The 1986 Air Carrier Access Act requires airlines to provide a wheelchair for passengers with disabilities at the airport. The problem, though, is that many travelers are faking it, Frontier Airlines CEO Barry Biffle said.

“There is massive, rampant abuse of special services. There are people using wheelchair assistance who don’t need it at all,” Biffle said at a Wings Club luncheon on Thursday in New York.

He said he has seen some Frontier flights where 20 people were brought in wheelchairs at departure, with only three using them upon arrival.

“We are healing so many people,” he joked.

Biffle wasn’t talking about travelers’ personal wheelchairs, but rather the service airlines provide when travelers arrive at the airport.

It costs the airline between $30 and $35 each time a customer requests a wheelchair, Biffle said, and abuse of the service leads to delays for travelers with a genuine need for assistance.

“Everyone should be entitled to it who needs it, but you park in a handicapped space they will tow your car and fine you,” he told CNBC. “There should be the same penalty for abusing these services.”

Biffle isn’t the only executive to complain about travelers falsely claiming they need access to a wheelchair at the airport.

In July 2022, John Holland-Kaye, the then-CEO of London’s Heathrow Airport, told LBC Radio amid staffing shortages that some travelers were “using wheelchair support to try to get fast-tracked through the airport.”

“If you go on TikTok, that is one of the travel hacks people are recommending,” he said. “Please don’t do that. We need to protect the service for people who need it most.”

John Morris, a triple amputee and founder of WheelchairTravel.org, noted there are reasons why some travelers might need wheelchairs on their outbound leg but not upon arrival. For example, they could need the help to get through a large airport like in Atlanta or New York City, but not so at smaller facilities.

“Disability impacts people in a lot of different ways,” he said.

“I think there’s a good case to be made that abusers should face some consequence but I’m not sure how we do that in a society when our disabilities aren’t [always] visible,” Morris said.

Earlier this year, the Department of Transportation proposed stricter rules aimed at preventing wheelchair damage by airport ground handlers and ensuring “prompt assistance” to travelers with disabilities when getting on and off the plane.

Airspace closures through the Middle East grounded and diverted flights on Saturday as Iran launched drones toward Israel.

United Airlines, which resumed service to Tel Aviv early last month after suspending Israel flights after the Hamas attacks in October, called off its Newark to Tel Aviv flight on Saturday after Israel closed its airspace. Jordan and Iraq had also closed their airspace, according to Jordanian state-owned media news outlet Al Mamlaka.

“We are closely monitoring the situation and will make decisions on upcoming flights with a focus on the safety of our customers and crews,” United said in a statement. The carrier is the only U.S. airline to have resumed service to Israel since October. Delta was scheduled to restart flights to Tel Aviv on June. 7. American Airlines has not resumed Israel service.

United also canceled its flight from Washington Dulles International Airport to Amman, Jordan on Saturday night, “due to unrest in the Middle East.”

It was not clear when flights would resume.

Flight-tracking site Flightradar24 said multiple flights bound for Tel Aviv and Amman had diverted on Saturday.

Airlines also canceled service scheduled for Sunday. Israel’s El Al cancelled more than 20 Sunday flights. Two El Al flights headed for Israel from Thailand diverted to Bangkok. The carrier told passengers not to come to the airport until notified.

Emirates Airline canceled its Dubai-Amman flight scheduled for Sunday. Air France’s Israel service was canceled for Sunday and British Airways canceled its two flights to Tel Aviv on Sunday and scrubbed a flight to Amman. Lufthansa also canceled its service to Israel.

Nintendo is likely to release a new Switch console this year, analysts told CNBC, as the Japanese gaming giant looks to capitalize on the interest in its characters ranging from Mario to Zelda.

The Nintendo Switch first launched in March 2017 and marked a new type of hybrid console where gamers could play on their TVs but then take their controller, attach it to a tablet, and game on the go.

This approach, which combined the at-home aspects of console gaming with the portability of mobile games, proved very popular with gamers. Nintendo has sold 132.46 units of the Switch, making it the company’s second-most successful console after the handheld Nintendo DS.

