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Airlines Confidential Podcast
336 - Scott McCartney & Oscar Munoz: A tip of the hat to Spirit Airlines
00:36:24
Host Scott McCartney & Guest Co-Host Oscar Munoz.…
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- [00:04]
A
Airlines confidential with Scott McCartney is made possible with support from RTX, Collins Aerospace, Pratt and Whitney and Raytheon. Connecting and protecting our world. RTX.com infinity Flight the leader in Cadet Academy flight training programs infinityflight.com Ontario International Airport in Southern California SoCal so Easy flyontario.com the Executive MBA in Aviation at the University of Colorado, Denver Business ucdenver.edu and by Cirium, the world's most trusted source of Aviation Analytics. Cirium.com we also welcome your business support. Contact us at airlinesconfidential.com welcome to Airlines Confidential.
- [00:59]
B
I'm Scott McCartney and I'm going to start with a tip of the hat to the people of Spirit Airlines who not only brought the ultra low cost carrier model to the United States, but more than that, opened a seat in the sky for millions of people who couldn't have been able to fly without Spirit's cheap fares or took trips that they wouldn't otherwise afford to see girlfriends, have fun, go to weddings, you name it, whatever. Spirit really did change travel in many ways for lots of people. We'll talk about the reasons why the airline failed, the implications for the rest of the industry, the second guessing and all the hindsight. But first, simply thanks. Thanks to the people of Spirit. Thanks for changing travel in this country. Thanks for making flyers out of millions of people. Even thanks for those flying bananas painting planes bright yellow in a world of blue and white aircraft. And good luck to the 7,000 remaining Spirit employees who now find themselves out of work. You still have a lot to contribute to this industry and I feel relatively certain that you will get that chance. So much to talk about and I'm very excited about doing that with Oscar Munoz, the former chairman and CEO of United Airlines. It's an historic week in the airline world. Oscar, we have so much to discuss. Thanks for being here.
- [02:24]
C
Hi Scott. And sure enough, we do. But you know, first, I'd echo the above statements, Ben, and Spirit really did something important for this industry. He forced us all to rethink the concept of fair pricing and what it looked like. And you know, you don't have to like every tactic or every paint job and livery on a plane, but you do have to respect the discipline behind that. And look, anytime 7,000 people, as you mentioned, are impacted like this, that's the part that hits hardest to all of us and them. And these are talented folks, pilots, mechanics, frontline teams. And I love this industry because it does have a way of absorbing good people. So I hope we do that quickly here.
- [03:07]
B
So you mentioned Ben, I really want to start talking about Ben Baldanza, the co founder of this podcast, who really made Spirit into the significant airline it was. Ben became president of spirit in January 2005, a couple of years after 9 11, when the industry was still in recovery mode. He hired Barry Biffle the next month and Ben was named CEO the next year. He was CEO for the next 10 years. In that time, he and Barry took Spirit public, saw its stock Soar from above $10 a share to $75 a share, and turn Spirit into one of the most profitable airlines in the world. Ben did it, as you mentioned, Oscar, with great discipline, to keep costs low. You couldn't be a low fare airline if you weren't first a low cost airline. He had great vision to make travel more affordable for people, in part by letting them pay for only what they used. Why should everyone pay to check a bag? Ben reasoned, when you don't charge for baggage fees, every passenger pays for that service whether you use it or not. So charging passengers for carry on bags reduced the cramming of the overhead bins, sped up boarding and deplaning, and let Spirit schedule more flights for each aircraft. Since they turn planes quicker at the cost of an airplane, that's saved hundreds of millions of dollars for Spirit, allowing it to fly a more robust schedule with the fleet that it had. Low cost, low fares, high ancillary revenue, it was a winning formula. Part of Ben's discipline was measured growth and smaller airplanes. He hammered this point with me, and I think it's really significant and completely forgotten in all the discussion about Spirit. Ben didn't want the extra seats of an A321. He wanted to keep it smaller. With A320s, even A319s at the time, you don't have to struggle as much to fill as many seats and you can get some higher fares out of that if you don't have as many seats to flood the market. Easier to open new markets and all of that. He put in the big front seat. He kept the the marketing very simple on that simple premium product, in keeping with Spirit's ethos, wasn't sold as, you know, magic flying carpet. It was just a big front seat. If you wanted more room, you could buy it. And he grew spirit's fleet from 50 to 80 airplanes. He grew the cash balance, too. Spirit had a significant cash balance when Ben left. Ben had Spirit in fine shape when he