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spk01: Good morning and welcome to the United Airlines Holdings earnings conference call for the third quarter 2023. My name is Silas and I will be your conference facilitator today. Following the initial remarks from management, we will open the line for questions. At that time, please press pound two on your telephone keypad to enter the question queue. This call is being recorded and is copyrighted. Please note that no portion of the call may be recorded, transcribed, or rebroadcast without the company's permission. Your participation implies your consent to our recording of this call. If you do not agree with these terms, simply drop off the line. I will now turn the presentation over to your host for today's call, Christina Edwards, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk13: Thank you, Silas. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to United's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Yesterday, we issued our earnings release, which is available on our website at ir.united.com. Information in yesterday's release and the remarks made during this conference call may contain forward-looking statements. which represent the company's current expectations or beliefs concerning future events and financial performance. All forward-looking statements are based upon information currently available to the company. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. Please refer to our earnings release, Form 10-K and 10-Q, and other reports filed with the SEC by United Airlines Holdings and United Airlines for a more thorough description of these factors. Unless otherwise noted, we will be discussing our financial metrics on a non-GAAP basis on this call. Please refer to the related definitions and reconciliations in our press release. For reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, please refer to the tables at the end of our earnings release. Joining us on the call today to discuss our results and outlook are our Chief Executive Officer, Scott Kirby, President Brett Hart, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer, Andrew Nacella, and our new Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Michael Okenen. In addition, we have other members of the executive team on the line available to assist with the Q&A. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Scott.
spk06: Thank you, Christina. I want to start today by saying how heartbroken we are by the horrific attacks on Israel and the escalating conflict in the region that has millions of innocent people in harm's way. Here at United, when tragedy strikes anywhere around the world, we focus first on safety and second on how we can use our unique capabilities to help. While we suspended our service to Tel Aviv, we were the first U.S. carrier to add extra flights to Athens where customers connect from airlines operating between Tel Aviv and Athens. We also outgaged some regularly scheduled flights to Athens, added a dedicated Tel Aviv support desk, and continued flying to Oman and Dubai to maximize flexibility for our customers with tickets to Tel Aviv. We're closely monitoring the situation on the ground and staying in close touch with State Department officials so that we can resume service as soon as possible. We look forward to a succession cessation of violence in the region, and as we've done in the past crises around the globe, we expect United to continue to play a meaningful role in the humanitarian response. Turning back to the business, I want to start by welcoming Mike to the leadership team. You all know him well, but I'm excited to have him as a partner who agrees with my no excuses approach and is 100% committed to making United work for our employees, customers, and shareholders. I also want to congratulate Christina for her recent announcement from Crain's here in Chicago as one of the top 40 under 40. The third quarter was another solid milestone to demonstrate that United Next is working as we expected and the growth we are adding is profitable. Though fuel spiked this quarter, we're very encouraged about our results. It's clear to see why from the numbers. Our top line revenue grew 12.5% to $14.5 billion, making it the highest third quarter in our history. Our costs were also on track with our plan as we delivered strong operations in both August and September. United's diverse revenue streams have also allowed us to handle variations in demand and produce solid, absolute, and even better relative results. It's evident in the numbers. United and one other airline expected to count for 98 percent of the total industry revenue growth this quarter and over 90 percent of the industry's total pre-tax profitability. Even in a tough industry environment, United's diverse model is building strong, absolute, and even more impressive relative margins. So what is it about revenue diversity that makes us different? First, because of our size and industry-leading global network, our loyalty program is the most attractive program in the world for customers, and it therefore generates significantly directly earned significant loyalty, but also significant opportunity to do even more with it in the future. Expect to hear a lot more details from us on this front starting at an investor day in early 2024. Second, we have unmatched geographic diversity with a large domestic network complemented by the largest long-haul international network, and both are solidly profitable. While this is a great attribute, it does create some short-term risk and volatility, as we're seeing right now, with a transitory hit to margins this quarter as a result of the tragedy of misery. Third, we appeal to both business travelers, and it's been nice to see recent momentum in that segment, but also increasingly to leisure customers as well. We've gotten a lot more agile at pivoting capacity in the leisure markets and not surprisingly have found that our core customers can now fly us in both business and leisure markets as we add seats to leisure destinations. Our ability to move domestic capacity in the leisure markets when they're strong is a consequential driver of our strong relative revenue performance. And four, we continue to advance and improve our segmentation efforts. This is a project almost a decade in the making, but all the way from basic economy, which just allows us to compete profitably on price on the low end, and all the way up to Polaris on long-haul international, United is able to give our customers the real choice they want. So what does that mean going forward? In short, it's a confirmation that United Next is working as we expected. We thought the industry operating environment would be difficult. We thought that medium-term capacity aspirations would be higher than demand growth. We thought that domestic would be a lot tougher than international in the short to medium term. But we also thought United would win share, grow our gauge, and grow our connectivity, and that would allow United specifically to improve our results. By the way, we also expected, and now believe will happen even faster, that the domestic market is going to see a shakeout that leads to an improvement in margins over the medium to long term. It's impossible to call the timing exactly, but I guess that we see meaningful industry changes by 2H24. And for what it's worth, that's what has happened every single time we've been through one of these cycles in my career. And as that is happening, I'll continue closely tracking the airline industry revenue to GDP relationship. I've talked about this in the past, but that ratio declined by approximately 35 percent the past few decades. I don't think we'll make all that up, but almost everything we do make up goes straight to the bottom line. So, in conclusion, I'm proud of the team at United. We're creating something special here. Even in a tough industry environment, we're producing strong, absolute results while producing the best relative results in our history. We believe we have a lot of runway ahead of us with United Next in our diverse revenue streams, along with our ability to catch up, engage, and connectivity position United well. We expect that the current stress in some segments of the industry is also going to lead to structural changes that lay the foundation for an even better future for United, our employees, our customers, and our shareholders. With that, I'll turn it over to Brett. Thank you, Scott, and thank you to each member of the United team. conflict in Israel. At United, our top priority is the safety of our crews and customers. We're closely monitoring the situation. Following our coordination with the State Department, we have suspended flights to Tel Aviv until the end of October, and we're offering waivers to impacted customers. We will continue to monitor the situation and adjust as needed. Mike will provide more detail on the impact of these capacity adjustments shortly. Last quarter, we announced changes to our operation at disruptions, including taking advantage of FAA-granted waivers to reduce our flight schedule, allowing for necessary airspace relief in the highly congested region. While July was a difficult weather month, the Newark waivers and other proactive measures to improve reliability helped avoid pre-pandemic levels of ATC-related delays. In the third quarter, delayed arrivals were down 16 points versus the third quarter of 2019. Additionally, In August, we had the fewest cancels of any August in history, while operating the third largest quarter wide-body schedule ever. In September, the FAA granted extensions to the New York airspace waivers, allowing the ability to maintain a reduced flight schedule at Newark that will help minimize air traffic delays through the rest of the year. The flexibility enabled by waivers are proving to be successful in ensuring operational reliability and resiliency at our largest international hub and have meaningfully improved the travel experience for our customers traveling in and out of Newark and throughout our network. Looking to our system operations, during the quarter, we carried over 482,000 revenue passengers daily, the most in any quarter in United's history and September. We're grateful to the FAA for allowing us to make necessary adjustments in Newark and thank our employees who worked hard to get our customers to their destinations safely and on time. While most of our network has recovered to 2019 capacity levels or beyond, our China network has been last to recover. At the start of the quarter, we were operating four flights a week from San Francisco to Shanghai, and this month we increased that to a daily flight. Next month, we will be the first US airline to return to Beijing with a daily flight from San Francisco. We believe this measured approach to bringing China capacity back online is appropriate as demand slowly recovers. These increased flights are a significant step forward in rebuilding our Asia-Pacific network. Late last month, our pilots ratified their industry-leading agreement. This contract enables us to continue And I'm excited for the future as we continue to execute our UnitedX plan. At this point, we have ratified agreements for four out of our five major work groups. The flight attendants, represented by AFA, are in active negotiations, and we look forward to sharing an update when we have one. As a reminder, we began accruing for pilot pay rate increases in the first quarter of this year. Our outlook has and continues to represent our expectation for this agreement. it over to Andrew to discuss the revenue environment. Thanks, Brett.
