Last week, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) completed the safety review Southwest Airlines LUV following a series of incidents involving flights operated by the Dallas-based airline. The FAA review found no significant safety issues.

American Airlines AAL operations were briefly interrupted on Christmas Eve due to a technical glitch. Allegiant travel company ALGT raised its earnings per share forecast, mainly due to strong bookings in the post-election period and strong demand for leisure travel.

Read the latest airline roundup here.

1. loyalty The company now expects its capacity (measured in available seat miles) for scheduled service to increase 1.8% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2024. This represents an improvement from the previous expectation of 1.5%. Total system ASM is now forecast to increase 1.9% year-over-year (previous forecast: increase 1.5%). Earnings per share (airline) are expected to be in the range of $2.50 to $3.00 (previous forecast: 50 cents to $1.50). Consolidated fourth quarter earnings per share (EPS), excluding items, are expected to be between $1.75 and $2.25. This represents an improvement over the previous expectation of a breakeven of $1 per share.

2. Southwest Airlines Flights were involved in a series of safety-related incidents between May and July this year. This included an LUV aircraft that flew very low from the ground to Tampa. As a result, the FAA tightened safety oversight of LUV to ensure the air carrier complied with federal safety regulations and began a review in July. The FAA completed its review and gave the all-clear on the LUV’s safety procedures.

LUV currently sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

3. All American Airlines Flights in the United States were suspended for an hour on December 24 due to a network hardware problem DXC technology DXC, one of its providers. The disruption also caused some AAL flights to be delayed. The technical error led to inconvenience for passengers on one of the busiest travel days. The error was corrected and normal operations could be resumed. DXC is responsible for maintaining AAL’s flight operations systems.

The table below shows the price movement of major airline players over the past week and over the past six months.

Image source: Zacks Investment Research

The NYSE ARCA Airline Index rose 2.5% to $68.2 as most stocks in the table above traded in the green. Over the past six months, the NYSE ARCA Airline Index is up 19.7%.

The story continues