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The online card service Moonpig has reported a bump in sales thanks in part to its increased use of AI to help design cards, personalise customers’ messages and answer queries.

The company said sales rose 6.7% to £169m in the six months to 31 October and had remained strong in the weeks since then, largely as as result of increased orders and spend per order at its main Moonpig brand.

“AI is now designing a lot of cards for us,” said its chief executive, Nickyl Raithatha. He said technology had helped create everything from baby and birthday cards to corporate greetings linked to a particular business.

“It is still being managed by our in-house team. We make sure a person will look at it and it is relevant and exciting for customers. We don’t want to fill our site with generic design. We are treading carefully.”

The strong sales helped lift the company, which also operates Greetz elsewhere in Europe and sells vouchers for experiences such as spa days and cinema trips, back into the black with a pre-tax profit of £26.6m for the half year compared with a £33.3m loss a year before.

About half of purchases involve shoppers using AI-led features to help add a creative spin to their messages, whether that is a sticker, photo or personalised handwriting, up from only about 2% two years ago.

Recent developments in the technology allow a shopper to automatically adapt a broad range of designs to fit certain requirements, such as targeting a particular age or relative.

The company said its new AI chat system already resolves about a third of all queries and said: “customers consistently rate these interactions far more highly than human-handled ones”.

Raithatha said the company was “not looking at this as a threat or reduction in jobs” but it could step up productivity by suggesting 50 or more designs that a person could edit, adapt or curate rather than designing just one or two cards in a day.

“We still need that creativity,” said the CEO, who is stepping down at the end of this month and will be replaced by Catherine Faiers, the chief operating officer of the secondhand car marketplace AutoTrader.

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Raithatha said that the tax and spending changes announced in the chancellor’s budget last month had not led to any noticeable change in customer behaviour but recent trading had been “very encouraging” with a “great start to peak trading” over the festive period.

He added that there was “hopefully less uncertainty” now the measures had been announced, which made “businesses more able to make decisions”.

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Geneva – The International Air Transport Association (IATA) updated its analysis of aerospace supply chain bottlenecks noting that aircraft availability remains one of the most significant constraints on industry growth in its just released global outlook.

While deliveries of new aircraft began to pick up in late 2025 and production is expected to accelerate in 2026, demand is forecast to outstrip the availability of aircraft and engines. The normalization of the structural mismatch between airline requirements and production capacity is unlikely before 2031-2034 due to irreversible losses on deliveries over the past five years and a record-high order backlog.

Notable points on the current situation include:

• Delivery shortfalls now total at least 5,300 aircraft.
• The order backlog has surpassed 17,000 aircraft, a number equal to almost 60% of the active fleet. Historically, this ratio was steady at around 30-40%. This backlog is equivalent to nearly 12 years of the current production capacity.
• The average fleet age has risen to 15.1 years (12.8 years for aircraft in the passenger fleet, 19.6 years for cargo aircraft, and 14.5 years for the wide-body fleet).
• Aircraft in storage (for all reasons) exceed 5,000 aircraft, one of the highest levels in history despite the severe shortage of new aircraft.

“Airlines are feeling the impact of the aerospace supply chain challenges across their business. Higher leasing costs, reduced scheduling flexibility, delayed sustainability gains, and increased reliance on suboptimal aircraft types are the most obvious challenges. Airlines are missing opportunities to strengthen their top-line, improve their environmental performance, and serve customers. Meanwhile, travelers are seeing higher costs from the resulting tighter demand/supply conditions. No effort should be spared to accelerate solutions before the impact becomes even more acute,” said Willie Walsh, IATA’s Director General.

As production bottlenecks continue, new challenges and impacts are being revealed:

• Delivery delays are compounded by several factors, including:
  • Airframe production is outpacing engine production (which is constrained due to issues with existing engines). This is resulting in newly completed airframes being parked until engines are available.
  • Longer timelines for new aircraft certification (from 12-24 months to four or even five years) are delaying entry into production/service, particularly impacting long-haul fleet renewal.
  • Tariffs on metals and electronics resulting from US-China trade tensions have worsened some supply bottlenecks and raised some maintenance costs.
  • A shortage of skilled labor, especially in engine and component manufacturing, is constraining production ramp-up plans.
  • The fragility of the aerospace supply chain network (often reliant on a limited number of suppliers for critical parts) can become an acute constraint amid economic uncertainty, changing tariff regimes, and tight labor markets. As a result, even small disruptions can be difficult to resolve and balloon to significant production delays.
• Fuel efficiency improvements are slowing as the fleet ages. Historically, fuel efficiency improved by 2.0% per year, but this slowed to 0.3% in 2025 and is projected at 1.0% for 2026.
• The situation for the air cargo fleet risks evolving:
  • Converted aircraft from passenger operations are in short supply as airlines keep them in use for passenger operations longer.
  • New-build wide bodies face production delays.
  • Older cargo aircraft which have been kept flying longer to compensate for slower fleet renewal will eventually reach hard limits on their useful life.