spk07: Total revenue for the third quarter increased 12.5 percent, one point ahead of our guidance midpoint. TRASM was down 2.8 percent, TRASM was down 1 percent, and capacity increased 15.7 percent year-over-year. Capacity came in a bit below our original outlook, mostly due to the changes in our Hawaii flying levels in response to the fires. It's nice to come in ahead of a revenue outlook as a strong Q3 outcome further validates that our United Next commercial strategies are working well and that we have differentiated United from our competition. Demand for the Atlantic and the Pacific was truly outstanding, and we see that trend continuing into the fourth quarter. Third quarter domestic PRASM results were consistent with our year-over-year performance in the second quarter of down 2.1 points. In other words, we saw no real change in our domestic trends in the quarter-over-quarter review. Our focus on prudent gauge growth centered in our hubs resulted in strong, positive marginal revenue on our incremental capacity. We did focus a majority of our third quarter growth on international flying. International capacity increased 22 percent. International PRASM was up 1.3 percent year-over-year. International profit margins remained well ahead of domestic though domestic margins remain solidly profitable. We also saw strong performance across most of the globe. Clearly, Europe was a standout with capacity being up 12 percent with positive PRASM performance. Asia Pacific led international PRASM up 3.8 percent on 86 percent more capacity. Turning to our outlook for the fourth quarter, we expect total revenue to be up approximately 10.5 percent on approximately 15.5 percent more capacity. This implies transit will be down around 4.5% year-over-year. Our guide assumes we begin limited service to Tel Aviv again in November. Tel Aviv accounts for approximately 2% of United's consolidated capacity. As we think about the sequential trend in unit revenues, I know many of you are wondering if we are seeing a slowdown. Resurgence of the Pacific flying is resulting in many long-haul flights being added, increasing United's long-haul international stage length by five points versus Q3. United's Q4 unit revenue expectations are consistent with Q3 adjusted for stage. United has taken full advantage of the demand surge across the Pacific with capacity being added to key markets, including the long-pending resumption of daily flights to Beijing and Shanghai from San Francisco and the addition of Manila, just to name a few. Having done capacity planning my entire career, I have to say that our team is the best in the business, United properly allocated our 2023 growth to international markets over domestic, and in domestic markets, we wisely invested in gauge, not scope or depth. Less than 1% of United's domestic capacity this winter is in new markets, not in 2019. Capacity planning for 2024 will be even more important to achieve our financial goals. While we're not going to provide guidance for 2024 today, We have plans to let the 30 percent growth we've added to the Atlantic since 2019 mature in 2024 and expect to fly a similar level of capacity in 2024 S-23. We also plan on little to no growth for the first half of next year on domestic flying. This preview of our 2024 capacity, I think, will allow United to continue to produce top-tier results as we align with industry conditions. I wanted to touch on a few other important commercial elements today as well. Recently, the question I get asked the most often by our frequent flyers is about potential changes to achieve premier status on United. The good news is we have no material changes planned for 2025 program year. We've carefully managed our premier population in recent years to maintain a robust and valuable set of benefits for each premier member. We very much believe in never causing a situation where everyone has a premier status which obviously results in no one receiving an adequate level of Premier benefits. Our UnitedX strategy to offer Premier members access to more premium seats than each of our competitors is enhancing the value of our pre-compliant loyalty program. I also wanted to take a moment to talk about revenue segmentation. We've worked really hard on perfecting segmentation of our products in recent years. Not only do we have multiple product types appealing to a broad range of customers, but we also have new, more effective ways to distribute our products by United.com and NDC Technology. United is, of course, very focused on growing all of our premium products, given where our hubs are located. When I look back at where United was in 2017, we simply didn't offer premium products that many of our best customers were willing to pay for. We put a plan in place with United Next to correct this disconnect in our commercial plans, and we're making quick progress. Premium Plus is one of our best examples of segmentation and has been a huge success. Premium Plus' third quarter 2023 capacity is five times that of 2019, with revenue up seven times 2019, and is now our most profitable cabin. Premium Plus is now offered on all twin-engine international aircraft at United, and also on board, we'll be on board our new A321XLR jets, which replaced our 757 Stardust in 2025. Another important driver of revenues has been the success of domestic first class. We plan on increasing our first class seats per departure from nine in 2019 to 16 by 2027, an 80% increase. This increase in first class seats comes as more and more customers are seeking elevated experiences. United's basic economy product represents the other side of the spectrum compared to many of our premium products. Basic has made United more competitive versus ultra low cost competitors and given our customers more choices. Basic economy is now 12% of our domestic passengers and we expect to be even more competitive in this segment of the market in the future with the arrival of our large narrow-bodied jets in 2024 and 2025. These new jets have low marginal chasms, allowing United to be price competitive with anyone at any time. While it took time to perfect the offer, and we are only in the early stages of inducting these jets, BASIC has changed the competitive dynamics of our industry. I think it's also becoming increasingly clear that United's core business model of multiple product choices, an expanding club network, experience levels from basic economy to Polaris, provide travelers choices. And for United to grow in premium products, travelers are willing to pay for. Beyond segmentation, United's networks split evenly between domestic and global capacity. I'll just end with diversified revenue streams provide United with a resiliency other business models will just not ever achieve. RASM accretive gauge growth folks in our hubs in turn provides United with the unmatched ability to create cost convergence for years to come with our low-cost providers. Thanks again to the best team in the business, and with that, I will hand it off to Mike.
