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• Delta Air Lines is one of few carriers opting against installing Starlink internet on its planes.
• The airline instead tapped Amazon LEO in March to become its in-flight WiFi provider.
• Elon Musk hit out at Delta’s choice on X, saying it would be “painful, difficult and expensive.”

Elon Musk doesn’t seem pleased with Delta Air Lines choosing a rival internet provider to Starlink.

Dozens of airlines around the world have struck deals with Starlink to give passengers free, high-speed WiFi. It connects to a constellation of over 10,000 satellites, helping provide connectivity in remote areas, such as over the ocean.

However, Delta instead tapped Amazon LEO in March to become its in-flight WiFi provider. Amazon’s service has launched about 300 satellites so far.

On Wednesday, Musk replied to an X post that suggested Delta chose Amazon because it wanted customers to connect via its own Delta Sync portal.

“SpaceX requires that there be no annoying ‘portal’ to use Starlink,” Musk posted. “Starlink WiFi must just work effortlessly every time, as though you were at home.”

“Delta wanted to make it painful, difficult and expensive for their customers. Hard to see how that is a winning strategy,” he added.

A Delta spokesperson told Business Insider that “the assertion in question is not accurate.” The airline said it chose Amazon’s Leo connectivity service over Starlink for “several reasons,” including the potential for a “broader partnership” beyond just in-flight WiFi.

It added that Amazon met Delta’s technical requirements and shared its vision for the “next era of connected travel,” while adding that Delta’s strategy is to equip different aircraft with the technology that best fits each fleet.

Delta also clarified that passengers would still have been able to access the Delta Sync portal via a SkyMiles login.

To the last point, while Starlink has pushed for a more seamless in-flight WiFi experience with minimal friction between passengers and the web, airlines using the service still route access through their own branded systems.

United Airlines’ Starlink access, for example, is tied to its MileagePlus platform — with similar setups at Alaska Airlines and Qatar Airways.

Delta isn’t saying its portal was an obstacle. It seems to want a deeper level of control over the ecosystem surrounding onboard internet than SpaceX may have preferred.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Qatar has faced similar decisions in its Starlink strategy. Xia Cai, Qatar Airways’ SVP of product development and design, talked at a 2024 APEX event about the airline’s approach to customer engagement through its Starlink connectivity.

“There has to be a connection. Is it a transient connection? Or is it actually something that you’re going to build to create an experience, which Delta has done really well on their Sync platform?” Cai said, the aviation website Paxex.Aero reported. “How do you engage [with passengers]?”

United is actively installing SpaceX technology and expects the rollout to be completed by the end of 2027. Delta’s planned next-generation connectivity project with Amazon’s Kuiper network is not expected to begin until 2028.

It isn’t the first time this year that Musk has taken umbrage with an airline.

In January, Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said he wasn’t interested in Starlink, suggesting that installing the terminals on airplane fuselages would increase drag and, in turn, fuel costs.

Musk and O’Leary then engaged in a dayslong war of words, including Musk suggesting he could buy Ryanair, and calling for O’Leary’s firing.

In the five years I’ve lived in my house, there’s an entryway bench I’ve never once sat on.

This poor, sweet little bench is always buried underneath piles of coats, orphaned socks whose partners have presumably started new and better lives, and the occasional fossilized Girl Scout cookie. Our coat rack cowers in the corner, assuming the posture of a weeping willow in its final days.

Many people with children recognize this tableau as the encroaching entropy of modern family life, where nothing seems to have a place, and the thought of fixing the chaos looms so large that it just never happens!

Decluttering had been on my to-do list for about eight months. At one point, I gleefully declared I would be “rewarding” myself every evening after bedtime by decluttering one small area.

By day three, I realized this was the worst idea I’d ever had, and resumed bingeing “The Pitt.”

On day four, I decided to hire Raquel Bolton of Rainbow Rooms, a local professional organizer, to visit my home, assess the chaos, and implement systems to contain it. Ten hours of her time cost me $1,000.