stepped down to leave South Florida and nurture his very talented son's music future back in the Washington D.C. area. He was a professor, he was a podcaster, he was a board member at several companies, including chairman of Six Flags. And he was a driving force at JetBlue on its board and I think a driving force behind the ill fated attempt to buy Spirit. I knew Ben well enough to know that he loved Spirit and and all that it stood for as a force to expand travel, to democratize travel, to bring it to the masses even more than predecessors had done to make it more affordable, to get people buying only what they really used and valued. I knew Ben well enough to know, I think that he would be very sad to see Spirit fail and also very angry about Spirit's fate as well. Things started to go south for Spirit after Ben left. Some of the issues were inevitable, some were self inflicted. Eight years after Ben left, Spirit had gone from about 80 airplanes to more than 230. That's a big expansion. A lot of the new airplanes were the bigger A321s in Spirit's configuration. That's 46 more coach seats per plane, 25% more. You got to sell. It's a very different product to sell. The growth wasn't sustainable, especially after the pandemic. Yet spirit added 80 airplanes or so in the years after the pandemic, when the airline was losing money like crazy. You know, losing money. I know we'll make it up in volume. That's kind of the, kind of the attitude, let's get bigger and lose even more money. It just didn't work. Spirit also lost its bare bones, ultra low cost. Focus CEO Bob Fernaro wanted to provide better service and have fewer complaints. That's a noble ambition, but it costs money. Beyond that, particularly post pandemic, there was serious cost convergence in the industry. There was a pilot shortage and Spirit was losing pilots left and right to other airlines. It had to pay more to keep creepy crews. Spirit pilots got significant Pay increases in 2023 with a new contract. Then with all those new planes delivered, Spirit was chasing passengers in high cost airports. With all those planes, Spirit lost its niche as a spill carrier. With basic economy fares, big airlines could match Spirit's prices and get people on its planes proper. Profitably. They didn't spill as much and there wasn't as much left over for Spirit. And yet there was Spirit. With more and more flights unable to get customers away from the big airlines, discount airlines disrupted air travel and surviving big airlines responded. So it was your move, discounters. Now you gotta respond. Except they didn't have a good move and they still haven't found a profitable formula. So many factors, but rest in peace, Spirit Airlines. You did good for a long time and a lot of people will miss you.
- [09:16]
C
Yeah. Well, first, Scott, thanks as always. I forget that I'm on the podcast with you and I'm just listening intently to the wonderful recap of history and your take on it. Really appreciate it and I'm sure all our listeners do that. It is sad, but, you know, probably good for industry. Right. What happens now is that capacity gets rationalized for sure, but the demand doesn't disappear, it just redistributes and that typically leads to a healthier system overall. And so kind of excited for the rest of the industry. I mean, it'll be stronger and Frontier and Gem Blue can certainly use more passengers. Right. As we know, go fill in where there is demand. And then the bigs, well, you know, they will take advantage, probably American more than most. I think that was the bigger overlap as I look at the map. But again, you've seen them jump in quickly with rescue flights and so that'll build some loyalty, hopefully. And then JetBlue is built up for Lauderdale and already became bigger than Spirit and spirit's home. And JetBlue can certainly use the boost. Right. And we'll talk about their first quarter results shortly. But the bottom line is there will still be low fares, just maybe not as cheap as some of the Spirit fairs. But you know, they were losing money on those fairs and it just isn't sustainable. It's just that business model just can't do it. We all know that. So at the end of the day, you know, as you think about the news of the last week, you know, you think about the creditors who were in charge of the bankruptcy, they figured their best chance to recover some money was to shut it down. Right. Look, liquidation versus reorganization. And so whatever is left for whatever you can get and the slots in LaGuardia, the planes, all the technology and whatever's left. The problem with the government bailout idea, and you and I talked about this, is the president wanted to own the airline and to take whatever value was left away from the creditors. And I think when you and I talked, you said that it's like, how do current creditors go subordinate to the US Government? And again, the amount of money wasn't going to really sustain them in this high fuel prices anyway. And so, you know, as creditors, that's their right and they weren't willing to give it up. And I don't think the government wants to get into the business of bailing out every airline that can't make money. And so here we are. And as you said so wonderfully, rest in peace and, you know, we'll see where all this takes us.