A recent study by IATA and Oliver Wymann estimated that the cost to the airline industry of supply chain bottlenecks will be more than USD 11 billion in 2025, driven by four main factors:

• Excess fuel costs (~USD 4.2 billion): Airlines are operating older, less fuel-efficient aircraft because new aircraft deliveries are delayed, leading to higher fuel costs.
• Additional maintenance costs (USD 3.1 billion): The global fleet is aging, and older aircraft require more frequent and expensive maintenance.
• Increased engine leasing costs (USD 2.6 billion): Airlines need to lease more engines since engines spend longer on the ground during maintenance. Aircraft lease rates have also risen by 20–30% since 2019.
• Surplus inventory holding costs (USD 1.4 billion): Airlines are stocking more spare parts to mitigate unpredictable supply chain disruptions, increasing inventory costs.

To help expedite solutions, the study pointed to several considerations:

• Open up aftermarket best practices by supporting Maintenance, Repair and Operations (MRO) to be less dependent on OEM-driven commercial licensing models, as well as facilitating access to alternative sourcing for materials and services.
• Enhance supply chain visibility by creating clearer visibility across all supplier levels to spot risks early, reduce bottlenecks and inefficiencies, and use better data and tools to make the whole chain more resilient and reliable.
• Use data more extensively in leveraging predictive maintenance insights, pooling spare parts, and creating shared maintenance data platforms to optimize inventory and reduce downtime.
• Expand repair and parts capacity to accelerate repair approvals, support alternative parts and Used Serviceable Material (USM) solutions, and adopt advanced manufacturing to ease bottlenecks.

> More on aviation supply chain

 

For more information, please contact:

Corporate Communications

Tel: +41 22 770 2967

Email: corpcomms@iata.org

More than two-thirds (69%) of European shoppers reveal they’ve discovered a hidden present before the big day, and almost the same number ( 67%) feel guilty about packaging waste at Christmas.

Four in ten (40%)* European consumers have hidden Christmas presents so well they couldn’t find them again until after Christmas Day, according to new research commissioned by Amazon. The survey of more than 10,000 adults in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy reveals the creative lengths shoppers go to when hiding gifts, with some using suitcases (17%), sock drawers (14%), and even washing machines or tumble dryers (3%) as secret hiding spots. Meanwhile, more than two thirds (69%) of respondents admit to discovering their own Christmas gift before the 25^th of December.

With the festive season approaching, Amazon has shared the findings with a reminder to customers. One in two Amazon orders now comes in reduced packaging or the product’s original box. This means less packaging for customers to recycle and it has helped the company avoid more than 4 million metric tons of packaging since 2015.

For some popular gifts, this may mean they arrive without additional Amazon packaging, revealing what’s inside. So if you’re buying a present for someone you live with and they might be home when it’s delivered, simply tick the box at checkout to add Amazon packaging and keep the surprise.

Thais Blumer, Head of Sustainable Packaging, Amazon Europe said: “We’re proud that over half of Amazon orders in Europe now ship with reduced, recyclable packaging, or without anything but a shipping label added by us – helping customers reduce clutter and cut waste. But for those special surprises that need a bit more discretion, there’s always the option to add extra packaging at checkout.”

Key research findings:

• Hiding habits: The most common hiding places for Christmas gifts in Europe according to survey respondents are wardrobes/cupboards (48%), under the bed (31%), in the attic or loft (18%), in a suitcase (17%) or in a sock drawer (14%) with other spots including behind books on a shelf (15%), in a toolbox (7%), in the laundry bin (5%) and in a washing machines or tumble dryer (3%).
• Lost and found: 40% of European shoppers surveyed have hidden gifts so well they couldn’t find them again until after Christmas Day.
• Surprise spoilers: While 69% of respondents admit to discovering a present early, 42% of European consumers surveyed say this made them feel disappointed or guilty.
• Festive waste: 67% of European respondents feel guilty about excess packaging waste at Christmas.
• Reusing wrapping: European shoppers have used more sustainable alternatives to wrap their gifts with four in ten (41%) of respondents reusing delivery boxes or brown paper, 29% using newspapers or magazines and 16% using swatches of fabric, handkerchiefs or old scarves. Twelve per cent of respondents admit to wrapping gifts tin foil!

For those who want to maintain the surprise without adding additional packaging, Prime members can also select Amazon Day Delivery to choose a specific day when they know gift recipients won’t be home.

Amazon’s Ships in Product Packaging programme is part of the company’s wider efforts to reduce waste across its operations. By shipping items in right-sized packaging – or, where possible, in just the manufacturer’s box – Amazon helps to reduce unnecessary materials and the amount of packaging customers need to recycle at home. Since 2019, more than 1 billion shipments have been sent without added Amazon packaging, arriving in the product’s original box with only a shipping label attached. 

Read more about how Amazon continues to improve its packaging.

*Figures taken from a survey of 10,398 consumers in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, conducted by Kantar between 23^rd October and 3rd November 202