Certainly this past week saw several key stories in the aviation world.
First came the story that Spirit Airlines could be liquidated at any moment, only to be followed later in the week by reports that the budget carrier had asked the Trump administration for an emergency bailout.
Then, of course, came the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz late in the week, which sent jet fuel prices in New York sharply lower and airline stocks soaring...
It now appears that American Airlines has rejected United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby's idea to merge the two carriers. Kirby recently pitched President Trump on the tie-up.
American told The New York Times in a statement that it was "not engaged with or interested" in the merger idea pitched by CEO Kirby.
"While changes in the broader airline marketplace may be necessary, a combination with United would be negative for competition and for consumers, and therefore inconsistent with our understanding of the administration's philosophy toward the industry and principles of antitrust law," American said, adding, "Our focus will remain on executing on our strategic objectives and positioning American to win for the long term."
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters earlier this week that the merger was "not something the president or the White House has an opinion on or is weighing in on at this time."
Wells Fargo analyst Christian Wetherbee told clients that the American-United merger was unlikely, but on his radar was "an opportunity for United and Delta."
"This idea furthers our belief that the fuel shock presents an opportunity for United and Delta to emerge better positioned, potentially suggesting upside to out-year estimates," Wetherbee said.
He noted a potential merger between United and American could be too large, as the combined carrier would control around 40% of domestic capacity without divestitures.
As an alternative, Wetherbee suggested JetBlue could emerge as a smaller, more realistic target if American rejected United, giving United valuable assets in New York and Florida with less regulatory fallout.
Some analysts have already described the airline industry as highly consolidated and a classic oligopoly.
On our radar next week: Spirit's meeting with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, along with the carrier's uncertain fate as creditors could pull the plug at any moment. Attention will also shift to United and whether, after being rejected by American, it makes a move toward Delta. Meanwhile, jet fuel prices in New York are plunging, a welcome development for airlines after four weeks of soaring prices that led some carriers to hike bag fees and ticket prices to offset fuel costs.
Tyler Durden Sat, 04/18/2026 - 13:25Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,
New ultra-precise measurements have confirmed the cosmos is expanding faster than models based on the early universe predict, while a separate study has dramatically shortened estimates of how long the universe itself will last.
Astronomers have long observed a mismatch in the universe’s expansion rate depending on how it is measured. Local observations of nearby galaxies point to a faster rate, while data from the early universe, such as the cosmic microwave background, suggest a slower pace. This longstanding puzzle is known as the Hubble tension.
A major international collaboration, the H0 Distance Network (H0DN), has now produced one of the most accurate local measurements yet. The team combined decades of independent distance measurements—including observations of red giant stars, Type Ia supernovae, and different galaxy types—into a unified “Local Distance Network.” Their result: the Hubble constant stands at 73.50 ± 0.81 kilometers per second per megaparsec, with precision just over 1 percent.
James Webb just uncovered a serious problem with our understanding of the universe.
New data from the James Webb Space Telescope confirms a major discrepancy in the universe's expansion rate, suggesting our current understanding of physics may be fundamentally incomplete.
For… pic.twitter.com/x5sWtyHDI7
“This isn’t just a new value of the Hubble constant,” the collaboration notes, “it’s a community-built framework that brings decades of independent distance measurements together, transparently and accessibly.”
The findings, published April 10, 2026, in Astronomy & Astrophysics, strengthen the case that the discrepancy is not due to a simple measurement error.
“This work effectively rules out explanations of the Hubble tension that rely on a single overlooked error in local distance measurements,” the authors conclude. “If the tension is real, as the growing body of evidence suggests, it may point to new physics beyond the standard cosmological model.”
Dr Kathy Romer of the Dark Energy Survey commented, “The universe is not only expanding, but it is expanding faster and faster as time goes by.” She added, “What we’d expect is that the expansion would get slower and slower as time goes by, because it has been nearly 14 billion years since the Big Bang.”
Dark Energy May Be WeakeningSeparate research using the largest-ever 3D map of the universe from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has produced hints that dark energy—the force accelerating cosmic expansion—might not be constant but could be weakening over time.
The DESI team mapped nearly 15 million galaxies and quasars. When combined with cosmic microwave background data and supernova observations, the results fit better with an evolving dark energy model than the standard assumption of a fixed force.
Dr Willem Elbers, a researcher from the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University, said: “For decades, we have relied on a standard model of the universe, but our new data suggests that dark energy might be evolving over time. If this is true, it will change everything we thought we knew about the cosmos.”
Professor Will Percival, co-spokesperson for DESI and an astronomer from the University of Waterloo, added: “We’re guided by Occam’s razor, and the simplest explanation for what we see is shifting. It’s looking more and more like we may need to modify our standard model of cosmology to make these different datasets make sense together—and evolving dark energy seems promising.”
Dr Andrei Cuceu, a researcher at Berkeley Lab who worked on the study, noted: “We’re in the business of letting the universe tell us how it works, and maybe the universe is telling us it’s more complicated than we thought it was.”
Paul Steinhardt, Director of the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science, observed that if dark energy becomes weak enough, scientists say the universe could be pulled together into a Big Crunch “remarkably quickly.”
UNIVERSE MAY END IN BIG CRUNCH
New data suggests dark energy is weakening, letting gravity eventually collapse the universe.
Expansion will reverse billions of years from now, ending everything in a single point.
Source: NewsForce
Host: @MacyGunnell pic.twitter.com/PxUdo1l9Sg
A related theoretical model led by physicist Henry Tye from Cornell University and collaborators from China and Spain explores one possible scenario. Their calculations suggest the universe has a total lifespan of about 33.3 billion years. With 13.8 billion years already passed, roughly 19.5 billion years would remain. In this model, expansion continues for another 11 billion years before slowing, stopping, and reversing into collapse.
New research suggests our universe might not expand forever as we once thought. Instead, it could eventually collapse in on itself in a “reverse Big Bang,” a scenario scientists call the Big Crunch.
For years, astronomers believed the universe would keep growing, driven by a… pic.twitter.com/Fk8wx9Nvbw
These independent lines of inquiry highlight ongoing gaps in our understanding of the universe’s expansion rate and the behavior of dark energy. Future observations from next-generation telescopes are expected to test whether new physics is required to reconcile the data.
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Tyler Durden Sat, 04/18/2026 - 12:50