spk05: Thanks, Andrew, and good morning, everyone. Before I get into the results, I want to take a minute to say how honored and excited I am to join the United executive team during such a transformative time. Industry dynamics are constantly changing, and I continue to see the incredible opportunity ahead for United. We believe our no excuses mentality and clear strategy with United Next are laying the foundation for success. I look forward to continuing the conversations I've had with the investment community thus far in my new role, and I'm excited to lead the talented finance team here at United. Now let's turn to the results. For the third quarter, we delivered pre-tax earnings of $1.6 billion and a pre-tax margin of 10.8%. Our earnings per share of $3.65 was ahead of expectations as our revenue growth came in a full point ahead of our guidance midpoint. Thanks to the amazing commercial team for the great work. They truly are the best in the business. Fuel remains volatile and worked against us in the quarter. Our average fuel price for the quarter ended 30 cents higher than the midpoint of our July expectation and more than accounts for the entirety of the reduced outlook for the third quarter. our CASAmax remained on track at up 2.6 percent versus the third quarter of 2022. Our operation to Tel Aviv has been impacted by the recent events in the region and is materially impacting our outlook, as this market represents approximately 2 percent of our capacity. For the fourth quarter, we expect CASAmax to be up approximately 3.5 percent, with capacity up 15.5 percent, both versus the fourth quarter of last year. Our guidance incorporates no service to Tel Aviv through the end of October. If flights are further suspended through the end of the year, it would reduce capacity by an additional approximately 1.5 points and add approximately 1.5 points of CASMX, as it's very difficult to cut the associated expenses related to this flying so close in. These changes bring capacity for the full year up around 17.5 percent year-over-year, just below our guidance. We're proud of that result given all the headwinds United and our industry faced, a huge testament to the hard work of our operations team. Lower capacity along with elevated maintenance expense has pressured CASMX and pushed us above the high end of our CASMX range for the full year. For the fourth quarter, we expect earnings per share of approximately $1.80, with an average fuel price of approximately $3.28. Absent our Tel Aviv flying through the rest of the year, our fourth quarter earnings per share would be reduced by approximately 30 cents. Looking ahead to 2024, we feel good about the core fundamentals of our expenses. However, we are facing sizable headwinds with labor, an expectation of a new flight attendant agreement, and continued higher maintenance expense. We believe our capacity growth along with improvements in utilization are helpful tailwinds as we manage down expenses. We are working through our 2024 budget and new projections for 2024 capacity, CASAmax, and our other financials, and we'll provide our customary guidance on our January call. On the fleet, in the third quarter, we took delivery of 18 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft and paid for 14 of those aircraft with cash. We expect to take delivery of 20 737 MAX aircraft in the fourth quarter, and we took delivery of our first Airbus A321neo last week. This is a reduction of 12 aircraft versus our plan in July for the second half of the year. Due to these aircraft shifting into 2024, we now expect our full-year 2023 adjusted capital expenditures to be approximately $8 billion. Earlier this month, we announced our order for 68,321 NEOs and exercised options for 57,87 for delivery in 2028 and beyond. Managing the delivery skyline for the future of United is critical. This order builds on the successes we are already seeing with United Next and reflects our confidence as we extend our planning into the next decade. With the retirement of our Boeing 757 and 767 fleet later this decade, these aircraft are important additions as we work towards fleet simplification and capitalize on our cost reduction opportunity. Turning briefly to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with almost $19 billion in liquidity, including our undrawn revolver. Before we end our prepared remarks today, it's important to recognize that while our financial results remain strong, as an industry, we are facing new and unique challenges. Our growth has helped us deliver strong relative cost performance, and that's even before we begin the accelerated gauge growth that we expect will come from the 737 MAX 10 and the A321 additions to our fleet. We are committed to continuing to deliver industry-leading cost performance. And this will form the foundation for continued cost convergence and improving absolute profitability. And because our growth is focused on our hubs, we're also growing with industry-leading Prasm. There are and will always be headwinds facing our industry. But as we enter 2024, United has great momentum, and I'm confident a very bright future. With that, I'll hand it over to Christina to start the Q&A.
spk13: Thank you, Mike. We will now take questions from the analyst community. Please limit yourself to one question and if needed, one follow-up question. Silas, please describe the procedure to ask a question.
spk01: Thank you. The question and answer session will be conducted electronically. If you would like to ask a question, please press pound two to enter the question queue. Please hold for a moment while we assemble our queue. The first question comes from Jamie Baker from JP Morgan.
spk19: Hey, good morning, everybody. So following up on some of the prepared remarks, probably for Andrew or maybe Scott, I can't recall a time when there's been such a chasm between domestic yields at United and those of the LMAs. How would you rank order the drivers of this? How much is reflective of low-end consumer weakness? How much is your own success with basic economy? How much is loyalty? Maybe the LMAs are just selling out too far in advance. Just trying to assess the permanence of the phenomenon. So if you could rank order the drivers, that would be great.