Here is what I learned.

Where do we start?

Raquel Bolton lives up to her company name: her leggings contained every color visible to the human eye, and she showed me photos of her own home, which is similarly bright and cheery.

Bolton offered a free consultation to walk through my space as she gave an honest assessment: I had the budget for 10 hours.

A full overhaul — including relocating the sprawling main-floor kids’ zone to our finished basement, which is currently used for storage — would take about 30 hours over one to two weeks.

We decided to do what we could, tackling the entryway and our connected living-dining room areas over the course of two days.

Bolton sent links ahead of time with storage options I could order before she arrived, but she was also happy to work with what I already had. We ended up doing a little bit of both.

On our first day, Bolton immediately set to work sorting swiftly through years of accumulated kid clutter.

“It’s going to look a lot worse before it gets better,” she warned, as we sat on the floor surrounded by Barbies with their hair chopped off, waterlogged puzzles missing key pieces, and a toy cellphone that had recently caused a full-on sibling war.

Within minutes, she created piles: keep, donate, nostalgia, toss.

What struck me most was how fast she moved. Where I might have spent 10 minutes debating the emotional significance of a broken toy stethoscope, she made the (correct) call in seconds.

Before becoming a professional organizer, Bolton was a fifth-grade teacher and ran a home day care, so she moved through the piles with an intuitive sense of what was developmentally past its prime and what still had life in it.

I got so emotional (over my) baby

I expected to feel mildly embarrassed by all of the crap we would find, but I didn’t anticipate the emotional weight of the process; a sizable number of toys and books triggered specific memories.

I had to invoke my inner Marie Kondo — expressing gratitude for the joy each item had brought my family — and then say goodbye. And for particularly meaningful or high-value items that I couldn’t part with, we had the “nostalgia” pile waiting. They’d later be put in a dedicated storage zone.

Once we hit our stride, Bolton didn’t need me hovering. She worked through the remaining areas solo, and I’d resurface periodically to find three neat piles awaiting my executive approval. The process felt efficient and literally saved me hours.

Occasionally, mystery items would surface — Bolton used Google’s AI tools to identify them. My favorite was a set of small wooden pieces that flabbergasted both of us, but that artificial intelligence correctly identified as fake pills from a doctor’s kit. We were able to reunite them with their toy.

At 2 p.m. sharp, Bolton took a break to sign her kids up for their town’s coveted spring-break camp as soon as registration opened. If you are a parent, you understand.

The moment was a humanizing reminder to me that this service was different from hiring other contractors: Bolton is also a mom in the trenches who navigates the same challenges, and she brings that perspective into every aspect of the work.

The kitchen analogy

Bolton has a signature framework she shares with every client: “Everything has a home.” It sounds obvious until she maps it onto your actual life.

“I tell my clients that the ideal playroom has a similar setup to a kitchen,” she explained. “You have cupboards and drawers for putting things away, those drawers have specific contents, and then you have workspace — the countertop, the island — which is the equivalent of the playroom floor or a play table.”

The analogy extends to how we use the space.

According to Bolton, you would never empty the spoons and forks from your dishwasher and toss them randomly into a drawer mixed with the peeler and spatula. Yet, she pointed out, most parents do exactly that with their children’s toys — lobbing everything into one giant bin — and somehow this seems completely normal.

“For children, playing is their ‘job,'” she said. “Toys are the tools they need to do their work. If we want children to be independent, they need to be able to find their tools.”

And when it comes to tidying up, Bolton cautions against ever telling your kids, “Don’t mess up the playroom. I just tidied up in there!”

You would never say: “Don’t have a cup of tea. I just put the mugs away.” Toys are meant to be played with.

Volume problems

I asked Bolton what the most common mistake families make that contributes to clutter. “Too many toys,” she said, without missing a beat.

