Airline Weekly Lounge

Airline Weekly Lounge takes a fundamentally different approach to aviation podcasting. Instead of talking about airplanes and routes, hosts Gordon Smith, Jay Shabat, and Meghna Maharishi focus squarely on the question that drives the entire industry: how do you actually make money running an airline? Produced by Skift, the travel industry's leading business publication, this is aviation coverage through a financial lens. With 414 episodes on a weekly schedule, the show has built an extensive archive of airline business analysis. Each episode dissects earnings reports, route economics, fleet decisions, and strategic moves by carriers around the world. Recent episodes have examined airlines as varied as Icelandair, JAL, ANA, and Ethiopian Airlines, giving the show a genuinely global scope that most US-centric aviation podcasts lack. The three-host panel format creates a roundtable discussion feel, and occasional live interviews with airline executives and industry leaders add primary-source perspectives. The analysis goes deeper than what you'll read in mainstream business news -- these are people who study airline financials full-time, and they'll explain why a particular aircraft order signals a strategic shift or why a route network change reveals something about a carrier's competitive positioning. The 4.0 rating from 140 reviews is the lowest on this list, and recurring feedback points to audio quality inconsistencies. That's a legitimate gripe for a podcast backed by a major media company. But if you can look past the production issues, the analytical content is genuinely hard to find anywhere else. For anyone interested in the business mechanics behind the flights they take, Airline Weekly Lounge fills a gap no other show really tries to.