Since the Switch’s launch, Nintendo’s shares are up more than 200%. The console has helped the company sustain sales momentum over the years thanks to its steady and strong stream of first-party games and popular characters.

Games involving Mario, Zelda and Pokemon are among the Switch’s best sellers.

But there are signs that sales are starting to slow and Nintendo needs something new. In its September-quarter results, Nintendo said revenue fell 4% year-on-year and profit dropped 19%.

“I think the new device will come out in 2024, probably in the second half of the year,” Serkan Toto, CEO of Tokyo-based games consultancy Kantan Games, told CNBC.

“The original Switch is now almost 7 years old, sales are going down … So it’s absolutely high time for a new Nintendo system this year.”

Piers Harding-Rolls, research director of games at Ampere Analysis, expects the launch of the new Switch in the fourth quarter of this year.

For Atul Goyal, managing director at Jefferies, the timings of the launch will depend on recent sales. If the Switch remained popular in the holiday quarter then Nintendo could push a new console out to the Fall of this year, Goyal said. If Switch sales dropped in the December quarter, the new device could come as early as Spring or Summer, he added.

Nintendo has not announced its December-quarter results yet.

Launching a new console this year will also allow Nintendo to capitalize on the popularity of a number of its key characters following movie releases. “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” has raked in more than $1 billion in box office sales since its April release and helped Nintendo see a bump in revenue in the June quarter of last year. In November, Nintendo said it plans to develop a live-action film of The Legend of Zelda, one of its most popular characters.

Not much at this point as the company has been tight-lipped on what’s next. Analysts are expecting what they’re dubbing the “Switch 2” to follow the hybrid approach set out by its predecessor.

“I’m expecting Nintendo’s next console to be a Switch follow-up, as the hybrid device approach has been so successful,” Harding-Rolls said, adding that there’s likely to be an upgrade in capabilities to the company’s console controllers too.

Kantan Games’ Toto said he expects the successor to be a “new device and not just an upgrade.”

“Nintendo needs to drastically improve specs after 7 years, so they will absolutely release a successor,” Toto said.

Such an appraoch, building on the success of the Switch, makes sense to many.

“An evolution, not a revolution, in the console strategy is likely. In other words, an iPhone model. With that comes the opportunity to ease the 130M+ Switch audience into a familiar but more powerful form factor, and the ability for Nintendo to sell compelling 1st (and 3rd) party games to a scaled audience,” analysts at Moffett Nathanson wrote in a note in December.

Harding-Rolls said the performance of the new console will be impacted by the availability of the product. But he said he can see it “achieving similar levels to the original Switch during its first Q4 sales period,” which equates to around 7 million or 8 million units sold to consumers.

Analysts at Moffett Nathanson said the Switch 2 is unlikely to “match or surpass the Switch,” arguing the current Nintendo console benefitted from people buying gaming consoles while staying at home during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Still, the analysts said “this next console can match or even exceed the early performance of the Switch but trail off as we get into year four and beyond,” as Covid-inflated comparisons of Nintendo’s fiscal year in 2021 and 2022 are “too challenging to overcome.”

The Federal Aviation Administration on Saturday ordered a temporary grounding of dozens of Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft for inspections, a day after a piece of the aircraft blew out in the middle of an Alaska Airlines flight.

Images and video of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 that were shared on social media showed a gaping hole on the side of the plane and passengers using oxygen masks before it returned to Portland shortly after taking off for Ontario, California, on Friday afternoon.

The FAA’s emergency airworthiness directive will affect about 171 planes worldwide and applies to U.S. airlines and carriers operating in U.S. territory, the agency said.

No serious injuries were reported on the flight, according to federal safety officials. There were 171 passengers and six crewmembers on board, Alaska Air said.

“Safety will continue to drive our decision-making as we assist the NTSB’s investigation into Alaska Airlines Flight 1282,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said in a statement.

