338 - Scott McCartney & Guest Co-Host Doug Parker on Crisis Management

Summary

Podcast Summary: Airlines Confidential Ep. 338

Title: Scott McCartney & Guest Co-Host Doug Parker on Crisis Management
Date: May 20, 2026
Host: Scott McCartney
Guest Co-Host: Doug Parker (former CEO, American Airlines)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Scott McCartney welcomes industry veteran Doug Parker to discuss how airlines confront and manage crises—focusing especially on cost pressures caused by soaring fuel prices and the lessons learned from historic airline crises. The episode also breaks down current industry news, including Warren Buffett’s return to airline investing, air traffic controller staffing plans, mergers, policy debates, and Parker’s philosophy of effective crisis leadership.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Warren Buffett Returns to Airline Investing ([02:02–05:39])

• Buffett’s Investment Background: Berkshire Hathaway disclosed a new $2.6 billion stake in Delta Air Lines—Buffett’s first reentry since selling off all airline stakes early in the pandemic at a loss.
  • “Indeed, if a far sighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville.” — Warren Buffett, as quoted by Scott [02:55]
• Doug Parker’s Reflection:
  • Noted how influential Buffett’s 2016–2017 investments were; regrets that COVID-19 undermined the industry’s progress.
  • “One of the quotes...from Warren Buffett…‘You get the shareholders you deserve.’ And we in the airline business never had long-term shareholders like Berkshire Hathaway for a long time.” — Doug Parker [04:08]
• Delta’s Fuel Hedge: Delta’s refinery ownership potentially makes it more attractive to investors during fuel cost spikes.

2. FAA Air Traffic Controller Staffing Plan ([05:39–09:51])

• New FAA Report Highlights:
  • FAA claims it needs 2,000 fewer controllers to reach full staffing, expecting technological scheduling tools to deliver more controller productivity per shift.
  • Manual scheduling will be replaced—intended to move "on position" time from 4 to 5 hours per shift.
  • Concern: NATCA (controllers’ union) not fully consulted; skepticism over FAA’s ability to roll out new tech effectively.
  • Good news: Record trainee hiring (2,028 in FY25), net gain in controller workforce, successful retention bonuses for older controllers.
  • Bad news: Soaring mandatory overtime ($259M last year, +85% from 2019), risking fatigue and burnout.
• Parker’s View: Validates push for more productivity but emphasizes essential need for union buy-in [09:51].

3. Airline Industry News Highlights ([09:51–14:21])

• Allegiant Acquires Sun Country:
  • $1.5B deal combines two creative, niche carriers—operating separately for now; integration will be watched closely.
• Airfare Inflation:
  • 21% YoY air fare rise in April, matching industry earnings reports—driven by fuel cost increases.
• Spirit Fleet Update:
  • Spirit aircraft are being stored or ferried amid ongoing reorganization.
• Transportation Secretary’s Reality TV Road Trip:
  • Supported by regulated industry sponsorships (e.g., Boeing, United); ethics concerns raised, but impact viewed as limited curiosity.

4. More News Briefs ([14:21–15:05])

• Southwest wins more gates in San Antonio post-lawsuit.
• FedEx resumes MD-11 operations with newly approved structural fixes; UPS retires its MD-11 fleet.

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Main Theme: Airline Crisis Management & Leadership

1. Identifying the Type of Crisis ([18:36–24:19])

Doug Parker structures his explanation around three major historical crises:

• 9/11:

  • Revealed structural flaws, not just a temporary demand drop. "All crises are not created equal. What matters oftentimes is what’s the source of the crisis, what really is going on." — Doug Parker [19:13]
  • Forced bankruptcies for legacy airlines with unsustainable business models.

• Great Recession:

  • Tough but inherently temporary; airlines survived mainly through external supplier support.
  • Industry had structurally sound carriers post-initial consolidations.

• COVID-19:

  • Pure demand shock, no underlying structural weakness. Required government support, but not a failed business model.

• Current Environment (2026):

  • High revenue and strong demand despite high fuel costs.
  • Main concern: Affordability and sustainability of continued high costs.