spk07: Hi, Jamie. I'll try to give that a try. I mean, rank order and then maybe a little difficult, but let's see what we can do. You know, I do think your question is really one of the most important questions that anyone could ask today, because there's such a difference occurring versus the past. And clearly, you know, what I think I would start off with is there's a large range of business models today that didn't exist in years past in this business. And these models are clearly creating winners and losers in a way many of us did not anticipate during the pandemic. You know, I recall telling all of you on the Q1 2020-22 call, that industry domestic margins would be challenging post-pandemic. Clearly, the thinking at the time was, for most at least, was that all airlines would be pressured equally at best, or the legacy carriers even more so, right? It was widely assumed that lower margin, higher cost legacy carriers would shrink, rebalance in supply and demand, an outcome that had happened so many times in the past, so why not again? The number of times I heard that the airline with the lowest cost wins the race, I can't even begin to count. So that kind of sets up what about the business models has shifted so much to cause this paradigm change we're seeing today. Why are these low-cost airlines so unprofitable? Why does United have top-tier results? And first, I just want to be really clear. United's domestic network is profitable. So it's not simply our great global network. that's creating this outcome for us. The first issue, of course, Mike talked about it, is cost. Every airline has to manage higher inflationary cost pressures, but the lowest cost carriers cost structure relative to the legacy carriers are clearly convergent. The shrinking cost gap is just a fundamental shift for United and our industry, and I guess I would rank that number one. You said it's impossible to run your airline like it's 2019. High utilization was a critical ingredient for success of certain models, and that's simply not possible where we are today. And also, having large labor cost differentials are not possible. Low-cost carriers also tend to operate with very high gauge already. It will be much more difficult for them to drive cost materially lower with larger gauge planes like United. United has increased domestic gauge more than any airline since 2019, and our plan is to push that even further in the years to come. You know, another issue that I think we should talk about is it's difficult for many to grasp is that not every ASM is created equal. It's easy to mistake made often in the middle of really large spreadsheets that everyone uses to evaluate our outlooks, right? At United, we proved this point early in 2018 and 19 with our growth and revenue performance, and we just did it again in Q3. Market saturation of the low-cost business model in certain regions is creating very low marginal RASMs for some of our competitors. In fact, many of our competitors have marginal revenue percentages that are negative. There are only so many seats that Florida, Cancun, or Vegas can support in such a short period of time. Also, low-cost carriers generally must operate a very large gauge equipment to have low costs without the connectivity benefit of the hub-and-spoke business model. Expansion of the low-cost model into smaller and medium-sized markets with these very large jets lacking connectivity just creates low marginal RASMs. Market saturation and the mismatch of gauge and other connectivity continues to plague certain business models. Expansion opportunities with this type of business model are not endless in our view, but in response to that shortcoming, many of our domestic competitors have doubled down with plans for even more growth in 2024. 2024 marginal growth in markets will absolutely be no better than 2023. No airline network team would say, let's add the bad markets in 2023 so we can save the good ones for 2024. The other factor is the percentage of ASMs that these airlines have in new markets. Very fast growth rates simply create a high percentage of new capacity which by its nature, in the best of times, is below average. This fourth quarter, United has less than 1% of our ASMs in new markets versus 19. This is an absolute difference maker. When capacity growth is designed as a strategy to maintain low costs without revenue or creative markets to add, the entire business model can break. And that is what we think is happening right now. United's domestic capacity growth has always been about correcting a gauge mismatch created by the overuse of high-cost, passenger-friendly, single-class regional jets. At United, we have this diversity of revenue streams that provide us long-term stability and earnings that a one-dimensional plan will never achieve. We have a range of products, including an array of premium seating options that's increasingly popular with our travelers. We fly as much capacity in global markets as we do domestically. We fly to big cities and small. We have a great hub and spoke business model. United has significant margin of creative growth, and we've proven that time and time again. United's business model can support dramatically higher gauge, and once added, we spill less and less traffic to others. United's higher gauge will create more and more cost conversions between now and 2027. The complexity of United's product offering is not a disadvantage. It, in fact, is a structural advantage that generates revenues more than the cost it creates by the complexity and just cannot be replicated. In the past, United and other legacy carriers that have emerged from the crisis smaller, creating excess planes and other resources for others to grow. This time, that will not happen. This time around, it is not United with the low margins. We will not adjust our plans. United's focus on global markets has clearly won the day in Q3, and you can see that in the results. Our focus on domestic gauge is absolutely the right one. We'll no longer spill as much revenue to others as we've done in the past. Our focus on basic fares means we'll be able to be even more competitive. United will moderate our domestic growth plans, as I said earlier, for the first half of 2024 because we're focused on building our Asia Pacific line where we see the strongest short-term results. But I have to say, maybe in our timing, there may be off to a few other – the timing may be off, Jamie, but the quarters are coming, and there's a lot of other variables. And I just really am confident that sooner or later, the industry will rebalance like it has done in the past, and the United and a few others with similar diversified revenue streams are going to come out on top. I know that was a long answer. I didn't rank exactly the way you wanted. No, no, no.
spk19: That's great. Yes. Andrew, that's great. I really do appreciate it. But let me just follow up with a quick philosophical question. If spill carriers can't make money but full-service airlines can, doesn't that suggest we're actually at the optimal amount of domestic capacity rather than the oversupply that investors keep asking me about?
spk06: Yeah. Well, I guess I'll try now. It's hard to follow Andrew. That was a great answer. And very comprehensive. And probably why we feel that, what Andrew said, is why we feel so different than I recognize everyone on this call feels or than the market feels. We feel really confident about where we're headed, what this means for margins out in 2026. By the time we're there, we just feel really confident. But without answering the question about sort of overall industry capacity. I kind of at a high level think of this, Jamie, as to me one of the most remarkable statistics this quarter is that 90% of the industry revenue growth is going to be at two airlines and 90% of the pre-tax profitability. We just have better models. And, you know, what we've tried to do as we went through COVID, the goal was to create an airline that had better product, service, experience for customers across the board. We can't just be a leisure airline. We can't just be a low fare airline. We can't just be a premium airline. We need to deliver for all customers. We tried to create products that were better on the high end, but all the way down to the low end. I believe strongly that air travel is not a commodity. Some in the industry think it's a commodity. That's how you get to low cost winds, if you believe it's a commodity. I do not think that. And I think we are proving, our results at two airlines are proving that air travel is not a commodity. So without commenting on what the total industry growth is, what is happening is airlines have that differentiated product, service, experience. We're getting almost all the revenue growth, and customers are voting with their wallets, and those models are working. Thank you, gentlemen. Appreciate it. Take care.
spk01: Our next question comes from Michael Linenberg from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
spk12: Yeah. Hey. Good morning, everyone. Congratulations, Mike, on your promotion and, Christina, on your recognition. Scott, I'm going to go to the other end, kind of at the side of your business that caters to the higher-end consumer. And I guess when I think about just the recent top-up order on the 787s, adding to Your current order, I mean, it's significant. I think it's actually one of the largest wide-body orders out there, at least for a U.S. carrier. Is the internal thinking at United, just given the shape of the OEMs, whether it's the manufacturers or the engine makers, that we could be facing maybe some kind of wide-body shortage in the back half of this decade? What are your thoughts on that?
