Cycle covers of planar 2-edge-connected graphs (Q1376070)

\textit{J. A. Bondy} [NATO ASI Ser., Ser. C 301, 21-40 (1990; Zbl 0734.05067)] conjectured that every 2-connected graph of order \(n\) has a small cycle cover, i.e., its edges can be covered with at most \((2n- 1)/3\) cycles. \textit{H.-J. Lai} and \textit{H. Lai} [Cycle covering of plane triangulations, J. Comb. Math. Comb. Comput. 10, 3-21 (1991; Zbl 0755.05069)] proved the conjecture for plane triangulations and the author [Cycle covers of planar 3-connected graphs, J. Comb. Math. Comb. Comput. 20, 245-253 (1996)] showed that for all planar 3-connected graphs at most \((n+1)/2\) cycles suffice. Here the author shows that Bondy's conjecture holds for all 2-connected planar graphs and notes that \textit{H.-J. Lai} [Cycle covers of planar graphs, Congr. Numerantium 122, 30-46 (1996)] has also obtained this result. He further shows that all 2-edge-connected planar graphs can be covered by at most \((3n-4)/4\) cycles, a bound which is shown to be sharp for an infinite family of graphs, and conjectures that the planarity condition can be dropped.