2. Cost and Capacity Management ([24:19–34:01])

• Focus on Costs, Not Revenue:

  • “This is a cost problem entirely outside their control.” — Doug Parker [24:54]

• Cash Flow vs. Capacity Cuts:

  • Don't cut capacity drastically as strong cash generation is critical.
  • Airlines’ current losses funded with debt—being prepared with cash and untapped credit is key.

• On Minor Cost-Cutting (“Crisis” Tactics):

  • Rejects token measures that don’t affect the core problem or impact customer experience.
  • “If that made sense, why weren’t we doing it before?” — Doug Parker [32:39]
  • Emphasizes long-term thinking over knee-jerk reactions ("paper cups," pay freezes, etc.)

• Fleet Management:

  • No wide-scale order deferrals seen yet, as airlines want to maintain modern, fuel-efficient fleets.

• Preparedness:

  • Today's airlines have better balance sheets, more cash, and more levers (debt, asset sales) thanks to painful lessons from past crises.

3. Fuel Cost Breakdown—The ‘Crack Spread’ ([34:19–37:52])

• Crack Spread Explanation:
  • Difference between crude oil price and jet fuel price; now highly volatile and much higher than historical norms.
  • Refinery-capacity constraints and geopolitical disruptions (Persian Gulf) have doubled the cost of jet fuel compared to base crude oil.
  • “It’s not as simple as, ‘Oh, we gotta deal with oil going from $75 to $100.’ We got to deal with jet fuel prices going from $80 to $200. That’s a huge difference.” — Doug Parker [37:52]

4. Leading Through Crisis: Philosophy & Practical Tips ([37:52–49:54])

• Keep Calm & Communicate:

  • Openness, transparency, and presence (especially internally) are vital.
  • “Your job is to make sure that everyone remains calm… really keeping everyone calm. That’s your job, is to make sure that everyone remains calm and keeps doing what you need them to do.” — Doug Parker [38:24]
  • Most employees should focus on serving customers; only a small central team works the crisis response.
  • Visible, approachable leaders project strength—don’t hide, don’t panic.
  • Know when to say “I don’t know, but we’ll get through it.”

• Balanced Decision-Making:

  • Resist panic-driven moves; trust in preparation and core strategies ("If it made sense before, it still makes sense now").
  • Principles matter: Uphold commitments to both customers and the workforce, even when it’s hard.
  • Example from COVID-19: Insistence on refunding customers per policy, even under severe cash strain.
    • “What’s going to matter is how we treated our customers and how we treated our team.” — Doug Parker [44:15]

• Crisis Preparation is Year-round:

  • Have capital reserves, solid relationships (with government, creditors), and a clear mission in place before the crisis hits.
  • “A crisis is no time for introductions.” — Doug Parker [48:20]

• Communication Nuances:

  • Don’t avoid staff just because you “don’t have the answers.” Regular, open communication is comforting—even if the answer is, “I don’t know yet.”

Notable/Quotable Moment:

“One of my favorite quotes about a crisis is: a crisis is no time for introductions.”
— Doug Parker [48:20]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “If a far sighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville.” — Scott quoting Warren Buffett [02:55]
• “This is a cost problem entirely outside their control.” — Doug Parker [24:54]
• “If that made sense, why weren’t we doing it before?” — Doug Parker on minor cost cutbacks [32:39]
• “Your job is to make sure that everyone remains calm... That’s your job.” — Doug Parker [38:24]
• “A crisis is no time for introductions.” — Doug Parker [48:20]
• “What’s going to matter is how we treated our customers and how we treated our team.” — Doug Parker [44:15]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 02:02 – Berkshire Hathaway/Delta stake and Buffett’s airline history
• 05:39 – FAA air traffic controller staffing report discussion
• 09:51 – Allegiant/Sun Country acquisition and airline fare data
• 18:36 – Start of in-depth crisis management discussion with Doug Parker
• 34:19 – Fuel crack spread impact on airline costs
• 37:52 – Leading through crisis: communication and leadership advice
• 48:20 – “A crisis is no time for introductions” discussion
• 51:46 – Listener mailbag & corrections

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Tone & Language

The conversation is engaging, candid, and practical—blending industry-insider analysis with story-rich recollections and straightforward leadership advice. Parker’s style is accessible, reflective, and focused on pragmatism; McCartney keeps the discussion flowing with probing, yet relatable questions.

