Raphael Stevens

United Airlines says it will fly 3,500 flights daily domestic flights in December.
That capacity is 91% of what it flew in 2019.
The schedule continues to focus on outdoor destinations like beach and ski destinations.
International travel remains hampered by flight destinations.

United Airlines first new livery Boeing 737-800 sits at a gate after arriving at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., June 5, 2019.
Kamil Krzaczynski Reuters

United Airlines is planning to ramp up its December schedule to 3,500 domestic flights a day, the most it’s flown in the U.S. since the pandemic began, expecting a surge in holiday travel.
The Chicago-based airline’s schedule includes more capacity to ski and beach destinations, including as many as 195 daily flights to 12 Florida airports, its most ever. United first announced its expansion of Florida service last year, part of carriers’ push to serve destinations that give travelers the ability to physically distance during the pandemic and also avoid other cities’ limits on travel and other activities.

International travel remains hampered by ever-changing travel restrictions. The Biden administration, however, has said it plans to lift Covid-era rules barring many international visitors in early November, replacing them with vaccine and other requirements.
Airline executives say carriers’ recovery is closely tied to a drop in case rates. United in September said it trimmed its third-quarter schedule following the surge in Covid cases and a decline in bookings in late summer.
United said flight searches on its website and app for holiday travel are up 16% compared with 2019.

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Cruise, General Motors’ majority-owned autonomous vehicle subsidiary, is targeting a fleet of 1 million or more self-driving vehicles by 2030.
Cruise CEO Dan Ammann said the company expects “to scale the business rapidly.”
Commercializing driverless vehicles has been far more challenging than many predicted even a few years ago. Previous goals also have been missed.

Cruise Origin

DETROIT – Cruise, General Motors’ majority-owned autonomous vehicle subsidiary, is targeting a fleet of 1 million or more self-driving vehicles by 2030.
Cruise CEO Dan Ammann showed investors Wednesday a graphic of the company’s “exponential Cruise fleet ramp” that showed scaling its operations to a million or more vehicles by the end of the decade during an investor event Wednesday for GM.

“We expect to scale the business rapidly,” Ammann said during the presentation at the first of two days of investor meetings that concludes Thursday.
Ammann did not specifically discuss the 2030 target, but a Cruise spokesman confirmed “that’s where the company believes it can be.”

To achieve such a lofty goal, the company would need approval from federal and state officials, which are in the early days of regulating the testing and deployment of such vehicles.
Cruise has been testing robotaxis in San Francisco for several years. Ammann said Cruise expects to begin charging customers for rides as early as next year, pending a final permit from California.
The company last week was granted the fifth of sixth permits needed to commercialize a self-driving ride-hailing fleet in the state. Google’s Waymo also was granted a similar permit, but it requires the vehicles to have back-up safety drivers.

Cruise plans to scale its fleet in the U.S. and internationally. Earlier this year, the company signed an agreement with Dubai’s roads and transport authority to be the exclusive provider for self-driving taxis and ride-hailing services through 2029, which would assist in the ramp-up.

Ammann said Cruise expects to quickly lower the cost of ride-hailing from about $5 a mile today to $1.50 a mile by removing the driver.
Cruise’s current test fleet is composed of hundreds of custom Chevrolet Bolt EVs equipped with driverless technology. That fleet, which it plans to launch operations with, will continue to expand until a purpose-built autonomous vehicle called the Origin is expected to be produced by GM beginning in early 2023.
Commercializing autonomous vehicles has been far more challenging than many predicted even a few years ago. Previous goals also have been missed.
Cruise was expected to launch a ride-hailing service for the public in San Francisco in 2019. The company delayed those plans that year to conduct further testing. 
Tesla CEO Elon Musk previously promised to commercialize autonomous vehicles, including 1 million robotaxis by now. The company currently has none.

Cruise Chief Technology Officer Kyle Vogt (left) with Voyage CEO Oliver Cameron, who will join Cruise as part of an acquisition of the company.

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A delayed return to office buildings for many workers during the Covid pandemic has been especially harsh on businesses around midtown Manhattan, which has the largest inventory of office space in New York City.
As of this summer, nearly 30% of the retail storefronts in Midtown East and around Grand Central were vacant, according to a new report from REBNY.
That compares with a retail vacancy rate of 28.4% on Madison Avenue, and 20.9% on the Upper East Side.