- [11:39]
B
Yeah, the thing with the credit is it's interesting, you know, Dave Davis in his statement said they had agreement from the bondholders. Well, that, that wasn't the whole story. They didn't have agreement from the lenders on the revolving credit line. I think the reorganization plan was in trouble before oil prices went up. And so this can't all be blamed on oil pricing. There's so much second guessing in hindsight. The what ifs around the justice department blocking the JetBlue spirit merger. Some people blaming the Justice Department for sealing Spirit's fate by not letting it merge with a bigger airline. Others saying the government did Spirit a big favor because that deal never would have worked. What do you think, Oscar? And would Spirit have been better off rejecting JetBlue and instead agreeing to merge with Frontier? There are some people out there blaming the Spirit board for not having the courage to say, yeah, JetBlue, you offered more money, but Frontier was the deal that would have faced less government opposition and made more sense and maybe worked better. I don't know. What do you think?
- [12:50]
C
Well, you know, trying to take the obvious politics out of the statements that are coming up about the rejection and the DOJ's actions in a previous administration, which is potentially a bit biased, I guess, but generally, you know this. In hindsight, I think both sides are right. The JetBlue deal, to your question, would have been tough to integrate. I very different business models, very different cost structures. I think, you know, the bigger issue is that Spirit had already, as you said, drifted from its original formula and that was already possibly not going to work. And by the time the merger question came up, the core model of Spirit was already under pressure. And I think Frontier was probably the more natural fit, strategically closer cost base, similar DNA. But even that wouldn't have guaranteed outcome in this environment.
- [13:40]
B
Right.
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C
With fuel and everything that's going on between the bigs, as I call them, and the ulcc. And so at the end of the day, you know, no merger fixes a model that's kind of already splintering, if not broken, is my thought.
- [13:55]
B
Yeah, yeah. To me, the JetBlue Spirit merger had some possibilities. You know, when you look at it, look, JetBlue's got a lot of debt, right? I mean, I think that's a big reason why nobody's bought JetBlue right now. Is very expensive to take on $9 billion, eight or $9 billion of JetBlue debt. And so at the time, Spirit had a lot of debt too. JetBlue was offered a really hefty price in the, in the $30 range. I think if the deal had been approved in court, it would have been had to be renegotiated. Spirit was worth a lot less. The court fight had dragged on and both JetBlue and Spirit were worth less. So I think it would have had to been renegotiated. It might not have even survived that. But at the end of the day, I think JetBlue needs a little Spirit in it. Right. It could use to have a little more seat densification and lower costs and all. I think spirit needed more JetBlue. I mean that's kind of the plan that people were developing. Let's offer some premium opportunities here for customers. And you know, if you, it probably would have taken a bankruptcy post merger to get rid of a lot of that, that debt that was hanging over them. But after that, you know, you could have had the fifth largest airline in the country in, in better shape after bankruptcy reorganization and am able to compete a whole lot better with the big guys because it is a network business and size does matter. So could have been a different outcome, but you know, we'll never know.
- [15:44]
C
Yeah, you know, as, as I, as I mentioned that demand doesn't disappear, but it redistributes. It just brings to point and for a conversation of from a deeper perspective at some point in time. But we're hearing certainly United's new pricing sort of scheme with regards to their upper class. It's a little confusing, I think but American has also announced something and Delta is doing something different. So it's all a little perplexing but clearly there's a move to continue to uptick on their revenue to recover some of the costs from fuel, but also beginning to categorize and segment even more the front of the cabin. And so it's an interesting play. They all seem to be doing it at some degree. It could be confusing. I suspect at some point in time it'll be more common and organized. But at least from my perspective, when I'm either on CNBC or various forums, most of the customers are not particularly happy because as you know, pricing in this industry is never met with open arms. But just what are your thoughts?
- [16:51]
B
Yeah, I think this is a fascinating topic and you're right, it is somewhat related to Spirit just in the sense of how do you find the right price point for the Right. Customer. And so United offering sort of super premium stuff. American is doing it in its new premium cabins with the front row of the 787 being, you know, sort of a super premium. Different blankets, different seat, a little bit, I don't know, Delta offering sort of basic premium tickets, basic first class. It is fascinating to see them try and get as much money out of the premium cabin you can.