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For Listeners Who Missed It...

This episode is essential listening for anyone in or interested in the airline industry—from executives to frequent flyers—offering a masterclass in crisis management, a timely breakdown of current events, and sharply relevant leadership lessons from one of the industry’s most experienced hands.

Transcript

[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 infinityflight the leader in Cadet Academy flight training programs. Infinityflight.com Ontario International Airport in Southern California state 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. I'm Scott McCartney and this week we are going to peer into the future in several different ways. We're going to look at future air traffic control staffing because the FAA is out with some new numbers and new plans. We're going to look at future travel related reality television. And we are going to ponder how airlines prepare for possible downturns and even crisis situations with someone who has been through several of the biggest crises the airline history has ever faced. Welcome back crisis veteran Doug Parker. Looking forward to looking at all that's going on these days with you.

[B]

Thanks, Scott. Great to be back. As always, there's a lot going on in the industry, but I'll tell you, hanging over everything is oil. It's all if you talk to people in the industry, it's all anyone really wants to talk about. How bad is it? How when will it end? What if it doesn't end all those things? That's what that's where everyone is and that's what airline leadership needs to work through. But there's a lot more going on, so let's, let's get to those.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So interesting news at the start of this week. Warren Buffett is back investing in airlines, sort of. The Oracle of Omaha is no longer CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, but he remains chairman and says he still consulted on the company's investment decisions. Well, Berkshire Hathaway disclosed its investment holdings in an SEC filing on Friday and it included a new big stake in Delta Airlines, which the company said was worth 2.6 billion at the end of March. That's not huge for Berkshire Hathaway, but it is significant for Delta and I think significant for the industry that the legendary investment company believes it can make money in airlines again because Berkshire Hathaway famously hasn't made money in the past. Warren Buffett invested $358 million in US Airways in 1989 and exited nine years later with a small profit. The quote from Buffett at the time in a letter to his shareholders was famously. Indeed, if a far sighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville. So that, that's what we thought Warren Buffett's opinion was of airline investments. But he came back to the industry in 2016. He spent 7 or $8 billion, bought 10% each of Delta, United, American and Southwest. And then frankly, he panicked at the, at the end of the pandemic and sold in May 2020. At the bottom, he said then, quote, our airline position was a mistake. For the record, Berkshire said its average price paid for Delta shares was $66.50. On Monday it was about $71 a share. So, so far, so good this time for Berkshire Hathaway.

[B]