spk07: Mike, I'll give it a try. You know, I do think the production lines for wide-body jets don't produce nearly as many aircraft as the narrowbodies, as you know. So there are definitely not as many that are going to be produced. But, you know, more to the point, the wide-bodies we just ordered, are for 2028 and beyond. And it's really our confidence in our plan, but it's particularly our confidence that we are going to increasingly pivot in the latter part of the decade to global growth and not domestic growth. And so, you know, we secured those positions. We're confident we'll use them. We have a significant fleet of 777s and 767s that need to retire at some point later this decade, at least for the 767 for sure. And so with the number of retirements we have, the confidence in our plan, and some of the OEM issues that you just brought up, this just made sense. Again, it's for 2028 and beyond. It's a long time away. But we are really confident in the plan. We're confident that global growth, we will have to lean into that and we will want to lean into that in the latter part of the decade.
spk05: Hey, Mike, this is Mike. I'll pile on. You know, with the delays in the supply chain, they've become persistent. And so... Part of what we're doing is controlling skyline for a longer period of time than we have historically. This industry has been an industry that has in the past gone from putting out fire to fire, and the United Next Strategy is putting us on a firmer footing to plan for the longer term. So, A, I want to highlight that. the contractual delivery dates. They've been pushing to the right, and we'll probably continue to see that. As you see us playing internally, we'll have some expectation of continued slipping. But make no mistake, we will make adjustments to the order book and the delivery times in a way that maximizes returns to our shareholders, and we will focus on return on invested capital in addition to our pre-tax margin as we take delivery of those aircraft.
spk12: Okay, great. Thank you. Just one quick follow-up. Just any early thoughts on maybe this proposed regulation around credit cards and maybe a cap on merchant fees? I know it's proposed legislation, so it obviously has to go through a process, but any sort of early take on it, or maybe it's a TBD? Thanks for taking my questions.
spk06: Sure, I'm happy to answer that. It would be a really, really bad policy for consumers in this country. It's a bill that would – 84% of U.S. consumers have some kind of rewards card in their wallet. I bet almost everyone on this call has one. And they like them, and they like them a lot. Our customers certainly like them a lot. And so I think it would be hard in Congress to take a vote that 84% of your voters are going to be upset with the outcome of that vote. And by the way, this bill would kill a rewards program. It would not exist anymore. It kills debit card rewards programs when it happens. And I think it's bad policy. And I also think it kind of misses the mark because in the credit card, it does a couple of things. It misses the mark with small businesses. I understand the frustration with small businesses. But small businesses are actually – there's middlemen in between credit card companies, the banks, and the small businesses – And I think that's probably where the bulk of the issues are. Some of those middlemen charge square charges as little as 35 basis points, and some of those middlemen are charging businesses 300 or 400 basis points. And so I think it probably misses the mark. And then the final point would be, you know, it's remarkable how good the cybersecurity is at the credit card processors. They've invested heavily in it. It's not easy to replicate. I mean, think about how many billions of transactions are happening every day and how rare breaches or problems are. And so, you know, I think this is one of those that I've spent now a fair amount of time in D.C. talking to people. They didn't know much about it before, you know, because it's come up. But as you talk to people about it, you know, they more and more say, well, those are a bunch of good points. We need to go through regular order. We need to examine this. And so I think as long as we do that, as long as we examine it through regular order, which is the right way to pass, you know, consequential legislations, The facts will win the day, and nothing's going to happen, and it won't become law. Great.
spk12: Thanks, Scott.
spk01: Our next question comes from Connor Cunningham with Milius Research.
spk08: Hi, everyone. Thank you. Just on costs, I'm trying to understand the trends between your core cost performance and just how these supply chain transitory issues that you've laid out are kind of impacting. I realize that it's probably really hard to tell right now, but can you, you could just frame up when you think some of these potential transitory, uh, cost pressures may ease next year. That would be helpful. Thank you.
spk05: Hey Connor, this is Mike. Um, let me take a shot at that. Um, and I will, I will acknowledge the four Q chasm headwind we faced it face versus our expectations earlier in the year. Let me try to size that. Um, We flew, we expect to fly in the fourth quarter about three points lower than we thought just three months ago. Now two points of that is due to Captain Upgrade issue that Scott talked about on our last earnings call. The Captain Upgrade issue has impacted the entire industry. We have navigated that really well at United, but it did hit us here at the end of the year. Our new contract with alpha does fix that. And so the, you know, on the horizon, we have a full, full expectation that that constraint goes away, but for the fourth quarter that. Uh, cause two of the three points. The other point was due to the, uh, to the, to the violence in Tel Aviv and the loss of that flying. That is something that we can reposition, uh, over time. And we would expect to be able to serve Tel Aviv, um, you know, when the violence, uh, ceases. And so those three full points coming out relatively rapidly, you can't take the costs out. That was the majority of the chasm, of the increase in the chasm for the fourth quarter. Industry is facing other issues, but that's what happened here at United. And we expect to mitigate that in 2024 and beyond. The other issue, which I'm not sure how persistent is yet, is that maintenance costs. Maintenance costs throughout the years have been higher than we expected. and for United, it's been a big piece has been the increased need for spare parts. That's on aircraft, but particularly when we repair engines as the work scope has been larger than expected. Some of that is related to the supply chain, and it's difficult to see when that ends. I will end, and so those are the two components, majority capacity and then some additional headwinds for maintenance in the fourth quarter. We're not giving 2024 guidance at this time. The industry is facing cost pressures, inflationary cost pressures, labor cost pressures, maintenance cost pressures. What I will commit to today is that United will be industry leading in how we manage our costs. Cost convergence is a structural trend. It is what is causing the lower cost carriers, and they're not lower costs for long, the low cost carriers to struggle. and it is a foundation to United Next. And so I don't know where all that's going to settle. We will give you guidance as we would normally on the January conference call, but I will commit to industry-leading Chasm going forward.
spk08: Okay. That's super helpful. And then maybe just a little bit on – so a lot of your cost stuff next year kind of seems like it's somewhat capacity-related or new delivery-related. So I'm just trying to understand if you could – Is there any excess swing capacity that you may be able to have that could protect some of that growth that you have next year that may be slowed as a result of some of these delivery delays? Thanks again.