Large-scale groundings of aircraft by the FAA or other aviation authorities are rare. The FAA has heavily scrutinized the Boeing 737 Max since two fatal crashes grounded the jetliner worldwide almost five years ago. Two other models of the Max, the smallest and largest version, have not yet been cleared by the agency to enter commercial service.

The section of the fuselage missing appeared to correspond to an exit not used by Alaska Airlines, or other carriers that don’t have high-density seating configurations, and was plugged.

The incident was described as “an explosive decompression at the window exit,” said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, the labor union that represents Alaska’s cabin crew and flight attendants at United, Spirit and other carriers.

Anthony Brickhouse, a professor of aerospace safety at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said such an incident is extremely rare.

“Rapid decompression is a serious matter,” he said. “To see a gaping hole in an aircraft is not something we typically see. In aviation safety, we would call this a structural failure.”

The incident is also a reminder to keep your seatbelt fastened when seated, he added.

“I always advise people on a commercial aircraft, keep your seatbelt on regardless of what the light says,” Brickhouse said.

A passenger didn’t appear to be seated in the seat next to the panel.

Before the FAA issued its directive, Alaska Airlines earlier said it would ground its fleet of Boeing 737 Max 9 planes. Alaska said on Saturday afternoon that of the 65 Boeing 737 Max 9 planes in its fleet, 18 “had in-depth and thorough plug door inspections performed as part of a recent heavy maintenance visit.”

Those planes were returned to service on Saturday, Alaska said.

More than 140 flights, about 14% of Alaska’s schedule, were canceled on Saturday, according to FlightAware.

The National Transportation Safety Board sent a team to Portland on Saturday to investigate the incident.

United Airlines, the largest operator of the planes in the U.S., had prepared to ground dozens of its Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft for inspections, CNBC reported earlier.

United has 79 Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft in its fleet but just over 30 of them have already “received the necessary inspection that is required by the FAA,” the airline said. The inspections were expected to cause about 60 flight cancellations on Saturday, United said.

The FAA said the inspections will take between four and eight hours per plane.

The Boeing 737 Max 9 is a larger version of Boeing’s best-selling jetliner, the 737 Max 8. Max planes were grounded worldwide in 2019 after two fatal crashes within about five months of one another. The U.S. lifted its flight ban on the jets in late 2020 after software and training updates.

The Boeing 737 Max 9 has an emergency exit door cut behind the wings for use in dense seating cabin configurations, like those used by budget airlines, according to Flightradar24.

“The doors are not activated on Alaska Airlines aircraft and are permanently ‘plugged,'” Flightradar24 said.

Boeing didn’t comment beyond its statement when asked about the sealed emergency exit door. Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the fuselages for the planes, referred CNBC to Boeing when asked about the incident.

“Safety is our top priority and we deeply regret the impact this event has had on our customers and their passengers,” Boeing said in a statement on Saturday. “We agree with and fully support the FAA’s decision to require immediate inspections of 737-9 airplanes with the same configuration as the affected airplane.”

The company said it is supporting the NTSB’s investigation.

There are 215 Boeing 737 Max 9 planes in service worldwide, according to aviation-data firm Cirium. In addition to United and Alaska Air, other operators include Aeromexico, Turkish Airlines, Icelandair and Panama’s Copa Airlines.

Southwest Airlines and American Airlines operate the smaller 737 Max 8.

Late last year, Boeing urged airlines to inspect aircraft for a “possible” loose bolt in the rudder control system, the latest in a series of manufacturing flaws on Boeing jets that have prompted additional inspections, and slowed deliveries of the jets.

Billionaire Charlie Munger, the investing sage who made a fortune even before he became Warren Buffett’s right-hand man at Berkshire Hathaway, has died at age 99.

Munger died Tuesday, according to a press release from Berkshire Hathaway. The conglomerate said it was advised by members of Munger’s family that he peacefully died this morning at a California hospital. He would have turned 100 on New Year’s Day.

“Berkshire Hathaway could not have been built to its present status without Charlie’s inspiration, wisdom and participation,” Buffett said in a statement.

In addition to being Berkshire vice chairman, Munger was a real estate attorney, chairman and publisher of the Daily Journal Corp., a member of the Costco board, a philanthropist and an architect.

