United Airlines Holdings, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to United Airlines Holdings Earnings conference call for the first quarter 2024. My name is Krista and I will be your conference facilitator today. Following the initial remarks from management, we will open the lines for questions. At that time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. And if you would like to withdraw that question, again, press star one. 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, Managing Director of Investor Relations, Please go ahead.

Thank you, Krista. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to United's first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Yesterday, we issued our earnings release, which is available on our website at ir.united.com. Information on 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. The 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 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 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 Nocella, and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Mike Leskaden. In addition, we have other members of the executive team on the line available to assist with Q&A. And now, I'd like to turn the call over to Scott.

Thanks, Christina, and welcome everyone to the call today. Before we dive into our Q1 earnings performance, I want to start by talking about the issue that always comes first at United, safety. Safety is the fundamental pillar of our core four nets, safe, caring, dependable, and efficient, and in that order. Safety is at the core of everything we do at our airline to make United a success. As you've read, The FAA recently began evaluating several elements of our operation to ensure we're doing all we can to drive safety compliance. We welcome the FAA's engagement, and we are embracing this review as an opportunity to take our safety culture standards to an even higher level. As we undergo this review, I have confidence that, first, we have a strong foundation and a culture of safety here at United, including training, systems, processes, and reporting culture. And that's backed up by our strong track record and the success of our safety protocols. Second, through the FAA review, I'm confident that we'll uncover opportunities to make our airline even safer. At United, we have the best team of airline professionals in the world, and we're committed to embracing this opportunity to make the best airline in the world even better for our customers and employees. Now to our Q1 earnings. We delivered a strong first quarter, and it's clear the United Next plan continues to put our airline on a bright path. Notably, we saw meaningful year-over-year margin improvement in the first quarter, and if the Boeing MAX 9 hadn't been grounded, we would have been profitable for the quarter. Our United Next plan continued to demonstrate resilience in challenging industry conditions as we faced further significant aircraft delivery delays. These delays are driving temporarily higher costs this year, but we've been able to find ways to offset most of those headwinds. On demand, we see continued positive momentum in bookings across all customer segments. from the most price-sensitive customers to domestic road warriors and up to the premium global customer. Our cost management and clear demand for the United product continue to support our confidence in the United Next strategy and full year 2024 EPS of $9 to $11. In conclusion, I'm proud of the United team for delivering top-tier operational and financial results. Thank you for all the work you do that makes us the airline that customers choose to fly. And with that, I'll hand it over to Brett.