Yeah, look, I think it's, I think it's good for the industry. The, one of the quotes that I remember from Warren Buffett put me back from 16 and 17 is you get the shareholders you deserve. And we in the airline business never had shareholders, long term shareholders like Berkshire Hathaway for a long time. So that investment in 1617, which was, you know, was really important to all of us. It's one of the things I feel horrible about, by the way. You know, they made that investment in large part based on a presentation that I'd given them called the Leap of Faith about what, where we thought the airline industry was and American was in 16 and 17 where we were. But, you know, Covid changed all that and they lost all the equities, went down and they exited with losses when they could have exited before with some nice gains. But nonetheless, the fact that they're now back in, albeit just to one airline, I think says a lot about where the industry is. I'll also note that I don't know obviously what their investment thesis is, but I will note. We'll talk later about fuel prices. But a big part of the, the issue with fuel prices is not so much Brent crude base price, but the jet fuel price, the crack spread. And Delta at least has the ability to offset a good bit of that because they own a refinery. So maybe the reason they separate Delta from the others, that would seem logical to me is they look at Delta as being less exposed to the real problem here, which is jet fuel crack spreads.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, very interesting. It'll be interesting to follow, see if they add to the investment or whatever they do with it. Okay, I want to get to a report the FAA put out on air traffic controller staffing. This came Friday as well. I'LL preface this with the news that FAA administrator Brian Bedford will be my guest on the podcast next week. So we'll talk about this and we'll talk about many other important things, but this is a big one. The FAA basically said it needs 2,000 fewer controllers than it previously stated in order to get to full staffing. How did it reach that conclusion? Mostly by saying that it will deploy better scheduling tools to get more time on screen from each controller. Right now, controllers are scheduled manually, the report says, and we're not just talking about which shift you show up for. We're talking about scheduling time within the eight hour shift when you get your breaks, what other tasks you do, things like that. The report said back in 2008, controllers average 4.68 hours per 8 hour shift on position that is actually working traffic. Last year that was down to 4.01 hours per shift. In that shift, typically 1.2 hours were spent on other duties and an average of 2.3 hours when controllers were available but not on position. So the FAA wants to raise the four hours per shift on position to five hours, basically. And if it can do that, it won't need as many controllers to get to full staffing. It won't need 2000 as many controllers. This seems like a good, efficient, workable plan. I think there are some concerns and it'll be interesting to hear from Brian about this. The National Air Traffic Controllers association, natca, wasn't consulted on this and just feels like you're going to need union engagement on work issues within facilities. I think I'd feel a lot better about it if NATCA was in agreement. And it seems like the FAA is counting the results before it deploys staff scheduling software. It would seem like a relatively simple thing since lots of complex businesses, such as airlines, for example, work very sophisticated scheduling systems. It's not something terribly new. The FAA does have a terrible track record on deploying new software systems, and I worry about banking improvement that may face delays and disappointments like so many systems have before. So we'll hear what Brian has to say about this next week. There was some good news in the report. The FAA hired 2028 air traffic control trainees in fiscal year 2025, the most since 2008 and above the target of 2000. For the year, a new bonus retention program for retirement eligible controllers resulted in 400 staying on and that was a big help. So for the year, a net gain of 568 controllers and trainees. So kudos to the FAA for that. The Bad news was that mandatory overtime continues to grow. That's not good for controller fatigue, burnout retention, not good for the budget either. But I think the burnout's the key issue here. Last year, The FAA spent $259 million on controller overtime. That was up 10% from the year before and up 85% from controller overtime in 2019. Before the pandemic, the FAA's own report said the 2025 overtime spending quote far exceeds any reasonable use of mandatory overtime. So lots of work to do and look forward to talking to Brian next week.

[B]

Yeah, fascinating stuff. I'm interested to hear what Brian has to say to you. Obviously it's a huge problem that we've been talking about for decades now. But look, I mean, the combination of fill in the gap with a combination of more hiring and some productivity certainly sounds rational, but, yeah, he's going to need buy in from natca. They obviously are important in the process because they represent the controllers who are doing the work. So again, I know Brian pretty well. My guess is he does have a plan for that and we'll hear from him next week. Okay. So in other news, Scott Allegiant completed its $1.5 billion acquisition of Sun Country Airlines. It was fairly quick and easy as these things go in our business compared to others. The combined airline has 195 aircraft, now serves 175 cities. They do have different operating styles, so it'll be interesting to see what the combined airline ends up being. But for now, they continue to operate as separate carriers. Allegiant, as our listeners know, focuses primarily on small town service and sun country operates in larger cities and has some creative side hustles, if you will, like flying cargo for Amazon and providing casino charters. Good to see that Sun Country CEO Jude Bricker staying on as an advisor and a board member. And he'll work on integrating the two airlines.

[A]

Yeah, I'm really curious to see how, how that all ends up. You know, they're both, they're both really creative operators, so. But as they get bigger, you know, they've both kind of flown under the radar and, you know, I don't know more. It'll be interesting to see how it goes.

[B]

I agree.