In early 2023, his fortune was estimated at $2.3 billion — a jaw-dropping amount for many people but vastly smaller than Buffett’s unfathomable fortune, which is estimated at more than $100 billion.

During Berkshire’s 2021 annual shareholder meeting, the then-97-year-old Munger apparently inadvertently revealed a well-guarded secret: that Vice Chairman Greg Abel “will keep the culture” after the Buffett era.

Munger, who wore thick glasses, had lost his left eye after complications from cataract surgery in 1980.

Munger was chairman and CEO of Wesco Financial from 1984 to 2011, when Buffett’s Berkshire purchased the remaining shares of the Pasadena, California-based insurance and investment company it did not own.

Buffett credited Munger with broadening his investment strategy from favoring troubled companies at low prices in hopes of getting a profit to focusing on higher-quality but underpriced companies.

An early example of the shift was illustrated in 1972 by Munger’s ability to persuade Buffett to sign off on Berkshire’s purchase of See’s Candies for $25 million even though the California candy maker had annual pretax earnings of only about $4 million. It has since produced more than $2 billion in sales for Berkshire.

“He weaned me away from the idea of buying very so-so companies at very cheap prices, knowing that there was some small profit in it, and looking for some really wonderful businesses that we could buy in fair prices,” Buffett told CNBC in May 2016.

Or as Munger put it at the 1998 Berkshire shareholder meeting: “It’s not that much fun to buy a business where you really hope this sucker liquidates before it goes broke.”

Munger was often the straight man to Buffett’s jovial commentaries. “I have nothing to add,” he would say after one of Buffett’s loquacious responses to questions at Berkshire annual meetings in Omaha, Nebraska. But like his friend and colleague, Munger was a font of wisdom in investing, and in life. And like one of his heroes, Benjamin Franklin, Munger’s insight didn’t lack humor.

“I have a friend who says the first rule of fishing is to fish where the fish are. The second rule of fishing is to never forget the first rule. We’ve gotten good at fishing where the fish are,” the then-93-year-old Munger told the thousands of people at Berkshire’s 2017 meeting.

He believed in what he called the “lollapalooza effect,” in which a confluence of factors merged to drive investment psychology.

Charles Thomas Munger was born in Omaha on Jan. 1, 1924. His father, Alfred, was a lawyer, and his mother, Florence “Toody,” was from an affluent family. Like Warren, Munger worked at Buffett’s grandfather’s grocery store as a youth, but the two future joined-at-the-hip partners didn’t meet until years later.

At 17, Munger left Omaha for the University of Michigan. Two years later, in 1943, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, according to Janet Lowe’s 2003 biography “Damn Right!”

The military sent him to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena to study meteorology. In California, he fell in love with his sister’s roommate at Scripps College, Nancy Huggins, and married her in 1945. Although he never completed his undergraduate degree, Munger graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1948, and the couple moved back to California, where he practiced real estate law. He founded the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson in 1962 and focused on managing investments at the hedge fund Wheeler, Munger & Co., which he also founded that year.

“I’m proud of being an Omaha boy,” Munger said in a 2017 interview with Dean Scott Derue of the Michigan Ross Business School. “I sometimes use the old saying, ‘They got the boy out of Omaha but they never got Omaha out of the boy.’ All those old-fashioned values — family comes first; be in a position so that you can help others when troubles come; prudent, sensible; moral duty to be reasonable [is] more important than anything else — more important than being rich, more important than being important — an absolute moral duty.”

In California, he partnered with Franklin Otis Booth, a member of the founding family of the Los Angeles Times, in real estate. One of their early developments turned out to be a lucrative condo project on Booth’s grandfather’s property in Pasadena. (Booth, who died in 2008, had been introduced to Buffett by Munger in 1963 and became one of Berkshire’s largest investors.)

“I had five real estate projects,” Munger told Derue. “I did both side by side for a few years, and in a very few years, I had $3 million — $4 million.”

Munger closed the hedge fund in 1975. Three years later, he became vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.