- [17:40]
C
You know, I would, my, my point of it is that if you're offering a different value and a different product and, you know, a different offering, whether it's blankets or something, some of these just seem like you're just, you're just being asked to charge more. I mean, like, I know at United they're going to have the Polaris Studio, that's a differentiated product that you can see almost going back to the, you know, history of original first class when it was really first class. And I could see paying more for that. But consumers just to pay for access to the club, players club and, or just get a seat assignment and all that, that just doesn't seem as much value for the uptick that they'll do. So again, these are all, as you know, very, very smart people who understand their markets and I'm sure they'll work through that. But it is, it's an ever evolving situation.
- [18:34]
B
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think you're right. I'm not sure people really want to pay more for a different blanket. All right, time now to thank our sponsors for making this podcast possible. Thanks to the Executive MBA in Aviation at the University of Colorado Denver where the syllabus for the aviation course is being rewritten this week. The Executive MBA in Aviation at CU Denver is the first degree of its kind in the world. Taught by industry experts and design for ambitious leaders from across the aviation ecosystem. And I know, Oscar, you've been meeting with the class recently and heard from several students how much they have appreciated that. It's really cool what you're doing with this program. With classes located at Denver International Airport and week long residencies in Washington D.C. and at airports around the world, students experience a hybrid, flexible course structure that balances in person and online classes without career interruption. Go to Business ucdenver. Edu to learn more. We also want to thank RTX for its sponsorship of Airlines Confidential. RTX rallies more than 180,000 innovators around a powerful vision to create a safer, more connected world with industry leading tools and technology. The RTX Global team works across market leading businesses. Collins Aerospace, Pratt and Whitney and Raytheon to drive progress for generations to come.
- [20:10]
C
In addition, we want to thank Infinity Flight Academy. The path to the flight deck starts long before a pilot reaches the airlines. At Infinity Flight Academy, they're proud to serve as a flight training partner for the American Airlines Cadet Academy, helping prepare the next generation of professional airline pilots. Infinity Flight Academy's training is structured, standardized and built around the discipline today's airlines expect from day one. For future pilots pursuing a career at the highest level, Infinity Flight Academy is proud to be part of the journey. Infinity Flight Academy training tomorrow's airline pilots through the American Airlines Cadet Academy.
- [20:46]
B
Oscar, you mentioned JetBlue results out last week and frankly I thought they were pretty ugly. The first quarter loss of 319 million was worse than expected and significantly worse than the first three months of 2020. Revenue was up 4.7%. That's good, but not as robust as we saw competitors post. And operating expenses were up a bunch in dollars, and I think this is an interesting way to look at it in dollars. Revenue was up $100 million compared to last year, but operating expenses were up $150 million and only 62 million of that was fuel. So the net loss was more than $100 million bigger than last year. And you just can't blame all of it on higher fuel prices, right? There were a whole lot of other costs going up, too. CEO Joanna Geraghty says JetBlue sees strong demand ahead and is on pace with its Jet Forward turnaround plan. And JetBlue isn't considering bankruptcy this year, she said. But JetBlue better hope that it gets the bounce from Spirit that it hoped to get by buying it and now stands to inherit.
- [22:03]
C
Yeah, the famous ad is right. Hope isn't a strategy, but you know, it's a starting. It is a starting point. Again, to your point on the numbers, they're tough to defend, right? When your costs are just growing faster than your revenue, that's a structural issue, not a timing issue. And so I think they might have been clearly counting on scale from Spirit. Now they're going to have to find that that through execution instead. On the good news front, the demand is still there and the question is whether they can align that cost structure fast enough to capture it profitably. And that's not an easy task. So I wish them well and they're great people as well and hopefully we're not having that conversation again in a future state with regards similar to Spirit. Well, a couple of other news items of note this past week, I know we've forgotten about this, but the Congress approved and the President signed a bill to fund most of Department of Homeland Security, including tsa. And so TSA workers will get paid again. Yes. I read somewhere that the agency said it has lost over 1,000 employees during this funding shutdown and it did leave them working for long stretches without a paycheck. And you see it at the airports. Initially people were like, hey, thanks for being here, but it's been so long that you don't even see that anymore. So again, the professional folks there and a thousand people, you know, you don't think about, you know, it's a number, right. But it's a big number and the training that's required and the process of getting these folks and so replacing that will be an issue for those folks. And you know, we'll continue to see some, some repercussions from that. In addition, and on the kind of, on the government front, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said it would install transponders on its vehicles. Listeners will recall that the NTSB called out the lack of transponders on fire trucks as a factor in the crash of the recent Air Canada Jazz jet and a Port Authority fire truck. And you called out the Port Authority for not installing transponders even after the incident. Well, now they say they're going to do it and glad to hear that and glad to see movement here for sure. But gosh darn it, safety recommendations shouldn't take that long to implement. Especially fix is so straightforward, right. You know, we learned fast from incidents and this one just took a little longer than it should have in my point.