[A]

All right, Bunch of other things to mention. The monthly inflation report from the government showed airfares up nearly 21% in April compared to a year ago. Seasonally adjusted, they were up 2.7% from March. You know, I've said before the monthly inflation report numbers, it can be erratic, but I think it's in this case, it's kind of directionally correct. That's actually a similar number to what we saw in first quarter earnings reports from airlines. And obviously because of fuel prices, fears have had to go up. An update on the Spirit situation A friend asked me the other day, how is that capacity going to be replaced? And my answer was it has already been replaced. JetBlue expanded in Fort Lauderdale to cover a lot of Spirits capacity there. Frontier is expanded in Orlando. Breeze says it's going into Atlantic City. As always, if there is demand for seats, airlines will find a way to fill that demand. As for Spirit's fleet, which we talked about last week, with the complexity of reuniting engines with their rightful airplane, something like three quarters of Spirit's owned and leased jets have now been ferried to storage and more every day. I saw something we're recording this on Monday. Spirit plane left DFW this morning headed for the day desert. Most of the planes went to either Phoenix, Goodyear or Morena, Arizona. And I mentioned reality TV at the start of the show. You've probably heard that Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and his family are doing a road trip TV show. The series is being funded by a non profit advocacy group called Directly Enough Great American Road Trip, Inc. Andrew Tangle and Sharon Terlop of the Wall Street Journal reported this past week that Boeing and Toyota, two companies heavily regulated by the Transportation Department that Duffy heads, each donated 1 million to the show. Shell Oil is also a sponsor at that level. United Airlines and 13 other companies and organizations are also listed as sponsors on the group's website, apparently at lower giving levels. The Duffy involvement drew an ethics complaint from a watchdog group filed with the DOT Inspector General. Don't hold your breath on that one. The the Department of Transportation says the secretary had no role in soliciting sponsorships. I'm not sure that's the standard of good ethical behavior, but I don't know. This is more of a curiosity than than anything else. Compared to a lot of other issues in Washington, the dollars are pretty small.

[B]

Okay. And on a couple other news notes, Southwest Airlines in the city of San Antonio settled their lawsuit over gates in the new terminal that's going to open in 2028. Southwest will get six new gates in San Antonio, three in the new Terminal C and three in the renovated Terminal B. Right now, Southwest has six gates in Terminal A, which is scheduled to get renovated once the new terminal opens. And FedEx has resumed MD11 flights. The FAA lifted its grounding of MD11s that was imposed after the Louisville UPS crash. Boeing developed structural and reinforcements for the engine pylon mount and with that FedEx is putting its 29 MD11s back into service. UPS has opted to retire its MD11 fleet.

[A]

All right, so time now to thank our sponsors for making this podcast possible. 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 that journey. Infinity Flight Academy training tomorrow's airline pilots through the American Airlines Cadet Academy. In addition, thanks to Cirium, Cirium offers the most accurate and precise data and analytics to enable airlines 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 to maximize revenue, manage costs and seize commercial opportunity. Visit cerium.com for more and much appreciation to Ontario International Airport, which is celebrating a decade of local control for its sponsorship as well. Thanks to public support, the local community reclaimed ont, revived it as a vital gateway in Southern California and ensured the airport is ready to soar even higher in the years to come. Come visit flyontario.com 10 to learn the story and find out how you can join the year long celebration of how a decade of local control has turned ont into one of California's fastest growing and most economical airports. Okay, Doug, I thought it would be good to talk about crisis management at airlines, something you've had a lot of experience with, sadly. But but you navigated some very tough waters with strong, lasting results. And don't do this to we're not suggesting that the industry is headed into some kind of huge crisis, but I think we both agree that airlines here and abroad can adjust to and handle higher oil prices. And you know, we'll talk more about that. This is all an unexpected headwind and if it gets worse, more actions might be needed. Personally, I'm worried that higher airfares will dampen demand for airline tickets, and that demand could further be impacted by broader economic trends. Higher gasoline prices can shrink disposable income for Americans and others around the world, while air travel is largely bought by higher income folks and corporate customers. The economy does affect demand, and recessions have proven to be trouble in the past. Not saying we're headed for a recession, but in the economic news chatter, you hear a lot more discussion. Interest rates have gone up and the economy has weakened some. So we'll see where it all goes. But let's set all that aside. That's not what we're talking about today. Let's talk about just crisis preparation in good times and even today. What kinds of things are management teams thinking about? What are they, what are they talking about? What kind of contingency plans do you think they're developing?