In 1959, at age 35, Munger returned to Omaha to close his late father’s legal practice. That’s when he was introduced to the then-29-year-old Buffett by one of Buffett’s investor clients. The two hit it off and stayed in contact despite living half a continent away from each other.

“We think so much alike that it’s spooky,” Buffett recalled in an interview with the Omaha World-Herald in 1977. “He’s as smart and as high-grade a guy as I’ve ever run into.”

“We never had an argument in the entire time we’ve known each other, which is almost 60 years now,” Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick in 2018. “Charlie has given me the ultimate gift that a person can give to somebody else. He’s made me a better person than I would have otherwise been. … He’s given me a lot of good advice over time. … I’ve lived a better life because of Charlie.”

The melding of the minds focused on value investing, in which stocks are picked because their price appears to be undervalued based on the company’s long-term fundamentals.

“All intelligent investing is value investing — acquiring more than you are paying for,” Munger once said. “You must value the business in order to value the stock.”

But during the coronavirus outbreak in early 2020, when Berkshire suffered a massive $50 billion loss in the first quarter, Munger and Buffett were more conservative than they were during the Great Recession, when they invested in U.S. airlines and financials like Bank of America and Goldman Sachs hit hard by that downturn.

“Well, I would say basically we’re like the captain of a ship when the worst typhoon that’s ever happened comes,” Munger told The Wall Street Journal in April 2020. “We just want to get through the typhoon, and we’d rather come out of it with a whole lot of liquidity. We’re not playing, ‘Oh goody, goody, everything’s going to hell, let’s plunge 100% of the reserves’ [into buying businesses].” 

Munger donated hundreds of millions of dollars to educational institutions, including the University of Michigan, Stanford University and Harvard Law School, often with the stipulation that the school accept his building designs, even though he was not formally trained as an architect.

At Los Angeles’ Harvard-Westlake prep school, where Munger had been a board member for decades, he ensured that the girls bathrooms were larger than the boys room during the construction of the science center in the 1990s.

“Any time you go to a football game or a function there’s a huge line outside the women’s bathroom. Who doesn’t know that they pee in a different way than the men?” Munger told The Wall Street Journal in 2019. “What kind of idiot would make the men’s bathroom and the women’s bathroom the same size? The answer is, a normal architect!”

Munger and his wife had three children, daughters Wendy and Molly, and son Teddy, who died of leukemia at age 9. The Mungers divorced in 1953.

Two years later, he married Nancy Barry, whom he met on a blind date at a chicken dinner restaurant. The couple had four children, Charles Jr., Emilie, Barry and Philip. He also was the stepfather to her two other sons, William Harold Borthwick and David Borthwick. The Mungers, who were married 54 years until her death in 2010, contributed $43.5 million to Stanford University to help build the Munger Graduate Residence, which houses 600 law and graduate students.

Asked by CNBC’s Quick in a February 2019 “Squawk Box” interview about the secret to a long and happy life, Munger said the answer “is easy, because it’s so simple.”

“You don’t have a lot of envy, you don’t have a lot of resentment, you don’t overspend your income, you stay cheerful in spite of your troubles. You deal with reliable people and you do what you’re supposed to do. And all these simple rules work so well to make your life better. And they’re so trite,” he said.

“And staying cheerful … because it’s a wise thing to do. Is that so hard? And can you be cheerful when you’re absolutely mired in deep hatred and resentment? Of course you can’t. So why would you take it on?”

— CNBC’s Yun Li contributed reporting.

In air travel, minutes matter.

A few moments could be the difference between making and missing a connection for passengers — and could avoid delays that ripple across the schedule for airlines. Saved time could even lead to big savings for carriers as they scramble to get a handle on costs.

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.

The technology helped reduce taxi time by 20% and halved gate changes and conflicts, according to the carrier.

“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.

American isn’t alone in looking to shave off a few minutes.

United Airlines last month launched a new boarding procedure for economy class, accommodating window-seat passengers first followed by the middle and then the aisle. United told staff the changes could save it up to two minutes per flight.

