Good to see you, Andrew. Lots of questions for Scott
Kirby.
Let's talk First off about the first quarter,
much better than was what is expected.
Andrew went through 15 cent loss versus
57 cent, percent of 57 cent loss expected.
What happened that Wall Street failed to appreciate going into
the earnings report?
You know, I think at United Airlines it was a
good first quarter.
There's a lot of issues and challenges which I'm sure
we're going to talk about this morning.
But there's been a structural change in the industry and
you can you can see it,
there's a couple of airlines that are really outperforming.
United is one of those
as we're picking up market share and winning customers.
We had strong revenue performance.
We had really great domestic performance.
We had the best operations that we've had in our
history.
You put all that together even with the challenges,
you know we we had a really good first quarter
would have been profitable without the Max 9 grounding.
But you're expecting better than expected profits in the second
quarter relative to St.
estimates going into yesterday. And this is coming as we
go into the summer where you're going to be fighting
capacity limitations. How much is that limiting your ability to
grow?
Yeah. So you know the the there has,
there is a lot of
our challenges in the industry,
the capacity limitations particularly the suppliers.
You know it is pretty remarkable.
We started the year with this kind of bow wave
of aircraft delivery supposed to be
183. We actually knew we wouldn't get all of those.
We planned for 101, we're now planning for 61.
The biggest impact of that really is on our cost
structure.
We hired, you know, enough employees to fly
101 airplanes and and we're going to be carrying that.
You know, as we go through the summer it'll catch
up within a few months,
but we're carrying that during the summer.
How long do you expect the
pilot unpaid leave offer to be out there and the
pause in pilot hiring,
is that a A2 month situation or do you sit
there and say,
look, it might have to extend a little further.
So unpilling leaves are something that are regular.
We do regularly in the industry,
just the seasonality of our business.
We don't need them all.
We need them all during the summer.
We need them all Thanksgiving at Christmas
and we it's a it's a benefit that we offer
a small minority of people use it but for that
small minority who can afford to you know it's a
great opportunity for them to take a month and you
know travel the world use their flight benefits
and and so that'll that's just kind of regular course
with regard to pilot hiring.
You know I think we'll be probably be back on
track this summer and really it was this was just
about you know when we had fewer aircraft we'd staffed
up and so take a couple months pause and then
we're back right on track.
Last time we talked last quarter in Houston,
you said look we are taking the Max 10 off
of our expectations
in our order book and you immediately started saying we
may look to find some
A320 ones from Airbus, you're leasing 35 of these.
How tough was it to put that deal together given
the tight market that's out there right now?
You know when you're United Airlines,
you know I think most of the aircraft lessors are
are kind of chomping at the bit to do business
with us.
So but you did try to buy from Airbus,
we talked to Airbus and they are,
you know they're they're sold out to the end of
the the
decade. They build a great airplane.
It is a very tight market now,
particularly with the challenges that are happening
at Boeing. But you know what we've done I think
is really get our fleet plan in a much better
place now where we're going to take 100 narrow bodies
a year. We had these big spikes as aircraft got
delay,
you know delayed and we'll have consistency,
steady deliveries, we'll have steady CapEx,
but importantly we'll have steady for the operation on pilot
hiring,
pilot training, all the things that go wrong with it.
You know that consistency is really going to help.
Two quick questions. First of all,
there's a whistleblower testifying in Capitol Hill today essentially saying
the Dreamliner is not safe.
You're the largest operator of the Dreamliner.
Look, he's on nightly news last night saying these things
could fall out of the sky.
When you hear that, what's your reaction?
Look, this is an airplane.
There are thousands of these airplanes.
They've been flying for decades,
millions of flight hours. I am totally confident the
787 is a safe airplane.
And then with regard to the FAA audit of your
maintenance issues,
you had a string of them this spring as these
were taking place.
What did you say to your staff and what have
you said to the FAA about what's happening here?
Yeah, you know, safety at United Airlines is the number
one priority.
It always has been. That is by the way is
true at all of US aviation.
At United, we have a leading and strong foundation of
safety training process systems,
reporting culture that goes up well beyond the standards that
are required.
But it is true that while they were unrelated,
we had a cluster of several high profile incidents.
And because of that, you know it's an opportunity to
say we may have a really high safety standard.
Air transportation is by far the safest form of transport
in the world,
but how can we take the standard even higher?
And we're working very well with the FA.
We welcome them in here.
We're really embracing this as an opportunity to take the
already very high standards to an even higher level and
I'm confident we'll be able to do that.
And look you can for for CNBC viewers who are
watching
you know and care about financials,
you can. Our focus is on the safety process internally
at United,
but you can see our numbers.
You know we're able to operate well while we do
this at the same time.