[B]

Okay, great. Thanks. I will do my best and probably best way at least for me to go through this. Let's just start with today's, you know, kind of what they're going through today. We can talk about kind of just in general if you'd like more about just how best to lead through a crisis, if indeed this is one. But so, you know, when I look at today's and I will go back to history to talk about it because I think it's helpful, I think it's really important to define what the crisis is, you know, and in this case, crisis in, in air quotes, because I'm with you. I'm not sure if this is really a crisis yet, but it's certainly starting to feel like it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So at any rate, you know, so it's, I think it's, you know, all crises are not created equal. They'll what matters oftentimes is what's the source of the crisis, what really is going on. So I'll go back. So you look at three that certainly in my career, 9 11, Great Recession and Covid 911 was setting aside the tragedy of what happened to our industry, what it meant for the economics of the business post 911 was a serious drop off in demand, obviously, and due to some fear of flying that quickly was passed. I mean quick in relative terms certainly versus Covid. That passed fairly quickly. It was months, not years, right before people were confident flying again. And there was no recession. There were strong revenues there. What 911 did was it highlighted a problem in our industry that was, that was going to be, that was going to have to be addressed at some point, which was airlines that had far higher costs than, than what upstart airlines could have in place. But they were living off this fare structure that had people flying from Buffalo to Indianapolis for $1,000. And all of a sudden what 911 did, as those airlines had to pull back in capacity because of the demand, it just accelerated what I think would have happened Anyway, but it accelerated in such a way that it formed a crisis for those large airlines. So that's, that's one kind which is the crisis just shows that there is something wrong in your business model. And that's what happened at 9 11. That's what led to the bankruptcies of United and Delta and Northwest and US Airways twice. And all those bankers, they had flawed business models. It was highlighted by that crisis. And there was no way out of. There's nothing about that wasn't something you wait out. You can't just say, oh, wait till demand comes back. We're going to be fine. We have a problem. All had to go file bankruptcy to get out of it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I'm going to contrast that to where we are now. So that's one, the second one great recession. I mean by then, you know, much of that is shaken out. The airlines that were still around were the airlines that seemed like they should still be around. We all got through that one huge leverage up in balance sheets back then. Still needed support from our suppliers like Boeing and Airbus and ge. That kind of stuff was still going on. But we all got through it because it was indeed a recession. A recession that had some high fuel prices first and then a huge drop in demand. So a really painful one for our business. But it would pass and it was known it would pass. And we were able to all write those that needed financing were able to get financing to get through. And we got through it all without huge changes in the structure of the industry. And then of course Covid comes, which is another thing altogether. And you know, again, something that I think, you know, it was clearly was driven by demand drop off and not real structural issues in our business. And that required government assistance to get us through. But we all got through it. So I don't know. So I put those as all kind of different things to look at. And in this one you look at it and what I see is first and foremost, revenues are incredibly strong.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean not just kind of strong. Yeah, exceptionally strong. And I don't look at these numbers as much as a lot of your listeners or even, or you do. But what I'm hearing is, you know, revenues in the second quarter for most airlines are going to be double digit increases revenues.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And that's on fairly modest capacity growth. So it's revenue per ASM driven growth on top of some capacity growth. We don't have times like that that often in our business where everyone's up double digit revenue growth and they're all Growing. I mean, I can't remember when we've had one. Frankly, this would be all else equal. You would say, oh my God, these airlines need to add capacity. This is the kind of environment where you want more seats, not less. Now, the issue, of course, is you're not going to do that in this environment because you're not making money by adding more capacity. But what you don't want to do is look at this and think, oh my God, what am I going to do? Woe is us. Our business model is flawed. It's not. I mean, surely some of the reason that the revenues are up, it was because the cost structure is up. But there's no denying the fact customers are willing to pay it. I mean, as you note, there's some concern that, oh gosh, we raised fares too much, but that's not happening. Customers are paying these higher fares, they're willing to pay the higher fares. And the revenues are what the revenues are. Again, we all may be, and I'm certain all the management teams are worried about, okay, how long can this last? What if we do get to end a recession? All those types of things. But anyway, I think that's just really important. This, nothing about this is a revenue issue. None of this feels like it's a. Some sort of, oh, this business model is better than our business model. Well, actually some of that might be the case, but that was that. I should back up this. Certainly. We already talked about the issue with the ultra low cost carriers and low cost carriers and how things like basic economy have made their business model less viable. So the other thing that does happen in these crises is if you already were in trouble, the crisis is often what pushes you over. I mean, when I mentioned the bankruptcy airlines, I didn't mention Americans. They chose not to file bankruptcy through all those troubles. But when fuel prices rose to really high levels in 2011, that pushed them over, didn't push anybody else over. And Spirit just got pushed over, Right?