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.

“When you actually plan shorter flight times, you have more airplanes available,” 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.

Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO:

Travelers are flocking to airport lounges in search of complimentary food, drinks and perhaps most importantly, a chance to relax away from the hordes of travelers at the gate. The problem: plenty of other travelers are too.

Armed with high-end rewards credit cards and fresh from years of big spending, more and more travelers are gaining access to airport lounges, turning what were once small, exclusive spaces for an elite few into a must-have stop for millions of passengers.

The trend has posed both an opportunity and a challenge for airlines and credit card companies as they market luxury to the masses. The spaces have to be both exclusive and attainable for enough people.

For top frequent flyers and certain credit card holders, standard airline lounge access is complimentary or discounted. Individual annual lounge memberships run between $650 and $850 for the major U.S. carriers, which have raised prices in recent years.

Delta Air Lines Sky Club lounges — and the credit cards that grant entry to them — became so popular that customers complained about the long lines and crowds at many locations. The airline in response curbed access for employees, instituted time limits and in its most controversial move yet, announced annual limits on visits for many credit card holders — even stripping some credit cards of access altogether.

But many customers complained about those changes, too, saying they were too strict. This week, Delta walked back some of the changes, highlighting how hard it has become to strike the right balance between exclusivity and access.

“Any wait is too long, and we are doing everything we can to minimize that,” Delta’s chief customer experience officer, Allison Ausband, told CNBC last summer at the opening of a new, larger Sky Club at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

She said the lounges are “not a profit center for Delta by any means” but are an “investment that we’re making in the premium experience for our customers.”

Delta executives have said that revenue growth for its premium products like business class has outpaced that of main cabin economy.

Delta, United Airlines and American Airlines are racing to build more lounges and spaces and larger ones to fit high demand.

They have also divided, or are planning to divide their lounges into different tiers. United, for example, opened a grab-and-go express club at its hub at Denver International Airport last year, for travelers making tight connections, which the carrier said could free up space in more full-service lounges.

The carrier separately operates a network of Polaris lounges for travelers booked in its highest cabin class, usually on long-haul international routes.

Delta is in the process of building a network of highest-tier lounges aimed at travelers in its Delta One suites and other top customers. Those spaces are slated to begin opening next year, starting with one at Kennedy Airport, followed by Los Angeles and Boston.

Credit card issuers such as JPMorgan Chase, Capital One and American Express are also opening new spaces in airports, eager to attract and retain high-spending customers.

“Customers reward companies that take care of them and that are on their side and and that create amazing experiences,” said Jenn Scheurich, head of travel at Capital One.

The company has opened clubs at Washington Dulles International Airport and Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and plans to open one at Denver International Airport early next month, with other projects at New York’s LaGuardia Airport and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

Capital One Venture X cardholders pay a $395 annual fee for that card, which comes with unlimited access to the company’s lounges, as well as access for two guests. The general public can get in for $65 a visit.

Chase opened its first Chase Sapphire lounge in Hong Kong in 2022 and its first in the U.S., at Boston Logan International Airport, in May, featuring a tap room and massage chairs. It’s planning to open other lounges at LaGuardia Airport, Washington Dulles, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and San Diego.

Those lounges are open to customers with Chase Sapphire Reserve cards, which have a $550 annual fee, along with two guests.

Neeraj Khemlani, the president and co-head of CBS News and Stations, is stepping down from his role, according to a Sunday report from Variety.

Khemlani told employees in a memo on Sunday he is leaving his current position for a new “multi-year first-look” deal at CBS where he will create content like documentaries, scripted series and books, the report said. In his current role, Khemlani is responsible for running CBS News, its local stations and popular programs like “Face the Nation,” “60 Minutes” and “CBS Evening News.”

“I’m so proud of what all of you have accomplished — the scores of journalistic wins, the superb storytelling, the creativity that enhanced every aspect of our programming — that has put this division on a stronger path forward,” Khemlani said in the memo, according to Variety.

Paramount, which owns CBS, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It is not immediately clear who will succeed Khemlani, but CBS could announce the new executive as soon as Monday, Variety said.