- [24:27]
B
Yeah. And this just seemed like such a no brainer. You've got, you got a system, ground service radar system to detect this. Why the heck wouldn't you want the fire trucks to be seen on the, on the system to be seen clearly. And when you get the recommendation from the faa, you just have to do it. I just don't understand. You know, it's not like they don't have the money to do it. What, what was the problem? I don't know, but glad they're doing it now. Before we get to the mailbag, I want to thank Cerium. Cirium offers the most accurate and precise data and analytics to enable passengers to optimize planning operations and passenger services. The right intelligence drives operational efficiencies, enables you to predict market shifts and helps airlines respond quickly to maximize revenue, manage costs and seize commercial opportunity. Visit cirium.com for more. And we want to thank Ontario International Airport, which is celebrating a decade of local control for its sponsorship as well. Thanks to public support, the local community reclaimed onto revived it as a vital gateway in Southern California and ensured the airport is ready to soar even higher in the years to come. Visit flyontario.com 1010 to learn the story and find out how you can join the year long celebration of how a decade of local control has turned Ontario into one of California's fastest growing and most economical airports.
- [26:04]
A
Promotional support provided by the ultimate Avgeek website, theairchive.net, a vast collection of airport airline memorabilia, timetables, route maps, rare cabin and airport photos, special flights and more, all@theairchive.net, the hub of air transport history.
- [26:20]
B
Okay Oscar, in the mailbag we have a couple of clarifications to make from last week's show. First, RO from Oakland correctly pointed out to us that Hawaiian had migrated its passenger service system over to Amadeus in 2023, shortly before it was acquired by Alaska Airlines. We incorrectly said Alaska and Hawaiian were both in Sabre when the PSS systems were combined in Alaska's Sabre system. And sharp eared listener Gary Leff in Austin who writes the much followed view from the Wing blog, pointed out that United accrued $560 million last year towards its flight attendant contract ratification bonus. Last week we noted that the $740 million bonus that's in the pending tentative agreement that United has with its flight attendants would have on paper would have wiped out first quarter profits if it had been paid out in the just completed quarter. Obviously that's not the case as Gary points out, but I think the general point remains that United has a bit of an earnings headwind coming from higher labor costs as it catches up to other airlines with new contracts.
- [27:39]
C
Yeah, it's, you know, I, I'm the, the architect of the last contract with the flight attendants and after I think five or six years of contention that I had to step in and work through that and now here's the next chapter and this has taken a long time. I mean know, look, it's real labor costs are growing up, a cost are going up across the industry and these are critical jobs and, and now United will have to catch up, you know, after years of pressure. But again they'll frame it in a way that of product, better product and reliability and if you get those right, higher labor costs can be absorbed and, and if not they can be a real headwind and they'll just, you know, they'll mention in their earnings it's like, hey, part of this was the catch up on the, on this. And so I think people will see through the numbers. So while there will be a headwind for sure from the pure earnings, they will, they will manage, manage through that. But again, we, these, these labor costs, I mean and the, the leapfrogging that everyone does every year has always been an economic and financial issue in these, in this industry and why our margins are, are where they're at. And so, and then back to the pricing schemes and everything that's being done to catch up on cost. We don't like to talk about it openly with customers because they don't like it. But you know, the fact of the matter is, you know, we have to serve both investors and customers and it's a delicate balance in between. And so, you know, pricing has not gone up. I mean inflation adjusted, it's never an issue. So yeah, again I'm babbling through all the points that we're going to have to work through and United will work through for certainly and in their commentary. But yeah, they'll have to face some of that commentary going forward.