“Of course, all the toys end up tossed randomly into one bin, because the quantity is so overwhelming. It’s too time-consuming to put things in individual places when there are just too many of them.”

Her solution, apart from regular decluttering, is toy rotation. Rather than giving children access to everything at once, Bolton advocates treating toys like seasonal décor or a rotating wardrobe — a curated selection is accessible at any given time, while the rest is stored away.

The payoff is twofold. First, tidying up becomes more manageable. Second, during her years running a day care, Bolton found that children play better when a limited number of toys are available.

Fewer choices lead to less overwhelm and more focus. As a bonus, a toy that’s been out of rotation for several weeks feels brand new when it comes back out.

Putting everything back together again

Bolton’s core principles in practice are simple: keep things in their logical places, create systems kids can use themselves (picture labels for younger children so they can put things back independently), and remember that kids won’t play with toys they can’t see.

And at the end of the two days, our entryway transformation was the most dramatic. Each family member now has a dedicated hook and bin — the simplest and most economical solution rather than a more elaborate built-in.

The bench is, for the first time, accessible.

Bolton also encouraged us to move a beautiful dresser up from the basement, where it had been sitting empty and unappreciated, into the dining room to house my husband’s art supplies, my annual two-week knitting hobby, assorted electronics, and the general adult miscellany that had previously lived visibly on every horizontal surface in the house.

A newly organized TV room. A dining room with a dedicated art cart. Adult things and children’s things, finally separated.

My 7-year-old son came home that afternoon and said, “This woman is a GOD! I can actually find things now when I want to play with them.” He was especially pleased with his “weapons corner,” which, I want to be clear, contains only foam Harry Potter Swords of Gryffindor.

The next morning, instead of going straight to the TV, my kids went to their newly visible, newly accessible toys. Bolton would not be surprised.

But does it keep?

After our initial reveling, a few days in, things looked a bit sloppy again, but it was a meaningfully different kind of sloppy. Things have places now, categories exist, and critically, there is just less of everything.

That last part is probably the most durable change because no amount of system-building can compensate for the volume that comes from hanging onto a lifetime supply of miniature plastic objects engineered for a hyper-consumerist childhood where nothing is meant to last, except maybe the clutter.

The kids eventually drifted back to their morning TV routine (because “Peppa Pig” remains, inexplicably, appointment television). Still, now, when I say “that’s it” for TV time, they are less likely to whine and more willing to explore the analog alternatives around them.

I do have one concern: the beautifully labeled craft supplies in their elegant storage bags have not been touched in earnest since the reorganization, although I’m glad my son is now doing his homework with a sharpened pencil instead of a half-chewed crayon.

There’s something about a perfectly arranged space that can make it feel slightly museum-like — too ordered to disturb.

Bolton would likely point out that this is the Instagram-aesthetic trap in miniature: organizing for appearance rather than function. The goal, she always says, isn’t the “after” picture; it’s a more functional space.

I may need to be the one to crack open the watercolors first and give the kids permission to make a beautiful mess.

The value question

In the end, I spent $1,000 for Bolton’s time and a modest additional sum on storage bins and hooks. Bolton was largely able to work with what we already had, so the out-of-pocket spend beyond her fee was minimal.

More importantly, having an external person present forced me to make decisions in real time rather than defer them. The “keep, donate, nostalgia, toss” framework cut through months of my own avoidance in a single morning. That alone felt worth the price.

Bolton charges by the hour rather than by project, as she’s found it’s the fairest way to handle jobs that tend to grow once families realize how much they’ve been holding onto.

At $100 an hour for the Westchester/NYC metro area, I think it’s a reasonable expense for what amounts to a combination of physical labor, editorial judgment, and — when a particularly beloved but structurally compromised stuffed animal enters the picture — low-grade therapy.

I know our home will never be perfect, and that mess can be excellent evidence of a happy childhood in progress. What Bolton gave us isn’t a pristine playroom, but a system that can absorb the frenzy without completely surrendering to it.