Khemlani began his tenure at CBS in April 2021. Before joining the network, Khemlani spent more than 10 years at Hearst, where he held a number of leadership roles like executive vice president of Hearst Newspapers, president of Hearst Entertainment and Syndication and chief creative officer.

Khemlani’s departure marks the latest major leadership shakeup at a news network this year. CNN’s Chris Licht left the company in June after he faced a rebellion among the network’s talent and staff.

Media companies have been grappling with a soft advertising market, particularly affecting the traditional TV business. Networks are also gearing up for what is expected to be another contentious election cycle in 2024.

As of market close Friday, shares of Paramount are down around 9.5% year to date. In the company’s earnings report for the quarter ended June 30, Paramount reported revenue of $7.62 billion for the quarter, down about 2% year-over-year, as the company’s TV segment was once again dragged down by lower advertising revenue.

LOS ANGELES – It’s the billion-dollar question: Why are blockbusters in short supply this year?

universal The Super Mario Bros. movie. Movie is the only movie released in 2023 to so far pass the billion dollar mark at the global box office. It doesn’t look like there could be another, even with some big titles on the calendar.

“If you were to give 10 people a release schedule at the beginning of the year and say, ‘We’re only going to have one billion-dollar movie out of all these movies, and can you choose which movie that’s going to be? Mike Polidoros, CEO of film marketing firm PaperAirplane Media, said, “I don’t think anyone would have taken a Super Mario Bros. movie to the next level.”

The lack of billionaires marks a sea change in the industry. In the years leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic, and even last year, there were many megabytes that exceeded $1 billion of the global total.

The lack of these types of blockbusters in 2023 is especially evident Disney, which owns the Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and Legacy of Fairy Tale franchises. While the studio is well on its way to being the ruler of the box office this year, it’s had a series of missteps in recent months that have raised concerns that audience preferences are changing too quickly for Hollywood to adapt.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania failed to draw audiences beyond Marvel’s die-hard fans in February, grossing just $214.5 million domestically and less than $500 million worldwide. “Elemental,” which was released just last month, currently holds the second-lowest domestic showing of any Pixar film in the studio’s history, narrowly eclipsing 2020’s “Onward,” which experienced a shortfall at the box office due to the pandemic.

At Disney’s Lucasfilm, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” which hits theaters June 30, is expected to struggle to make back its roughly $300 million production budget. To date, it has grossed $122.1 million at the domestic box office and $221.4 million worldwide.

“On the whole, I see Disney in a situation that was mostly expected to be emerging from the pandemic and going through yet another leadership change,” said Sean Robbins, a senior analyst at BoxOffice.com. “These two hugely influential players have reshaped the studio’s stature in many ways, especially at the box office when considering the past decade that has seen their best franchises and their brand on all cylinders. This kind of momentum just wouldn’t have been sustainable without occasional ebbs and flows.”

Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC’s David Faber Thursday that the company will cut Marvel and Star Wars content as it seeks to cut costs and revamp its brands.

A bright spot for Disney has come in the form of James Gunn’s final arc at Marvel Studios. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is the third-highest-grossing domestic release so far this year, with $357.5 million. It follows behind Sony’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”. Gunn is now helping helm Warner Bros. Pictures. DC Discovery Studios.

The third Guardians movie has managed to secure $834.2 million worldwide since its May release, but it likely won’t reach the coveted $1 billion threshold.

Notably, Disney’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” generated more than $1 billion in global ticket sales in 2023, but since it was released in 2022, it’s not considered a billion-dollar movie of the year.

“The billion-dollar club seems to be getting more exclusive in 2023,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at comScore. “Despite many high-profile titles featuring some of the biggest movie brands and franchises, this year’s crop so far lacks the global footprint or sheer market dominance to cross the billion-dollar threshold in what has been a competitive global film market.”

The Chinese market, in particular, was a major driving force in its previous multibillion-dollar box office hit, but the region has been more selective about which Hollywood films are allowed to be shown in the country. China has also developed its own lucrative film market.