- [29:24]
B
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how, you know, there's been a lot of talk about margins and Delta and United profit margins have been so much stronger than the rest of the industry. Right. But now, you know, it's going to be interesting to see going forward. You know, Southwest is catching up with its new revenue generating schemes. The American thinks it's catching up with recapturing some of the corporate travel that it lost and building out its premium products where it was way behind and other efforts to catch up, even getting its operation running better. And now if you sort of have everybody on the same cycle of higher labor contracts, as soon as we finish this cycle, the next one starts. Right. But for the next couple of years it'll be interesting to see how margins compare if it is more of a level playing field. So we also have in the mailbag this comment from Scott in Manila. Scott says. Hi Scott re episode 334 and guest hosts Charles Duncan and Jay Sorenson. Just wanted to comment on the final reader question about airline co brand programs and Jay's answer. Big Al loyalty is extremely misunderstood. But Jay is the only other person I've heard so far with the right perspective. I was intimately involved with the finances of loyalty programs in the past and have performed holistic analysis of their net benefit to the airline. The frequent flyer side of loyalty is a competitive necessity and questionably net accretive yield premium versus opportunity costs. Scott says the mileage sales side is 1000% worthwhile for those carriers that manage it properly. What many people might not know is when an airline sells a mile to a bank, they defer some of the value for the future travel that flyer might book and immediately recognize a big chunk as a marketing fee to reflect the the brand value quote of the airline breakage, meaning the mile never gets cashed in. Breakage is not meaningful and is actually negative in terms of engagement and lifetime value of the customer. Scott says using very round numbers, 100,000 miles sold to the bank for $0.02 each would result in $2,000 incremental cash, 1,000 deferred revenue to liability and 1,000 recognized revenue. Revenue Management and the Loyalty Redemption team then decide when that award booking would be available and at what price because they set the miles price and availability with $0.01 per mile in mind. Your 100,000 mile redemption appears worth only $1,000, but it's actually worth twice as much to the airline, right? Twice as much because you sold it for 2000. Why do airlines do this? Scott says because a brand asset with the steady stream of cash and little cost looks very valuable to investors and creditors. But if they end the charade and recognize co brand as the distribution channel that it truly is, they'll be less tempted to squeeze passengers for many miles for that Hawaii trip. They'll sell more miles and their rasm will go up. Scott concludes, I'm so pleased that I finally have a comrade in clarifying co brand contribution. Cheers, Jay. Fight the good fight. Scott in Manila well, thank you for that, Scott. I had hung on to that question from that show, particularly to put it to Jay Sorensen, because I knew Jay would be the perfect person to take that on and answer it. And he did it so well. And the idea of the third distribution channel, you sell tickets directly to customers, you sell tickets through travel agents, but you also sell tickets through the loyalty program. And that's a way to put cheap fares out there without having to post cheap fares and provide affordable travel for people. But also huge revenue for the airline through through credit card sales these days. Anyway, it's a fascinating topic. We'll have Jay on more and but I'm glad that was appreciated.
- [34:04]
C
No, it's actually a very good explanation and it's always good to see it in that light. These programs, as you know, are incredibly valuable, not just from a financial perspective, but from a brand perspective. But you do have to manage them with discipline and you can't overreach on the customer. And it's such a delicate balance between monetization and trust, Right. If you lose the trust, the whole model begins to weaken. And on a sidebar, you know, we're talking about mergers and integrations and the difficulty of that. When we merge Continental and United, the accounting for the two different companies and how they treated that was I cannot tell you how many meetings, how many of the accountants and accounting firms were involved because it inevitably it forces a big write up or write down on your financials. And so it adds that thing. So. But thank you. I don't know, Jay, but that's a very good explanation.
- [35:00]
B
Fascinating. Fascinating.
- [35:02]
C
Well, Matt, all for another episode of Airlines Confidential and I hope everyone has a terrific week.
- [35:08]
B
Thank you so much Oscar. It's been grand. Wish wish the news was better. But I do think you brought a great perspective on spirit and totally agree. You know, in the end it'll be better for the industry. In the end, I think travelers will be fine and we will watch closely how it all shakes out. Next week, Henry Harteveld and I will have a special episode for you recorded in Panama City. Panama will be there for Cirium's annual meeting of the On Time Performance Advisory Board with other airline and airport operations experts around the world. It's a fascinating group of people and really looking forward to this meeting. Cirium's experts will be there a lot to talk about. We'll have special guests from Copa Airlines, which is a perennial strong performer in reliability rankings. We've had Copa on before, but I think listeners will really be in for a special treat with this episode. So looking forward to that. Have a great week everyone and thanks so much for listening.
- [36:21]
A
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