We’re likely moving next year, and when we do, I’ll hire Bolton again to clear out the kids’ rooms and establish systems in the new space before total chaos has a chance to take root.

Until then, I’ll be sitting on my bench.

• OpenAI exec Joshua Achiam testified about a “tense exchange” he had with Elon Musk in 2018.
• Musk, Achiam told the jury in the Musk v. Altman trial, called him a “jackass.”
• The two clashed over AI safety, and Achiam’s colleagues later gifted him a gold “jackass” trophy.

An OpenAI executive told a federal jury Wednesday how Elon Musk once called him a “jackass” during a heated clash over AI safety.

Joshua Achiam, OpenAI’s chief futurist, recalled the “pretty tense exchange” during testimony in the California civil trial between Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

“He snapped and called me a jackass,” Achiam testified.

Achiam said that around 50 to 60 employees had gathered during a February 2018 company all-hands meeting for a question-and-answer session ahead of Musk’s planned departure from the startup he cofounded with Altman.

According to Achiam, then a research scientist at OpenAI, Musk said he was leaving because Tesla, Musk’s electric car company, would soon compete with OpenAI for elite AI talent, creating a “conflict of interest.”

“He also indicated a general lack of confidence in OpenAI’s overall path,” Achiam said, adding that Musk “wanted to go and do his own thing and sort of pursue AGI in his own way.”

“It sounded like he wanted to race towards AGI, like he wanted to build it very fast, because he was very worried that someone else, if they got it, would do the wrong thing with it,” Achiam said.

Achiam said he and a few others were concerned that racing toward AGI was a “fairly unsafe proposition,” telling the jury that Musk was proposing something that seemed “reckless.”

“We didn’t know whether a science fiction super intelligence bootstrapping event where you set the thing running one night, and you come back the next morning, and it’s so unbelievably smart it can crack encryption and take over the world was a science fiction scenario or not?” he said.

When an OpenAI lawyer asked whether Musk may have been trying to push him out of his “comfort zone” by calling him a jackass — as Musk has alluded to in his own previous testimony in the case — Achiam said no.

“I don’t think that was why he called me that. I think he was just upset that he had been challenged,” Achiam said.

After the meeting, Achiam told the jury that a few colleagues expressed their gratitude to him. At the next company all-hands, he was presented with a trophy “to commemorate the exchange, and in thanks for having stood up to Elon.”

The trophy, Achiam said, was a gold statue depicting a “jackass” with an inscription: “Never stop being a jackass for safety.”

• Pop stars like Zayn Malik, Post Malone, and Meghan Trainor have recently canceled tour dates.
• The Pussycat Dolls scrapped their North American tour, citing lower than expected ticket sales.
• However, the concert industry is still booming, indicating fans prefer to spend money on A-listers.

The era of sky-high concert-ticket prices is exposing pop music’s middle class — or, at least, who isn’t among the 1%.

A slew of high-profile artists have recently made headlines for downsizing, postponing, or outright canceling their arena tours, from heartthrob Zayn Malik and chart-topper Post Malone to legacy girl group the Pussycat Dolls, who were refreshingly candid with fans about why only one of their scheduled US dates would go ahead.

“When we announced the PCD FOREVER Tour, we hoped to bring the show to fans across the world,” the group said in a statement. “After taking an honest look at the North American run, we’ve made the difficult and heartbreaking decision to cancel all but one of the North America dates.”

Although Malik, Malone, and fellow tour canceler Meghan Trainor have cited other reasons for their changes of heart — health struggles, scheduling challenges, and family obligations, respectively — fans and media outlets alike have speculated that low ticket sales could be at least partially to blame. As the internet began circulating screenshots from each tour’s Ticketmaster venue maps showing swaths of still-empty seats, some have dubbed this phenomenon “blue dot fever,” framing the trend as a backlash against a broken, overpriced ticketing system.