For example, most Marvel films released pre-pandemic saw 15% to 22% of all ticket sales from China. In the aftermath of the pandemic, only a few of these comic book movies have been released to screens in the country and those that have have seen significantly less revenue.

The first two Ant-Man movies, which were released in 2015 and 2018, brought in about 20% of ticket sales from China. Meanwhile, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania saw just 8% of tickets sold in China.

“Globally, China’s evolution into a market that can no longer be relied upon for massive offerings by some of the films and franchises that used to do so leaves a gap that may be too big to fill in the short term,” Robbins said.

Lower Chinese ticket sales coupled with slower-than-expected returns from domestic moviegoers have hampered big blockbusters in 2023, dragging down the number of multi-billion-dollar blockbusters.

In the past decade, the number of global multi-billion dollar earners has increased exponentially, with Disney responsible for the majority of the chart-topping titles. In fact, the studio earned at least $1 billion every year from 2014 through 2019, when it had seven billion dollars worth of movies.

He didn’t make a $1 billion movie in 2020 or 2021 due to pandemic restrictions, but the 2022 movie “Avatar: The Way of Water” crossed $2 billion.

“Because 2019 was an anomaly on the upside, I think 2023 can be viewed as an anomaly in the other direction,” said Polidoros of PaperAirplane. “As they say with auditioning, get rid of the high and the low and go from there. And I think the same theory applies to the box office as a whole.”

Several box office analysts who spoke with CNBC shared the same sentiment as Polidoros. They noted that while many of Disney’s releases fell short of expectations, the studio remains a strong competitor at the domestic and global box office.

“It’s very unlikely that Disney will get a global hit of $1 billion this year,” Dergarabedian said. But, to be fair, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” and “Elemental” have collectively earned more than $2 billion worldwide.

Despite tepid results from traditionally strong Disney, the studio has generated more domestic ticket sales than any other studio this year so far.

Through June, Disney releases account for 30% of all domestic ticket sales, or $1.3 billion, according to data from Comscore.

The studio also has four of the top 10 highest-grossing domestic films so far this year.

“As usual, it’s about the content,” said Polidoros.

It’s not yet clear if Disney’s upcoming releases, like “Haunted Mansion,” “The Marvels” or “Wish,” will be able to generate a record $1 billion, but a diverse slate bodes well for the company.

“2024 looks more promising on several fronts, and their original animated film, Wish, could be a big hit later this year if it lives up to its potential with the audiences that helped make the ‘Frozen’ series such a hit,” Robbins said.

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.

American And Jet Blue One will stop selling seats on flights next Friday, two months after a federal judge ruled that the Northeast airline partnership violated antitrust laws.

The judge ordered the airlines to end their partnership of more than two years, which allowed them to share passengers and revenue, and coordinate schedules in the northeastern United States. Delta And united In busy airports serving New York and Boston.

The Department of Justice, six states, and the District of Columbia sued to block this partnership, winning their case on May 20.

““We are disappointed to end popular benefits such as codeshare and mutual loyalty benefits,” Dave Fintzen, JetBlue’s vice president of Northeast Alliance, said in a statement. With the recent court ruling and the termination of the NEA, we have to go down I say in short order.”

JetBlue said last week it would not appeal the ruling, so it could focus instead on its $3.8 billion acquisition. Spirit Airlines, a deal also challenged by the DOJ, though JetBlue said it did not agree with the judge’s ruling on the Northeast alliance. However, America said it still plans to appeal the ruling on the Northeast Alliance.

Earlier this week, airline websites still offered flight options on each other’s airlines during the year-end holidays, but those sales will only last through July 20.

Both airlines said they will work with customers who have existing reservations so that their plans are not disrupted.

“This is only the first step in the truce process that will take place over the coming months,” American said in a statement. “We will continue to work with the JetBlue team to ensure that customers with existing codeshare reservations can travel smoothly without disrupting their travel plans.”

Thursday is also the last day customers can use their American AAdvantage frequent flyer miles to book flights on JetBlue.