[A]

Yes. Spirit would say, hey, we had a reorganization plan and then all of a sudden it didn't work because of higher fuel price.

[B]

Yeah. To which I would say there was more to it. Which I would say you were the only one that would need a reorganization plan. I mean, they were again, that not sitting, not making any judgment on Spirit, but they were the weakest of those left. And when something like this happens, you don't want to be the weakest around. So that's certainly true. But again, I would also suggest that if it wasn't this something else over time, absent a merger or something, Spirit had a questionable business model and this pushed him over the edge. Yeah, and there may be others get pushed over the edge, but again, that's different than managing through a crisis. That's just making sure you have a business model model that can get through any sort of ups and downs in our business, which I think most, the vast majority of airlines are prepared for. So anyway, getting back to the initial question, how are airlines preparing for this now? What would I be doing? I think I'd be really focused on the fact that this is a cost problem and it's a cost problem entirely outside of their control. And you don't want to have your head in the sand or anything like that, but you sure don't want to be doing things like. And I can't imagine they are thinking, oh my God, we got to go cut capacity. You know, we talked on the, on the last one, we went through market profitability of airlines. What actually happens when you do that is you actually reduce your cash flow because those markets, cash on cash, flying airplanes is a positive things even in, even in tough environments, it's certainly positive with revenues doing what they're doing. So I don't think you're going to see anybody saying, oh, we're going to major cup. They may say we're going to grow less fast than we thought. That's entirely different than saying we're going to cut back capacity. And you may see some airlines that were at a tipping point tip. But again, that's different than managing through a crisis. That's just how you should have been managing all along is to get through things like this. So I don't know. I look at all this and I'm, I imagine what airlines are going through is how long can we sustain this? What are we going to do to make sure we do. How are we going to make sure we get through this? What if things do get worse? But I think when you go through all those questions, I'd be hard pressed to come up with a plan that is anything much different than keep doing what we're doing. It's working in terms of generating profits at a normal cost structure. It's working in terms of generating record revenues. And if there were things we could have been doing on cost, we should have done them before.

[A]

Well, that's so, so let me ask two things. One is we, we've seen some financing moves, right? Like JetBlue, American, Alaska, I think they, they all did some deals. And, and my, my recollection I May be wrong about this, but freed up some cash, took on increased debt and I'm sure they were all in that category, but, but that kind of thing. So that's one question. Is this going to result in more debt for the industry? And second question on the cost thing, I mean, is there any sense in, I think you already answered this, but any sense in saying where can we squeeze pennies out? I mean, in past fuels things we've seen efforts to, you know, hey, let's taxi on one engine, let's save as much fuel as we can or let's, you know, go to a cheaper, cut costs here and there. Let's slow down our, I don't know, development of new clubs or, you know, there are different ways you could save money. Right. Is there going to be that sort of, hey, we can save, save a few pennies here and a few pennies there.