spk05: Connor, you're thinking about it the right way. But given all the constraints, we are working in the incremental flights from United being quite profitable given the great results from our commercial team. We're going to fly as much as we can to maximize profitability, but we do face some of those constraints. The key around the pressure of growing is you do need to hire folks on board before you actually add the ASMs. And so, that's a headwind United faces as long as we're executing on the United Next strategy. We're going to work to optimize that. But that doesn't go fully away until you would return to a slower growth rate.
spk08: Okay.
spk05: Thank you.
spk01: Our next question comes from Catherine O'Brien with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
spk11: Good morning, everyone. Thanks for the time and congrats, Mike and Christina. You know, I noticed in the release you called out the basic economy was up 50% year over year. Andrew, can you just dig into what drove that? Is that 12% of domestic passengers? You know, is that up significantly? Is there also a pricing element? Thanks.
spk07: You know, it's a good question. We, last year, facing the surge in demand, just, you know, maybe the simplest way to say it is we sold out too soon and we didn't have appropriate room for these basic passengers and our gauge was smaller. And this year, as we get closer to implementing all of our United Next plans, we were much more careful not to sell out too soon. So our close-in bookends are actually quite strong. You know, it's interesting to say that as I read commentary from around the rest of the industry that kind of says the opposite. And I do, you know, have to wonder whether one is tied to the other, obviously. But because we didn't sell out too soon, because we have plenty of room, And because we have just a normal booking curve for all this, we're able to accommodate those passengers in this quarter, unlike we did in the past. And with the new gauge aircraft coming in the future, we'll be able to continue to do that going forward. So I think that's the simplest and easiest explanation as to why you saw that change in our basic economy passengers. And look, it's a product we've talked about a lot, provides choice for our customers on the low end. We have lots of products on the high end as well. It gives us the diversity we need, and I think it's really allowing us to compete very effectively with all of our competitors, but particularly our ultra-low-cost competitors.
spk11: That's great. Thanks. And then maybe one for Mike, just on a follow-up on the delivery, you know, continued delivery delays we're seeing. You know, with the recent announcements on Pratt potentially putting pressure on engine availability and on NEO deliveries, and then I don't think the MAX-10 has been certified yet, but correct me if I'm wrong. How do we think about that delivery outlook for next year? Are there alternatives to the MAX-10 maybe you would consider? I appreciate now that you guys have in the queue the contractual deliveries versus the expected, but should we expect to see that delta maybe grow when we get the queue later today? Thanks so much for the time.
spk05: Thanks for the question, Katie. That is what we can do is we can manage our expected deliveries versus the contractual deliveries and size the business appropriately. The more that we hire workforce for aircraft that don't come, that aren't delivered when we need them, the bigger that headwind is for us. And so one of the first things I need to do in my new role is to properly size the that buffer between expected and contracted delivery. So that's point one. Point two, we have older aircraft, and we will push some of those older aircraft to fly longer with expected delays in delivery. I happen to love that option because that is also a return on invested capital enhancing. And so in the long run, we want to simplify the fleet, and those max tens are going to be Structurally lower costs. We're excited about them. The A321s are fantastic aircraft. Both of those aircraft are fantastic for a network like United where Gage, we get a real advantage out of Gage. I expect those deliveries to really start to drive lower chasm in 2025, not 2024. And so we should understand the timing of that. But we've got numerous levers to manage the delays from the supply chain and we can do a better job optimizing based on delays that are becoming a little bit more predictable.
spk11: Great. Thanks for the time.
spk01: Our next question comes from Ravi Shankar with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
spk16: Thanks. Good morning everyone. I just wanted to follow up on the commentary earlier about you need to cater to all customers, which I totally get, kind of given the broad base of the market. But obviously, we're seeing some of your peers try to push into premium or push into low-end. And anyway, just kind of the face of it feels like specializing may be an easier thing to go after than trying to cater to everyone with the network and the product you have. So kind of just wanted to dig a little deeper into kind of why that strategy of kind of being everyone rather than being just maybe a full-service premium network airline?
spk07: I'll start. I'm assuming others may want to chime in on this. But, Merce, I think there's a really important distinction in your question that we need to clarify. We're not trying to be all things to all people within the United States or around the globe. There are parts of our network that don't cover every single market in the United States. And I think if you were to try and say we are going to cover every single O&D pair in the United States, as the world's largest airline, that would be incredibly challenging, and that is not something we're trying to do. We are trying in our hubs and all the spokes we serve well from our hubs to make sure we offer a diverse range of products that appeal to all the customers that fly on United Airlines. And some of those customers, by the way, fly on United Airlines for business, and sometimes those same customers fly on United for leisure, vacation, or other needs. they have that optionality to purchase anything from basic economy to Polaris as part of that. And if they join Mileage Plus, they have obviously a larger chance to get upgraded into our large premium economy sections or into our first-class cabins, which are growing. So that diverse set of revenue streams, I know it sounds complicated, but it is our secret recipe. It is what the market wants. It's what our customers want. And we are not trying to be all things to all people. We're trying to make sure for the customers that fly United that they have a range of product choices for the particular trip they're going to take on that journey.
spk06: And I would say it as it is more complicated. You're right. It's simpler to you're going to only try to appeal to one niche. But the niches are small. The number of markets that exist that you can only be a low-fare, low-cost, commoditized player for. It's small. The number of markets that exist that you can only be a premium airline is even smaller. And so they're just tiny niches, and we're a big airline.
spk05: I'll just pile on. We fly 200 million passengers annually, and those passengers fly for different reasons, and the passengers will shift from leisure to business passengers throughout their life. And so it is important that we serve all of them, and we serve all of them with a product that suits their needs.
spk16: That's a very helpful color. Thank you for that. And maybe as a quick follow-up, and apologies if I missed this earlier, there's some speculation about us potentially being at peak international right now, specifically peak transatlantic. What would you say to that, kind of going into 2024, kind of do you see enough runway? I think you said in the coming out of the summer of 2022 that 2023 would be a lot bigger and kind of had that visibility. Are you confident that that strength can continue in 2024 as well?
