From social-media stars to the Mexican army, everyone wants to run an airline

There are two measures of the recovery of the airline industry to its pre-covid altitude. First, data show that the 1.1bn seats on sale worldwide in July and August were only a whisker below levels in 2019. Seasoned observers point to a second, more subjective gauge: a slew of announcements of new or resurrected airlines with unlikely owners, dubious business models or questionably niche routes. Entrepreneurs are again being drawn to an industry that has long offered the glamour and excitement that a moth sees in a flame.One route skyward is to apply a fresh lick of paint to a defunct brand. On August 20th Monarch Airlines, a British carrier that went bust in 2017, said it would resume carrying passengers in 2024, though details of its plans are sparse. The government of Ghana, whose flag carrier collapsed in 2010, is also relaunching a national airline. It is doing so in partnership with Ashanti Airlines, a firm scarcely accustomed to running such a service in a continent whose carriers have lost a daunting $3.5bn between them in the past three years.