight lawmakers in Britain’s 650-seat parliament. Inflammatory rhetoric, such as talk of an “invasion” of illegal migrants, as well as allegations of racism that have led to several members being ejected, have turned off some voters who fear a Reform government would stoke division. A former leader of Reform in Wales was also jailed in November for taking bribes to make pro-Russian speeches, offences condemned by the party as “reprehensible, treasonous and unforgivable”. “Reform’s biggest strength is also its biggest weakness - namely, Nigel Farage,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at London’s Queen Mary university. “He’s adored by those who are absolutely determined to vote Reform but hated by those determined to vote against it - and disliked and distrusted by far too many who might otherwise be tempted to move in its direction.” Reform’s growing policy list, compiled here by Reuters from public statements and conversations with Farage and 10 current and former advisers, also includes plans to scrap diversity initiatives and net-zero targets, maximise oil and gas production, take the axe to Britain’s civil service and transform the country into a crypto hub. Critics have described the agenda, which Reform says should be a fully developed policy platform by the end of the year, as little more than an echo of the programme pursued by the US Trump administration - a characterisation that Farage rejects. Reform’s policies are underpinned by “simple values”, Farage said, focused on “family, community, country”. Labour has long accused the party of flip-flopping on issues including Britain’s public health service. “Reform don’t have a proper policy platform. Their ideas don’t make sense,” a Labour official said. FARAGE ‘HAS INSTINCTS NOT IDEOLOGY’Like their boss, Farage’s advisers often speak in epochal terms about the sweeping away of liberal elites clinging onto the “rules-based international order”. “You need to be asking: What is your new destination?” said Alan Mendoza, Reform’s chief adviser on global affairs. “Because the old, the old world, has gone. It’s over.” The party’s new head of policy, James Orr — a philosophy professor at the University of Cambridge and friend of US Vice-President JD Vance - spoke of Farage’s ability to connect with voters. “I’m hesitant to use the word philosophy about Nigel,” the 47-year-old told Reuters at a private members’ club in London’s wealthy Mayfair area. “He has instincts, not ideology.” Orr’s dismissal of elites stems from bruising experiences around the Brexit referendum, which saw Britons vote to leave the European Union by 52% to 48%. When doing post-doctorate research at the University of Oxford in 2016, he describes being the “only out-of-the-closet Brexiteer” among academics at his college. By contrast, his stance was backed by “the porters, the butlers, the maintenance department and the gardeners and the groundsmen”. Farage has indeed branded himself a man of the people leading a people’s revolution. Despite his euroscepticism, it was in Brussels that he met two of his biggest political influences — Beppe Grillo, the comic who co-founded Italy’s anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, and his social media guru Roberto Casaleggio. “Grillo weaponised social media and Nigel gets it,” said a former adviser who has been close to Farage since the beginning of his political career and requested anonymity to speak freely. “For a man who has never really turned on a computer in his life, he really gets it.” The main opposition Conservative Party, like traditional rival Labour, dismisses the idea of Reform coming up with coherent policymaking. The Conservatives have been outflanked by Farage on the right, losing many voters to Reform and seeing some of their most high-profile figures defect. “Reform are not serious people and they are not going to solve any of your problems,” Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch told a party forum on March 7. “Reform have absolutely no idea what they want Britain to look like in the 2030s.” FARAGE ON TRUMP AND MAGAReform figures also stress their close relations with American decision-makers could prove an asset in government. “With this administration, I happen to know most of the members of cabinet on a personal basis and have for many, many years,” Farage told Reuters. He said he agreed with Trump on big issues, such as global security, recognising “Iran is the bad actor in the Middle East” and understanding “China wants to take over and dominate our lives”. On controlling borders and producing energy at home, he added, the pair are aligned. Farage bridles, though, when asked whether he is copying Trump’s MAGA movement. “To some extent they copy what we were doing back in the run-up to the referendum,” he said. “I have always gone for bells and whistles and fireworks and fun, and whilst we believe in what we’re doing, we have a good time as well.” Orr, Reform’s policy chief, said Vance “hates what the technocrats and the elites have unleashed on Europe and Britain” and the US simply wants Europe to stand on its own two feet on security. One source with knowledge of Reform’s operations said officials close to Farage often visit Washington to try to raise money and drum up business support for the party. The officials are targeting those British businesses and business owners that oppose the UK tax regime and have largely quit the nation, the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity to speak freely. They hold dinners and events to draw people in and attend conferences to target “high earners” who have moved abroad. That strategy helped Reform raise 5.5mn pounds ($7.3mn) in the fourth quarter of last year, taking the party’s total take of cash donations to 18mn pounds in 2025, according to Electoral Commission data. At least two-thirds of that money, which dwarfed Labour’s 8.1mn pounds, came from donors who live abroad, the data shows. Mendoza, Reform’s global affairs adviser, said Britain must prove its utility to Washington, investing “serious money into defence” and showing “you’re willing to play a larger role”, if it wishes to maintain a serious security relationship. That would combat what he said was a belief in the Trump administration that Britain was “a weak and feeble country”.