But while it’s well-documented that live music lovers are fed up with forking over piles of cash, don’t get too excited: This probably isn’t a sign that the great concert-ticket squeeze is coming to an end. More likely, it’s a series of hiccups in the average concertgoer’s cost-benefit analysis.

As Rebecca Haw Allensworth, visiting professor at Harvard Law School, previously told Vox: “Most of the drive behind those really big, expensive concerts is just people’s willingness to pay.”

The concert industry is still booming for bona fide A-listers

It turns out that not every performer can price-gouge and get away with it.

That privilege is largely reserved for superstars like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé — figures whose concerts are designed as grand spectacles and treated as once-in-a-lifetime opportunities — and the new generation of pop giants following in their wake.

Olivia Rodrigo experienced such intense demand for her forthcoming arena trek that she added over 20 shows to her original schedule, including a 10-show run at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, breaking Jay-Z’s record for the longest residency. Harry Styles will play a whopping 30 shows at Madison Square Garden later this year — and despite prime tickets costing four figures, his fans flocked to the presale in record numbers.

These success stories aren’t reserved for artists making strictly pop music either, but rather for artists making fabulously popular music, whatever the genre. Noah Kahan, a folk-rock phenom whose first-week album sales rival those of Sabrina Carpenter and Billie Eilish, comfortably sold out his 2026 stadium tour — more than 1 million tickets across 30 concerts, per The Wall Street Journal. Even with Ticketmaster’s Face Value Exchange — a program artists can opt into that prohibits resellers from charging more than face value — the toll to see Kahan up close this summer could run about $500 per fan. When tickets went on sale, even nosebleed seats hovered around the three-figure mark.

These eye-popping price tags have become standard fare for big stars, especially since pandemic restrictions lifted; the average ticket price in 2026 is $144, Fortune reported, compared to $82 in 2020.

Peering into their hollow wallets, fans tend to blame Live Nation, which a federal jury recently found liable for holding an illegal monopoly. Still, much of the problem can be traced to simple supply and demand. Superfans of Rodrigo, Styles, and Kahan have evidently deemed these splurges worthwhile, signaling to the live event industry that there’s still money on the table. If people are willing to pay, ticket prices are likely to keep rising. Live Nation reported record-high concert attendance in 2025 and $3.79 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2026 alone, a 12% increase from the same period last year.

Meanwhile, the live-music boom may have led some artists to overestimate their star power and sales potential.

“The acts that really have community around them, and authenticity, are doing incredibly well,” Howie Schnee, president and co-owner of the concert promotion company CEG Presents, told me. “Noah Kahan is an obvious example of that. And of course, in the jam-band world, Billy Strings and Phish and Goose — a lot of people who follow those acts, that’s their No. 1 favorite band. Could anyone ever say the Pussycat Dolls are their favorite act?”

Mid-tier pop stars are trying — and failing — to take advantage of the moment

The symptoms of “blue dot fever” are more contained than they may appear, Schnee said, noting they’re more indicative of overenthusiastic booking strategies than “emblematic of the industry overall.”

Although Malone is a popular artist by any metric, he’s currently in the midst of a countrified rebrand, and it’s unclear how many fans will follow his tour bus into new territory. Tickets for his next tour, co-headlined by Jelly Roll, went on sale before Malone’s new album was even finished — prematurely assuming the size and eagerness of his paying audience.

Malik, Trainor, and the Pussycat Dolls, meanwhile, have all achieved commercial success and cultural relevance in the past — but one No. 1 hit from a decade ago doesn’t justify the rising cost of an arena ticket today.

In an era when a ticket to any average pop concert threatens to break the bank — we’re not even counting the rising costs of transportation and accommodation to get to the concert in the first place — fans are becoming more selective. Personally, as a proud pop girl who grew up with “Buttons” and “Don’t Cha” on my iPod, it’s no contest: I’d rather skip the Pussycat Dolls reunion gimmick ($120 for upper bowl at Madison Square Garden; I checked) and put that money towards a more expensive ticket to see Rodrigo sing “Drivers License” live.

