Seeking Alpha’s roundup of statements, announcements, and remarks that could impact markets, sectors, or individual stocks.
- American Airlines (AAL), Delta Air Lines (DAL), and United Airlines (UAL) said they don’t expect an FAA request to reduce flight capacity by 10% in the next few days to have a major impact on customers.
The FAA ordered the cutbacks to help reduce the strain on U.S. airports during the government shutdown. Airlines are expected to reduce their flights by around 4% beginning on Friday and by 10% some time next week.
“We expect the vast majority of our customers’ travel will be unaffected, and long-haul international travel will remain as scheduled. As schedule changes are made, we’ll proactively reach out to customers who are impacted,” American Airlines said in a statement.
Delta said it also expects to be able to operate “the vast majority of our flights as scheduled, including all long-haul international service.”
United noted that schedule cutbacks will not impact long-haul international or hub-to-hub flights.
“That’s important to maintain the integrity of our network, give impacted customers as many options as possible to resume their trip, and sustain our crew pairing systems,” United Airlines said in their statement.
American, Delta, and United added that customers who don’t wish to fly during this time will be eligible for a refund.
- Challenger, Gray & Christmas said that layoffs in October soared 183% from September and 175% year-over-year.
The outplacement firm added that the layoff numbers were the highest for October since 2003, with 2025 being the worst year for announced layoffs since 2009.
“Like in 2003, a disruptive technology is changing the landscape,” employment expert Andy Challenger told CNBC. “At a time when job creation is at its lowest point in years, the optics of announcing layoffs in the fourth quarter are particularly unfavorable.”
- Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee indicated that he was reluctant to lower interest rates again near term because of a lack of key inflation data during the government shutdown.
“If there are problems developing on the inflation side, it’s going to be a fair amount of time before we see that, whereas if it starts to deteriorate on the job market side, we’re going to see that pretty much right away,” Goolsbee told CNBC in an interview.
“So that makes me even more uneasy … with front-loading rate cuts and counting on the inflation that we have seen in the last three months to just be transitory and assume that they’re going to go away,” Goolsbee continued.
“Medium-run, I’m not hawkish on rates. I believe that the settling point for rates is going to be a fair bit below where it is today,” he added. “When it’s foggy, let’s just be a little careful and slow down.”
Goolsbee will be voting on whether to change interest rates at the next FOMC meeting in December.