People walk past office buildings in midtown Manhattan on May 7, 2021 in New York City.
Angela Weiss | AFP | Getty Images

Before the pandemic, it would take Rob Byrnes at least 15 minutes to wait in line and grab a quick lunch at a fast-casual restaurant in midtown Manhattan. Now, in the minority of people returning to office buildings in the area, Byrnes says he’s in and out with his meal in under two minutes.
But he’d much prefer to be standing in a line full of people again.

“We’re nowhere near where we need to be to have a sustained retail and restaurant climate in this area,” said Byrnes, president of the East Midtown Partnership, a business improvement district that spans parts of the 48 blocks in midtown. “It is still pretty quiet.”
Many of the businesses that pledged to bring employees back to the office after Labor Day put those plans on ice, potentially into 2022, with the spread of the delta variant and a looming flu season. The delay has been particularly harsh on businesses in midtown, which has the largest inventory of office space in New York City.
As of this summer, nearly 30% of the retail storefronts in Midtown East and around Grand Central were vacant, according to a new report from the Real Estate Board of New York, or REBNY. That compares with a retail vacancy rate of 28.4% on Madison Avenue, and 20.9% on the Upper East Side. It’s the highest rate of all of the Manhattan boroughs, REBNY said.
Historically, the Midtown East and Grand Central corridors have maintained a retail vacancy rate somewhere between 10% and 15%, according to the real estate trade association.

“We have got to get people back into the office to keep this economy humming,” Byrnes said.

Pre-pandemic, REBNY estimates that the office population in Midtown East and Grand Central was supporting the 2,579 businesses, including eateries. The neighborhood captured about 11.4%, or $6.5 billion, of Manhattan’s annual retail sales.
Today, REBNY says 93 of the retail storefronts are unoccupied. On one stretch of commercial real estate across from the high-end department store operator Bloomingdale’s, former Gap, Banana Republic and Victoria’s Secret locations sit vacant, leaving the entire block along Third Ave. between 58th St. and 59th St. street emptied out.
“These findings confirm the crippling effect that the pandemic has had, and continues to have, on the retail sector in midtown,” said Fred Cerullo, president and CEO of the Grand Central Partnership. “For these businesses to thrive, they need the kind of foot traffic generated by tourists and office workers.”
“They all contribute to the economic ecosystem that generates billions in business activities and tax revenue, which the city also needs now more than ever,” Cerullo added.
Storefronts remain barren, even as rents around the midtown area have tanked, a sign that businesses are still holding off on gobbling up space. Or they don’t plan to return at all.
From 42nd St. to 49th St. along Fifth Avenue (near Grand Central), average asking rents this spring were $615, down 12% year over year, according to REBNY’s biannual rents report. And along 57th St. from 5th Ave. to Park Ave. (Midtown East), average asking rents amounted to $531, a 22% year-over-year decline.
According to Gene Spiegelman, a vice chairman and a principal of the leasing firm Ripco Real Estate, an added layer of pressure stems from the fact that a number of national retailers — including Gap and Victoria’s Secret — have been proactively culling their real estate, as purchases move online.
“Companies are also changing their views on flagship retail,” Spiegelman said. “So it’s complicated beyond Covid. But Covid has not helped.”
There is still a long way to go to bring people back to offices. Only about 29% of employees across the New York metro area swiped into office buildings the week of Sept. 29, according to data from the security company Kastle Systems. That was up from 27.6% the prior week. But it was still below a nationwide average of 35%, Kastle said.
A separate survey by the Partnership for New York City recently found that Manhattan employers expected only about 41% of their workers to report into offices by Sept. 30, down from an expected 60% when the survey was previously conducted in May.
A record 19% of midtown’s nearly 250 million square feet of office space — about 47.4 million square feet — sat vacant in the second quarter of this year, according to Cushman & Wakefield.
“The worst part is that we don’t know where the bottom is,” said Jessica Walker, president and CEO of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce. “Tourism has been stymied, which is a huge part of the economy and the foot traffic in midtown, as well.”

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The Covid-19 pandemic threw supply chains into chaos, and steel — an essential metal used in everything from dishwashers to cars — was not immune to these disruptions.
“Steel is certainly one of those examples of shortages, higher prices, and growing frustration among customers,” Associated Builders and Contractors chief economist Anirban Basu told CNBC.