As for Schnee, in just a few days, he’s bringing his family to see Bruce Springsteen at Madison Square Garden. Even as someone with more than 30 years of industry experience, he found the total cost mind-boggling: “Throw in gas, parking, food, whatever,” he quickly calculated, “it becomes $1,400 for one night.”

Schnee added that he wouldn’t swallow that expense for any average Joe with a guitar. If an artist is charging arena prices, they better be having an arena-sized impact on the zeitgeist.

Despite the economic anxiety and uncertainty plaguing many of us, Schnee said, the demand to see some artists in the flesh is “recession-proof” — emphasis on some.

“People definitely have to make a decision,” he concluded. “They can’t do it all.”

• The Pentagon is betting on relative newcomers like Anduril to mass-produce cheap missiles for future wars.
• US officials are chasing low-cost cruise missiles and low-cost hypersonics amid stockpile concerns.
• The push explores whether “disruptive new entrants” can scale weapons production fast enough for war.

The Pentagon is preparing to test low-cost missiles from a handful of “disruptive” defense tech companies in hopes of rapidly scaling the US military’s stockpile of affordable cruise and hypersonic missiles.

The Department of Defense announced agreements Wednesday with four companies — Anduril, CoAspire, Leidos, and Zone 5 Technologies — to launch the “Low-Cost Containerized Missiles” (LCCM) program aimed at producing large numbers of cheap cruise missiles.

Another defense startup, Castelion, will support the development and production of low-cost hypersonic weapons.

The effort, focused on “disruptive new entrants,” reflects a broader Pentagon push to expand the US military industrial base beyond the traditional defense giants — “prime” contractors like Lockheed Martin or RTX — amid growing concerns about America’s ability to produce sufficient munitions during a major conflict.

Those concerns are not theoretical. The US war against Iran has shown how quickly a serious fight can burn through high-end munitions and has raised concerns about how long US missile stockpiles could last in a prolonged conflict.

The Department of Defense is looking to “cheap mass” — inexpensive missiles built in large numbers — that could give the military more staying power when demand for precision strike capabilities outpaces traditional production. The war in Ukraine has demonstrated repeatedly the value of that cheap mass when other stocks run dry.

The Pentagon said in a release that it hopes to procure more than 10,000 low-cost cruise missiles over three years beginning in 2027, via firm-fixed-price production contracts “creating a pathway for rapid and repeatable production of high‑volume, lethal strike capabilities.”

The department plans to begin buying test missiles from all four LCCM companies in June 2026, ahead of military assessments.

Castelion, a defense startup developing the Blackbeard hypersonic missile, is set to receive a multi-year procurement contract for at least 500 of its hypersonic weapons annually once those munitions pass testing.

Several participating firms, which were not named in the release, are expected to scale production without direct military investment, a model officials described as designed to reward speed, innovation, and private capital.

Officials framed the initiative as part of the Trump administration’s effort to build what they refer to as an “Arsenal of Freedom,” leveraging private-sector investment rather than relying solely on government-funded development.

The hunt for low-cost munitions extends beyond this initiative. The Pentagon’s research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is also searching for solutions to develop low-cost missiles that can be built in a mere days rather than months.

“We are moving beyond the traditional prime contractors to expand our industrial base, accelerating testing timelines, and sending a clear, long-term demand signal to innovative new entrants,” said Michael Duffey, Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment, in Wednesday’s release on the new DoD effort.

• American Airlines and United Airlines are flying to Venezuela again.
• It comes after US officials tore up a 2019 order barring US carriers from flying in the country.
• Caracas airport used to be a bustling gateway, but economic turmoil had pushed airlines to retreat.

Venezuela is open again, and American Airlines and United Airlines aren’t wasting time restarting service.

