United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby Talks Route Expansion & Demand

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**John** (0:07)
That's the way United Airlines announcing its largest expansion in the company's history today, unveiling new destinations and debuting its latest aircraft. Abramowicz has a special guest, and she's over in Newark. Hey Lisa.

**Lisa Abramowicz** (0:22)
Hey John, since I left you, I came over here to Newark to the hangar with a new XLR plane. Of course, Scott Kirby, the Chief Executive Officer of United, announcing 10 new routes. And I was looking at these routes, Ibiza, Bilboa, Toulouse, Okinawa, Valencia. I mean, it's a list of where in the world might you want to go. Is there any renewed emphasis on international and vacation types of destinations for United?

**Scott Kirby** (0:47)
Yes, there is, I wouldn't, it's not just renewed. We've, you know, we're the largest international airline from the US by a pretty wide margin, and it will continue to grow. What we've realized is, as we built a brand loyal airline at United that customers love and that customers want to fly, it allows us to open up new destinations to Americans around the globe, and it's been really successful. It's an exciting day for us, 10 new flight, 10 new destinations around the globe in a single day. I don't think any airline in history has done something like that, and it's going to be a great summer ahead for our customers and our employees next year.

**Lisa Abramowicz** (1:22)
In the past five years or so, there has been this huge expansion in the total revenue that United drives from international relative to domestic. Do you expect that to be the path of travel going forward? That will continue.

**Scott Kirby** (1:33)
Yeah. I think our growth rate internationally is going to be significantly higher than domestic. We have great hubs for it. We were born on third base for international expansion. Newark is a phenomenal hub. It's the best hub for flying across the Atlantic, and now that the FAA has really taken steps with slot controls and staffing, Newark is now the most reliable of the three New York airports. First time that I know that's happened.
It really enables this kind of expansion.

**Lisa Abramowicz** (2:02)
Regardless of traffic patterns, you're still trying to expand to JFK, and I have to say that trying to get out there these days with the traffic is a notable feat, but you are planning to continue the expansion there with the JetBlue partnership and even beyond that. How's that going? Where are you in the process of that?

**Scott Kirby** (2:17)
We get our slots next year to get back into JFK. It'll probably be the second half of the year.
We've got aircraft delivery delays also, so we have to wait for our bus to get the deliveries in time to have fly-flat seats on all those aircraft. But we're excited to get back into JFK and fly the Transcom markets sometime next year.

**Lisa Abramowicz** (2:37)
Last time we spoke, you were talking about, you have been talking about the resilience of the US consumer and how much people have adjusted, continue to want to fly premium. That's been one of the fastest growing areas for the network. Has that continued, or have you seen any shift in that?

**Scott Kirby** (2:50)
Demand is strong really across the board.
From premium all the way to basic economy. We really haven't seen any cracks in demand. The economy, every time I talk to you, I say the economy has held up better than the pundits would have thought, and even than I would have thought, given everything that's happening in the world. But consumer demand is really strong. We are a very good real time indicator of what's happening with the economy and how people feel about the economy. Demand is strong. I looked at the bookings for yesterday this morning. Demand is strong all the way through yesterday.

**Lisa Abramowicz** (3:20)
So if you put your economist hat on, do you have a sense of, or how would you characterize things? Are things heating up? Are they slowing down? Are they staying at sort of a stable, strong level?

**Scott Kirby** (3:31)
I'd call it stable. I think the economy is not, I really don't see any places of weakness, but it feels a little tentative when you think about some people worried, some people worried about, is AI a bubble?
Fuel prices, interest rates, all of that sort of, it feels a little tentative, but the party's still going and people are booking, demand is strong, business demand is leisure demand, it's premium, it's economy is really across the board.

**Lisa Abramowicz** (4:02)
One thing that we have seen is jet fuel prices came down briefly and then they've been going back up. And even though crude prices haven't necessarily remained as elevated, jet fuel has. Are you still on track to offset any increase in oil prices through price increases for failures through the fourth quarter of this year?