Demand for steel dropped at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, but then it quickly skyrocketed. At one point, steel prices were 300% above their pre-pandemic levels at more than $1,900 per ton. Before the pandemic, steel priced between $500 per ton and $800 per ton.
Steel’s high price tag hasn’t really dropped all that much, and some worry it’s a bubble that’s about to burst. 
“They have turned into a bubble. So, they go higher because they go higher,” CRU Group analyst Josh Spoores told CNBC about steel prices.
Steel is a key material in infrastructure projects, making the Biden administration’s plan to inject billions into U.S. infrastructure a huge boon to manufacturers.
“We estimate that for every $100 billion of new investment in infrastructure, that’s going to mean 5 million tons of additional steel demand,” American Iron and Steel Institute CEO Kevin Dempsey said.

Globally, steel demand in 2021 is expected to increase by 3.8% over 2020, according to the World Steel Association.
Watch the video above to learn more about the biggest U.S. steel manufacturers, the impact of steel tariffs, whether the U.S. steel industry can keep up with demand, and what happens when that “bubble” pops.

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CNBC Travel

Before the dawn of private jets and business class flights, royalty and high society members traveled through Europe onboard luxury trains.
Now anyone can do it — if they are willing and able to spend £1,700 ($2,300) for a one-night trip.

That’s the starting rate to go from Florence to Paris aboard the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, a historic luxury train operated by the LVMH-owned Belmond travel brand. Other routes cost more — much more.
The prices, however, don’t seem to deter rail enthusiasts. Many journeys sell every seat.
“2019 was a record year for Venice Simplon-Orient-Express that saw our revenue increase by 70% compared to those in 2015,” said Gary Franklin, vice president of Belmond’s trains and cruises.
When passenger journeys restarted in June, travelers again booked some routes solid.
“We are certainly seeing a revival of rail travel post-pandemic,” Franklin told CNBC. “With more and more travelers discovering … slow travel, we anticipate that this rise in demand and interest will continue.

The historic Orient Express service

The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express comprises 11 sleeping cars, three restaurant cars, one bar car and two staff cars, making it the longest passenger train in Europe, said Franklin.
But it’s not just an ordinary train. Each of the 17 carriages was once part of Europe’s iconic Orient Express, a train service that connected Paris to Istanbul beginning in 1883. The service later expanded to cities across Europe, reaching its “heyday” between World War I and World War II, said Franklin.

The oldest carriage on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express dates to 1926.
Courtesy of Belmond

Jet travel sidelined the famous rail line. Eventually the carriages fell into disrepair, and services ceased.
In the 1970s, American James Sherwood, Belmond’s founder, bought several dilapidated carriages at an auction. By 1982, he had located — and restored to their former grandeur — enough original carriages to form the Venice Simplon-Orient Express that still operates today.

New routes across Europe

Because of the Covid pandemic, the VSOE, as it is known, missed its entire 2020 travel season, which runs from March to November.
Following an 18-month closure, the train relaunched in June with new routes to some of Europe’s most popular cities. In addition to London, Paris and Venice, the luxury train now goes to Amsterdam, Brussels, Geneva, Rome and Florence.
The new Amsterdam route is particularly popular, said Franklin, adding that schedules to the city are close to selling out for 2022.

The name “Simplon” is from the Simplon Tunnel, a railway tunnel opened in 1906 that goes through the Alps between Switzerland and Italy. Some Belmond routes still use the tunnel today.
Courtesy of Belmond

Belmond also added three new “grand suites” during the train’s closure. The suites, now six in total, fit two passengers and have bedrooms, lounge areas and private bathrooms made of marble and hand-blown Italian glass. Prices start at £5,300 ($7,200) per person for short journeys.
The train’s suites are popular due to growing demand for privacy and special-occasion travel, Franklin said.

Why people pay the price

The history, the mystique and the opulence all explain why the Venice Simplon-Orient Express makes many travelers’ wish lists.
So is the fact, Franklin said, that the vacation starts the moment the journey begins — a concept few would associate with commercial flying, especially in today’s climate of contentious air travel.

We only have 120 people on a train, where an equivalent train may have 2,000 people.

