United Airlines Holdings, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to United Airlines Holdings Earnings Conference Call for the third quarter of 2026. My name is Regina 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'd like to ask a question, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. In order to get to as many questions as possible, we kindly ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. 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, Kristina Edwards, Managing Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Regina. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to United's third quarter 2026 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, which 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. And historical operational metrics will include pandemic years of 2020 to 2022. Please refer to the related definitions and reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures at the end of our earnings release. Joining us today to discuss our results here in Houston and Outlook are 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 Leskinen. We also have other members of the executive team on the line available for tuning. And now I'd like to put the call over to Scott.

Thanks, Kristina. Thank you all for joining us on the call today. It's been an eventful year, but it's once again given us the opportunity to demonstrate how Decommoditizing and becoming a true brand loyal airline was a structural change for United that gives us resilience in volatile times and I expect it will lead to strong results in a normalized environment. We built an airline that our employees are proud of and they're delivering and have made United the leading airline around the globe. Before I start, I want to congratulate Boeing on the certification of the MAX-10. It's a fantastic aircraft and we look forward to taking our first delivery next year. On this call, we'll talk a lot about 2026 and the current environment, but I want to take a couple minutes to focus on 2027 and specifically answer the question, what will it take for us to reach our goal of double-digit pre-tax margins next year? We live and breathe no excuses. One thing you'll never hear us say or use as a planning excuse is if it weren't for fuel. Instead, we're planning for and actually expect fuel to remain elevated for all of 2027. It also appears that industry capacity will accelerate. Obviously, either of those things could change and get us to double-digit pre-tax margins, but we're not counting on it. So what would it take to get there in a higher fuel and capacity environment? To be blunt, even though we're outperforming, the traditional way of looking at it would be hard. So in fairness, I've been pleasantly surprised at the industry's ability this year to raise yields and pass through much of the increase in fuel prices. So it's possible that airlines will continue to focus on yields as an expensive load factor, and that alone could get us to double-digit margins next year. But we aren't going to assume that will happen. You've heard me say in the past that hope is not a strategy. Instead, we're focused on things we can control, and those are the big investments we've made over the past several years in products, service, and technology. And one of those things is Starlink, a new and truly differentiating Rasm tailwind in 2027. Today, about half of United departures are on Starlink-equipped aircraft, and we offer more Starlink flights than the entire U.S. airline industry combined. We currently expect to reach 61% of departures by the end of 26, 87% by June 1, and available fleet-wide by the end of 2027. Importantly, we're also seeing evidence that Starlink is a motivating factor for customers to choose which airline they fly. That's why we launched a new tracker so people can check if their flight has it and can follow along as we outfit our fleet. It's hard to get brand-loyal customers to switch airlines. And while it's mostly anecdotal, we're seeing two important things happen. One, customers who are brand loyal to other airlines and have flown them for years switch to a United flight solely because of Starlink. And two, once they try us, they stick with us because they also experience great service and all the nose-to-tail things we've invested in for years, like new aircraft, larger seatback screens in every class of service, oversized bins, technology like Connection Saver, and a mobile app that's dramatically better than anything they've experienced before. We know that eventually... High-speed, low-Earth orbit Wi-Fi will be industry standard for everyone. But for 2027, and really 2028, we are well on our way to being the only global U.S. airline with Starlink at scale. So a lot of new customers are going to try us. It's a huge head start, and we're going to press our advantage wherever we can. And while others are just ramping up on their LEO Wi-Fi installations, we'll be on to our next wave of product and technology to sustain our lead and further deepen the competitive moats around our business. Our mission... will be to show new customers the very best of United and then earn their long-term loyalty by demonstrating that we're the number one airline in everything else as well. With both fuel and industry capacity expected to be elevated next year, will that share shift happen fast enough to get us to double-digit pre-tax margins? While I do expect a meaningful RASM tailwind from Starlink in 2027, to be honest, it probably isn't enough on its own. To get there in 2027, we probably also need at least one of the three following things to happen. Lower Fuel, Lower Industry Capacity, or a Continued Wellness for the Industry to Trade Load Factor for Yield. Regardless of what happens on how big the RASM benefits are in 2027, however, our series of big customer investments, including Starling and some big new ideas we haven't even announced yet that are coming in the not-too-distant future, have emerged as a new tailwind to a plan that was already working at United. And we expect to exit 2027 with More brand loyal customers than we otherwise would have had and expect that to lead to higher RASM in 2027 and beyond. And with that, I'll pass it over to Brett.