spk07: Well, you know, I'd say right now, particularly today, for example, we continue to see strength across the Atlantic. We particularly see it to southern Europe. I can tell the industry does by all of our changes, and that's great to see. So we think that the trends are going to continue. That being said, I did say earlier in my comments that we are going to give the Atlantic a rest. We've grown a lot since 2008. 2019 for sure. And this year will be a year of basically no capacity growth across the Atlantic. I said I wasn't going to give capacity guidance, but clearly that's a big hint for a big part of the airline. So sorry, Mike. And the other thing I've said is like the last part of the world to recover is Asia. And Asia is still, you know, however you want to look at it, very strong. We're growing a lot of capacity on the front, and we're going to focus our efforts where we see that growth, where we see the profitability opportunity. And if you look at our schedules going into next year, you can see that a gigantic percent in change in our capacity is, in fact, Asia. So we put the capacity where we think we need to put it. We're really bullish on international. We've come a long way. It's very profitable. And there's a lot more to come. And as I said, in the latter part of this decade, I think we'll lean into it even further. We have the right hubs, right gateways where we have the leading business demand, the leading leisure demand, and the leading cargo demand. And that recipe is just unique to United, and we're going to take full advantage of it.
spk05: I spoke to an earlier question around the constraints to, industry capacity, and there's nowhere that that's more true than for wide-body aircraft. In addition to that, as Andrew alluded to, but I'll just emphasize, we have the best international gateways leaving the United States of any carrier. And so this is where, as Andrew says, we were born on third base, and we're going to capitalize on that.
spk16: Great. Thank you.
spk01: Our next question comes from Scott Group with Wolf Research. Please go ahead.
spk03: Hey, thanks.
spk01: Good morning.
spk03: So, Scott, yesterday you said that adjustments are inevitable and you expect them by the second half of 24. I guess I'm wondering, are you just talking about there are going to be capacity cuts by the second half next year? Are you talking about something bigger than that? I'm not going to predict. Yeah, go ahead, sir.
spk06: Well, I'm not going to predict what the exact changes are going to be, but here's what I'd say. There's been a structural change in the industry, and the structural change is, I've hinted at this earlier in today's call, I don't think air travel is a commodity. Some in the industry think it is. I do not. I think product, service, experience matter. Everything we've been doing in the last three years has been focused on improving that for our customers. That's true across the board. from the premium, but all the way down to the basic economy customers, and particularly as it pertains to low-cost carriers. I think there's three things that we have done that have completely changed the competitive dynamic there. First, as we're growing with higher gauge, we now have low marginal chasms on those big airplanes. When we used to try to compete with them with regional jets, we couldn't compete. We had a high-cost product, and we ran out of seats. We now have seats to sell on low marginal chasm on big, growing airplanes. Second is basic economy. And that is a product that is, you know, where we can be price competitive, but offer a far superior product still than you can get on a low-cost carrier and still be price competitive. And the third is the pivot into leisure markets. We've added more capacity, and it's done really well, you know, when we've added capacity into leisure markets. And you put those three things together. And what we've tried to do is create a product that customers will choose. And so what we've tried to do is create a cost-competitive product for customers, but that is better, and so they will choose to fly United. And that is exactly what we've done. That's how you see us have 90, you know, two airlines have 98% of the revenue growth. And that makes it hard if you're someone else. I'm not going to predict what they have to do, but if If I was in one of those airlines, I'd be really worried about not having a competitive product with United Airlines. That's the issue.
spk03: It strikes me. I don't think I've heard you talk so much and then so positively about basic economy in a while. It feels like a change in tone or strategy. Can you just talk about that and why it's happening now? Is it reflective of the competitive dynamic, the demand environment? It just feels like a change.
spk06: Look, I think it took us a while to work it out. It also helped that some of our competitors went the other direction. I mean, charging people $99 at the gate and paying your employees a commission to take their purses away crossed the line. And so while they've gone one direction, we've gone the other with an improved product. But the other thing that's really changed in the last year is we finally started to get the gauge right. We couldn't make this work when we were flying 650 regional jets around the country. And, like, That's why this is all coming together. I love it when a plan comes together. This is coming together. And I know it's not reflected in our stock price yet, and the market is skeptical of it, but this is a plan that is working exactly like we thought it would. And that is the big change for basic economies. It's a better product for us. We've figured out how to make it work, but we now have the gauge to be able to sell the product.
spk03: Thank you.
spk01: Our next question comes from Duane Finningworth from Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.
spk17: You know, Mike, I was going to congratulate you on the promotion, but given I'm so far back in the queue. No, I'm just kidding. Congrats on the step up here. I don't want to pile on basic economy, but I did think the disclosure was kind of interesting. You know, you called out 50% growth in Is that simply a function of kind of inventory availability? So this time last year, things were really tight, and they're a bit looser this year, so we can drive that growth. And I guess depending upon the environment, that 12% of customers was also an interesting stat. So you can turn the dials, and maybe you have kind of half of Spirit Airlines within United Inventory to maybe kind of multiple Spirit Airlines customers. within United Inventory. I'm guessing you probably push back on that metaphor, but maybe you could just speak to kind of inventory availability as a driver there.
spk07: Well, we'll probably save that for a more smaller conversation, to be honest. You know, what I would say is the, you know, the comps last year, we just couldn't execute the way we wanted to execute. And so, you know, it's off a small base. It creates a big percentage, but it is a meaningful change. And as I said earlier, we're going to lean into it. We have these big aircraft coming, and we're going to be more competitive in the future, not less.
spk01: Helene Becker from TD Cowan, you are unmuted. Please go ahead.
spk14: Thanks very much for the time. Christina, congratulations. Given I was quoted in the article, I knew it was coming. And Mike, same to you. So here's my question. As I think about the fact that we have all these infrastructure issues, especially in the New York area, that are going to persist for several years, how should we think about two things? You increase gauge, obviously, to capture the demand, but then there's a point where you want to capture higher ticket prices. So what's the sweet spot where you can do both, where you can benefit from capacity limitations with higher aircraft and raise ticket prices so that you improve margins?
spk06: Elaine, we think about it through a different prism. We want to provide a good experience to our customers. And New York and New Jersey have not been a good experience for a decade. And the core reason they have is there are more flight schedules than the airports can handle. We think it is a win for everyone, particularly starting with customers. to have a realistic number of flights at the airport capacity and air traffic control handling those airports. And we're very grateful to the FAA for doing that, for listening and following through on that. And we're anxious to serve as many customers as we can, and so we are upgaging. So we're flying more seats. We're flying fewer number of flights, but more seats as we're upgaging. And so we're focused on delivery for our customers, and that means find bigger airplanes. The good news is bigger airplanes also have lower cost per seat, and when the operation runs better, it's even lower cost per seat, which customers ultimately benefit from, and that's what we're doing.
spk14: So is the conclusion that I should have that the revenue is what it would have been had the infrastructure issue not existed and you flew more flights, but you would have had higher costs, right? This way you have lower costs and the same amount of revenue. Is that right? Absolutely.