Gary Franklin
vice president, Belmond trains and cruises

Most trips only last one night. Others are longer, such as the popular five-night journey that retraces the historic route from Paris to Istanbul. The train travels this route once a year in August, and cabins usually sell out a year in advance, said Franklin.
Prices for the annual trip make one-night bookings seem like a steal.
Twin cabins for the run to Istanbul are £35,000 ($47,650) per journey, while grand suites sell for an eye-popping £110,000 ($150,000). All six suites are booked for the August 2022 trip.

British writer Agatha Christie immortalized the Paris to Istanbul route in her book “Murder on the Orient Express,” which she wrote after Carriage 3309 – which now houses the three new grand suites – got stuck in a snow drift in 1929, said Belmond’s Franklin.
Courtesy of Belmond

Franklin acknowledged that trips on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express aren’t cheap, but neither is restoring and maintaining the carriages.
“The food and beverage onboard the train … it isn’t cheap; accessing the railway network isn’t cheap,” he said. “Also, we only have 120 people on a train, where an equivalent train may have 2,000 people.”

Multi-course meals and beverages, but not alcohol, are included in the rates, and menus change depending on the destinations and season.
Courtesy of Belmond

He likened the trips to “a private jet on wheels” and the carriages to “art pieces.”
“As you’re going through the countryside in northern France, you wake up in your bed with breakfast in bed. You pull up the blinds, you’ve got the Swiss Alps and the Swiss lakes outside your window,” he said “You’re having lunch, as you go across the lagoon to Venice.”
For that experience, “It’s fantastic value for money,” he said. More

General Motors plans to double its annual revenues and grow profit margins by the end of this decade.
The automaker announced the new revenue target, along with fatter projected operating profit margins of 12% to 14%, on Wednesday.
The company is kicking off the first of a two-day investor meeting where it will detail exactly how the company plans to hit those targets.

DETROIT — General Motors plans to double its annual revenue to $280 billion by the end of this decade as it transitions to all-electric vehicles and diversifies its operations beyond selling cars and trucks.
The automaker announced the new revenue target, along with fatter projected operating profit margins of 12% to 14%, on Wednesday ahead of investor presentations in which it detailed how the company plans to hit those targets through traditional automotive operations and new software- and data-focused businesses.

The revenue goal is based on a rolling average of about $140 billion for the automaker in recent years, a company spokesman said. GM’s revenue last year was nearly $122.5 billion, down 10.8% compared with 2019 thanks largely to factory shutdowns at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Its operating profit margin was 7.9% in 2020.
“When you look at all of the investments we’ve been making for five years plus, that’s what positions us today to really be in execution mode,” GM CEO and Chair Mary Barra told reporters during a briefing ahead of the event. “We have great confidence in our ability to grow revenues.”
The two-day investor meeting, including product test drives on Thursday, is meant to provide a “clear strategy” to persuade investors to value the company more like a technology start-up such as Tesla, which is valued at more than $750 billion, compared with $79 billion for GM.

Barra said GM expects much of the revenue growth to come from its new and service-based businesses, with “moderate growth” from its traditional vehicles and operations.
“Especially in the initial days, we see EVs being plus volume, so we see tremendous opportunity to grow from an EV perspective and then the subscription and services,” she said.

The automaker expects its traditional business of auto sales and financing to increase to between $195 billion and $235 billion a year, up from $138 billion. Its new businesses such as autonomous vehicle subsidiary Cruise and BrightDrop commercial EV business is targeted to grow from $2 billion, largely from OnStar, to $80 billion during that time frame.
GM also confirmed plans to rapidly scale its electric vehicle manufacturing, with more than 50% of North America and China plants capable of producing the vehicles. Only two GM plants in North America are capable of producing electric vehicles currently, but it has announced plans to transition at least three others by 2023.
GM President Mark Reuss told investors Wednesday the company will soon announce a second assembly plant for battery electric trucks. The company’s first EV pickups, including the upcoming GMC Hummer, will be produced at a plant in Detroit.
The automaker is in the process of investing $35 billion in electric and autonomous vehicles through 2025, as it aims to become an all-electric automaker by 2035.
GM said it plans to surpass Tesla as the U.S. leader in EVs, but Barra and Reuss declined to disclose a time frame. The company has said it expects to sell 1 million EVs a year globally by 2025.
During the event, GM also is expected to better detail that transition as well as how it plans to commercialize driver-assist systems and autonomous vehicles.
GM on Wednesday confirmed it will unveil its new electric Silverado at CES in January. It also said a Chevrolet crossover for around $30,000 is in the works. GM did not release on-sale dates for the vehicles.
“No one is going to be able to touch us in the battery-electric truck space,” Reuss told reporters Wednesday. “You’re going to see that we have hit the mark on those.”