Both carriers have announced they will return to Caracas, the capital city, after yearslong hiatuses. The airlines last flew to Venezuela in 2019 and 2017, respectively. Delta also left in 2017 but has not announced plans to return.

American resumed flights from Miami to Caracas on April 30; the flight uses an Embraer E175 operated by the carrier’s wholly owned regional subsidiary Envoy Air. American will add a second daily E175 flight to Caracas starting May 21.

United will resume daily flights to Caracas from its Houston George Bush Intercontinental hub on August 11, using a Boeing 737 Max 8.

American’s return to Venezuela is initially limited to the capital, Caracas, though service to Maracaibo — a coastal city in the northwest where it also used to fly — has also been cleared by the Department of Transportation. United has only applied for Houston so far.

The reopening comes after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy rescinded a prior order barring operations in Venezuela amid security concerns and political instability.

These are American and United’s Caracas flight schedules:

American, effective April 30.

• Depart Miami: 10:16 a.m. | Arrive Caracas 1:36 p.m.
• Depart Caracas 2:40 p.m. | Arrive Miami: 6:13 p.m.

The second daily frequency, effective May 21, will leave earlier in the day.

• Depart Miami: 8:55 a.m. | Arrive Caracas 12:15 p.m.
• Depart Caracas 1 p.m. | Arrive Miami: 4:34 p.m.

United, effective August 11, subject to government approval:

• Depart Houston: 11:45 p.m. | Arrive Caracas 5:30 a.m.
• Depart Caracas 8 a.m. | Arrive Houston: 12:30 p.m.

Data from the aviation analytics company Cirium shows American has about 680 scheduled flights between Miami and Caracas this year.

Before 2019, it flew up to 5,000 flights annually from cities like Dallas-Fort Worth, New York, and San Juan, and was the largest US operator in Venezuela.

United’s flight is not yet showing in Cirium, but based on the August launch date, it’ll run roughly 280 flights between Houston and Caracas through 2026.

United has historically had a much smaller presence in Venezuela than American. It operated 225 flights on the route in 2017, though it operated for only half the year; it flew about 500 in 2016.

Demand is expected to be driven primarily by “VFR” (visiting friends and relatives) traffic among the large Venezuelan diaspora in Florida, though the nation is also bracing for more international tourists and business travelers.

While United won’t face any competition from Houston, American will compete in Miami with the Venezuelan carrier Laser Airlines, which relaunched flights on May 1 using a leased Airbus A320 from US-based Global Crossing Airlines. The jet can hold about twice as many people as Envoy’s E175.

Laser cannot operate its own aircraft in the US because Venezuela’s aviation regulator is rated below international safety standards by US authorities.

Nearly two dozen other foreign airlines also serve Venezuelan cities, with about 40,000 flights collectively scheduled for 2026, per Cirium — less than a third of the roughly 130,000 the airport handled at its 2013 peak, during its era as a key gateway for oil, business, and international travel.

Revived service to Venezuela comes after Duffy, in January, tore up a 2019 order restricting flights and reopened its skies to commercial flights.

The decision followed the removal of then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a US military raid that helped reset relations between the Trump administration and the remaining Venezuelan leadership.

“By restarting service to Venezuela, American will offer customers the opportunity to reunite with families and create new business and commerce with the United States,” Nat Pieper, American’s chief commercial officer, said in January.

The airline said it worked with regulators and other key stakeholders to assess security and ensure a safe return.

The Trump administration has targeted undocumented Venezuelans living in the US as part of its mass deportation effort, and accused some of being violent gang members. Direct commercial flights offer Venezuelans a way to self-deport, should they choose to.

Some airlines that had continued serving Venezuela despite the country’s crisis briefly suspended flights earlier this year during US military operations.

Many have since returned, including LATAM, Avianca, and Copa Airlines, as well as European carriers like TAP Air Portugal, Iberia, and Turkish Airlines.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in April when the first US airline resumed Venezuela flights, and has been updated.