Scott Kirby

Well, you know, we've spent a decade at United trying to build what we call a brand loyal airline to get customers, but really all customers, to choose to fly United, to get out of the commodity cycle of the business.

And 2025 is a great year for that.

Despite all the headwinds, United Airlines was the only airline to grow EPS last year.

We've started with a really strong booking environment.

in 2025 it really is the culmination of this brand loyal strategy and yes that's over indexes to the premium those are the customers that fly the most and have the most loyalty and that part of the business has done the best but you know we've seen pretty significant strength in the in the back of the airplane as well we had seven percent growth in basic economy last year and we've been investing there you know i think one of the cool things we recently announced is we're the only airline in the country that has ovens in coach

And so we're going to be serving hot meals in coach for customers that pre-order, give the customers the ability to pre-order hot meals.

And that applies obviously to the entire cabin and is not just focused on premium.

Premium has over-indexed, but really we're seeing strength across the board.

But while we index higher end kind of across the board, even in main cabin, so we're not a perfect indicator of the economy.

You know, one of the things I would say is customers are across the board willing to pay for better product service, better technology, better experience across the board.

But also I'd add like airline traffic, you know, in 2025 airfares were 2% lower than they were in 2019.

So we've been deflation, inflation is about up about 23% over that period.

We've been deflationary and our costs in many cases have grown even more, you know, 50% increase in airport costs.

It's sort of the norm across the industry.

So airfare remains a pretty good value, pretty good travel for customers.

That's put a lot of pressure on the low end of the airline industry, as you can see, but air travel remains a good value.

And we are increasingly finding that really across the board, customers are willing to pay for at least a little bit for a better experience.

Well, I think the low end, whether it happens through consolidation or airlines shrinking or airlines just going out of business, I think the low end of the market is in the... It's a painful process, but in the process of shrinking back to the niche that works for the low end.

And that really is flying in big leisure markets, mostly flying to Orlando and Vegas, and really shrinking back to that niche.

And they're going through that process.