On self-driving technology, GM said that in 2023 it will release a new hands-free system called “Ultra Cruise” that is capable of driving in 95% of scenarios. The system is expected to be far more capable than its current Super Cruise system, which is exclusively available on premapped divided highways.
At launch, GM said, Ultra Cruise will be available on more than 2 million miles of road in the U.S. and Canada. Super Cruise is currently available on more than 200,000 miles of road.

2022 GMC Hummer EV sport utility truck

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The American League Wild Card game between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox peaked at 8.4 million viewers on Tuesday night.
It’s the most number of people to watch a baseball game on ESPN since 1998.
The Red Sox beat the Yankees 6-2 and advanced to the AL Division Series to play the Tampa Bay Rays.

The Boston Red Sox dugout erupts onto the field after taking the 6-2 Wild card win over the New York Yankees. The Boston Red Sox host the New York Yankees in the American League Wild Card Playoff Game at Fenway Park in Boston on Oct. 5, 2021.
Barry Chin | Boston Globe | Getty Images

The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox kicked off the 2021 postseason on Tuesday with the most-watched baseball game on Disney’s ESPN networks since the day Mark McGwire hit his then record-tying 61st home run in the 1998 season.
The American League Wild Card game pitted the long-time AL East rivals against one another in an elimination context. The Red Sox beat the Yankees 6-2 and advanced to the AL Division Series to face the Tampa Bay Rays. Game one of the best-of-five set starts Thursday.

An average of 7.7 million viewers across ESPN platforms watched Tuesday night’s contest, and the network said viewership peaked at 8.4 million between around 10:15 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. ET.
That’s the most since Sept. 7, 1998, when McGwire’s St. Louis Cardinals faced Sammy Sosa’s Chicago Cubs in a late-season contest. While neither team made the playoffs, all eyes were on the series, because McGwire and Sosa were both on pace to pass Roger Maris’ single-season home run record of 61 in 1961.
McGwire hit his 61st that night in front of an ESPN audience of 10.6 million. He finished the season with 70 home runs, followed by Sosa at 66.
ESPN said the Boston area drew a 19.8 household rating for Tuesday’s contest. That means nearly 20% of all TVs in that market, which has 2.3 million households, were tuned into the game. Among Boston viewers, it was the most-watched Red Sox game on ESPN since 2009.
The New York market registered an 11.2 household rating. ESPN used metrics from Nielsen to gauge viewership.

Advertising data firm EDO estimated that search engagement for Tuesday’s Wild Card was 55% higher than the average 2021 MLB regular season game featuring either of the clubs. Viewers were 55% more likely to search online for a brand in the minutes after its commercial aired during the game. Nissan and Verizon were among the most-searched brands, EDO said.
Viewership for the Yankees-Red Sox game was up 67% from the 2019 AL Wild Card game between the Rays and Oakland Athletics. That contest drew 4.6 million viewers.

Anthony Rizzo #48 of the New York Yankees reacts after striking out against the Boston Red Sox eighth inning of the American League Wild Card game at Fenway Park on October 05, 2021 in Boston, Massachusetts.
Winslow Townson | Getty Images

For Wild Card games across all networks, the 2015 National League contest between the Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates still has the biggest audience, as 8.3 million viewers tuned in on WarnerMedia’s TBS network.
Tuesday night’s game is second, followed by the 2015 AL Wild Card on ESPN, which lured 7.6 million viewers to see the Houston Astros play the Yankees. The 2016 NL Wild Card game, pitting the New York Mets against the San Francisco Giants is fourth at 7.4 million.
MLB could be for another big hit on Wednesday as the Cardinals and Los Angeles Dodgers face off in the NL Wild Card game. That game is on TBS, with viewership information likely to be available on Thursday.
WATCH: ‘Field of Dreams’ game in Iowa

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