spk06: And I don't know that I kind of get into that level of detail that you have in your spreadsheet. What I think is we're going to have a much better experience for customers. Right. Got it. I think we will have lower costs because we'll have fewer irregular operations. Right. And we'll have bigger airplanes. And I think that will probably keep prices certainly in line to growing with inflation. be better for our customers and we'll be more profitable because we don't have all the expenses associated with disruption and we don't have all the frustration that comes from that from customers. This is one of those few situations where it's a win-win-win for everybody.
spk05: Lane, the worst thing from a cost perspective is irregular operations. That's what surprises us. We built lots of buffers into the system to control for that and with better air traffic control, with an airport that is capacity appropriately, we can do a lot more optimization.
spk15: Got it. That's very helpful. Well, thanks, everybody.
spk01: Our next question comes from Brandon Oglinsky from Barclays. Please go ahead.
spk18: Hi. Good morning, and thanks for taking the question, and congrats, Mike and Christina. I know it's been a long call. I just want to, you know, get one more in here. But, Andrew, I know you're not technically got into 2024, but you also mentioned domestic capacity. I believe in your prepared remarks we should think about it being, you know, pretty much flat, I think, in the first half of the year. But maybe you can clarify that. And what's driving that? Because I know under your next strategy you did want to up gauge domestically. So is this in, you know, concert with OEM delivery expectations, pilots, commercial? I mean, what are you seeing that's driving that?
spk07: You know, we're still putting our plan together, so I don't want to say it's final. And I did say in my prepared remarks that, you know, we would have, I forget the exact words, but low type of really slow growth domestically. Look, our commercial efforts are just focused on overseas at this point and across the Pacific in particular and to the South Pacific. And so we're executing. We're going to execute really well in that capacity, in my opinion. And that's where our focus is. As Mike said, there are a few constraints. We have OEM issues. And all that kind of leads to that outcome. And we think it's the right outcome for our capacity for next year. And we'll have a lot more to say in early 2024.
spk18: I appreciate that. Thank you.
spk01: We will now switch to the media portion of the call. As a reminder for attendees, please press pound two to enter the question queue for the media portion of the call. Please hold for a moment while we assemble our queue. Leslie Josephs from CNBC, your line is unmuted, please go ahead.
spk10: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I was wondering if you are seeing, if you could kind of put into context how many requests for status matches you've seen since Delta made those changes last month? And then also on your push to premium, can you talk a little bit about the supply chain currently and how far behind you are on upgrading those cabins and when you expect things to catch up?
spk07: Sure. Look, I'll give a little bit of commentary. Are our status matches up dramatically? Yes. Is dramatically a big number? No. So that's all I'll say on that front. And in terms of the signature interiors, we are definitely facing some constraints, but I'll pass that over to Toby, who runs that program for us, and he'll let us know.
spk04: Thank you, Andrew. I think we're about a year behind. The good news is that we're still taking our new deliveries. So we're right now flying about 120 airplanes that have the new interior design. which really got them raised, which is really good for us operational as well because it has space for one bag for each passenger, so no bags have to come out. So that's probably the biggest thing. So I think right now we're targeting 2026 for 100% to be complete.
spk06: Leslie, I'll just add, though, that this is another one of the things that United got right. We believe back in 2020 that there was going to be a full recovery in demand and thought that, The pandemic, as tough as it was, represented a once-in-history opportunity to get prepared and invest for the future. And so two of the things we did was get ahead of the curve. We built more club space. So we now have 49% more club space than we did before the pandemic. And we just opened the two largest clubs in our entire system that are great for customers. Feedback is awesome, one in Denver, one in Newark. So we planned ahead for this. And while the signature interiors are behind, we today have close to double the number of premium seats that we had pre-pandemic. So, you know, this is a team that started back in the summer of 2020 to prepare for the recovery and premium demand. And that's the reason Andrew said in his remarks, we don't need to change our programs and do anything because we prepared for this.
spk10: Okay. And on the other end of the spectrum with basic economy, are customers just buying that because they're more price sensitive now or? And I wasn't sure what percentage of your revenue is basic economy.
spk07: Leslie, I would say it's likely a lot more share shift. that in the previous quarters and years, we didn't have the large-gauge aircraft to accommodate all the different ranges, passenger types and product types adequately. And we are now just beginning, but we have a lot more flexibility, and we're able to accommodate those passengers, and it happened. And I think I would describe it as probably a fair amount of share shift.
spk01: Thank you. Moving to the next caller, Mary Schlangenstein from Bloomberg News. Your line is unmuted. Please go ahead.
spk09: Thank you. I wanted to ask you about the situation in Israel and whether you are assessing the potential for that to spread to other areas and perhaps even to some areas of Europe where you may have to cancel more flights because people might be poking away over worries. And if you're seeing any of that already where that's shifted to other areas, other countries or other cities that you serve.
spk06: We're not seeing that at all.
spk01: Okay, thank you. Moving to our next caller. Justin Bachman from The Messenger, please go ahead.
spk02: Yeah, hi, good morning, everybody. Thanks for the time today. I wanted to go back to Scott's point about the industry landscape changing. And I was hoping that you might be able to elaborate a bit on that, where, you know, if we're facing a situation where every American chooses to play Delta and United, what does that suggest where, you know, for the rest of the industry, as far as, you know, other players, do they become smaller, more niche? Or is there just too many airlines out there? I just wanted to see if you could expand on what that suggests over time. Thank you.
spk06: I don't think he suggests that, but I think what we are proving is that customers care about quality product and service. And I think because of that, the airlines that succeed are going to invest in quality product and service. And if you don't do that, you're going to fail.
spk05: Justin, I'm going to jump in on this as well. Uh-huh. What has changed is cost convergence, right? At this point, we're able to provide incremental seats to our customers at a price point that is competitive with the ULCCs, and we provide better product. And so customers are choosing to fly a better product at a similar price, and we are just getting started.
spk02: Right? No, I fully understand that. I'm just thinking, if you play that movie out, what, what does that suggest for the competitive landscape in 234 years? If those trends continue, and things, you know, don't continue as they have been?
spk05: That's a question for those airlines, not for us.
spk02: Okay.
spk01: I will now turn the call back over to Christina Edwards for closing remarks.
spk13: Thanks for joining us all today. Please contact Investor Media Relations if you have any further questions, and we look forward to talking to you next quarter.
spk01: Thank you all. This concludes today's conference, and you may now disconnect.
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