Virgin America celebrated its fifth birthday this month in style with a party to mark its inaugural flight to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. With legions of loyal fans—close to 400,000 on the microblog site Twitter—and a reputation for digerati chic in its San Francisco base, the airline seems poised to carve out a successful niche in the U.S. market. Behind the cheers and confetti, however, lay an uncomfortable truth: In five years of operations, Virgin America has never turned a profit.

Boeing has opted to enlarge its Portland, Ore., factory, a company center of excellence for complex machining, gear systems and flight controls, rather than turn to outside contractors as second sources.

LAN seeks synergies with TAM as it evolves its culture of change.

With a four-year contract offer last year that came as a surprise to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), Boeing ended a nasty National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) suit and won peace into 2016 with its most militant labor union.

Competition in the Philippines' domestic regional airline market is heating up. At least three carriers plan to enter the fray in coming months, but rather face off directly against the large incumbents, they have a different strategy in mind.

While Qantas has seized the opportunity presented by Boeing's timetable problems to cancel its 35 787-9 orders, it has left the door open for the stretched variant to feature in its future fleet plans.

Russia's new regional Sukhoi Superjet 100 aircraft may lose its first customer—Armavia—if the parties cannot agree on the terms for delivery of two aircraft ordered in 2010. The dispute started in July when the Armenian airline threatened to cancel the delivery of the second SSJ100, due to failure to reach agreement on leasing terms worked out by Russian Vneshekonombank.

Ethiopian Airlines has begun operating its first Boeing 787, using it to inaugurate scheduled service to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on Aug. 18. Ethiopian plans to operate the 787 on services within Africa for several weeks before putting it on the Washington route in September. Initial African destinations include Johannesburg and Nairobi.