[B]

Okay, I'll take those in order. The first one. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Losses lead to, lead to balance sheets getting more levered. There's no doubt about it. So to the extent there are going to be losses in the industry, which there are, if indeed oil prices, stay at jet fuel prices, I should say stay at these levels for this month for an extended period of time, there will be lots, certainly, certainly not the same level of profits and probably losses for the industry. And that's, you know, those get funded with debt. So there you will see, I think the right thing for airlines to do is. And again, this is back to being prepared. You know, Spirit couldn't raise any more debt, so they, they go away. But that's what, that's why you have this. That's why airlines, that's why you should have at this time a lot of cash on hand, a lot of unsecured assets, you know, the ability to draw down on revolvers, all those types of things. And you'll see airlines avail themselves of those things. Or that's why you have them. Yeah. If you didn't need them for times like this, you shouldn't be, shouldn't be holding on to them because it's not the best use of capital.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

To carry a lot of cash, for example. So. But they do it for this reason. And I think something I probably should know versus all those times I talked about the fact these airlines are so much better prepared than the airlines that we were running back in those, in those crises. I talked about, maybe not Covid, but I think it's due to the crisis.

[A]

That's a huge thing.

[B]

Oh, it's enormous I mean, if anything like this would have happened in the 1990s, early 2000s, it'd be serial bankruptcies.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or enormous requests for government support.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Not one airline asking for it. It'd be everyone saying, we need, you know, $50 billion again, because that's how severe this is in this time. No one's asked, no one's asking for anything. Everyone seems totally prepared to handle it. I mean, they have tens of billions of dollars, the large tens of billion dollars of cash on hand, unsecured assets behind that. They can handle this, and they're built to handle it. Again, because of what we saw in the past, we clearly weren't prepared for 911 as an industry, and I think we all get better for that. Again, we got through the Great Recession, which I think we wouldn't have gotten through in the 90s because of what we'd seen around 9 11, and we gotten ourselves at least better prepared. And then Covid, of course, no one could have imagined that kind of. That sort of disruption, so we ended up having to get government support for that. The entire industry had to, though, and that's including entirely different. So at any rate, I think this is. I think it's worth noting that the airlines are just so much better prepared. And then the fact that you'll see some start to avail themselves of this shouldn't be alarming or anything like that. That's what it's there for.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they're smart to go do it, and they will go do it, and that's why they have it. For times like this.

[A]

Kind of on the. On the same lines in. In past downturns, we also saw deferring orders for airplanes, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Push out the orders. We're not going to take delivery of those planes. We haven't seen that yet.

[B]

Yeah, good point. Yeah. And again, I don't know enough about each airline's positions and where they are. Certainly something you would expect to see. Now, that's that again, I think, given the revenue environment, people aren't looking, if you're really looking longer term, you're thinking, I want those airplanes and maybe I defer them a year. But that's not that easy to do, particularly because they're. They're delayed already. So. Yeah, I don't know. I. You're right. We haven't seen it. I don't expect you will see a lot of it. Yeah.

[A]

And I guess the other end of that is if you. If you. You replace an older airplane with a new airplane, you're saving Fuel and that benefit just got a whole lot bigger because jet fuels twice as expensive.

[B]

Yeah, that certainly helps. You gotta, you gotta pay more than that cash basis. You'd be better off to defer because you, because you got to put cash for the airplane, of course, and you don't get all that back that quickly. So if all you cared about was cash, I could see why you'd want to defer. But I think another good point you made, which is they're not doing that because they're not that much concerned about cash in the near term. That that level of cash, you know, $20 million or whatever it's going to be for the final delivery payment and that, you know, that doesn't rise to the level of saving the company and indeed it probably in the long term is going to be worse for us versus others is because we're going to want those airplanes three years from now.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So that's a really good point you make on your cost point. Yeah, I mean, look, I can go both ways on this. And there's constant debates within airlines, you know. Right. In times like this, you know, all of a sudden there's all these things people want to do. But my question every time is, well, if that made sense, why weren't we doing it before? Yeah, tell me, tell me why, tell me why it now makes sense to put the less expensive cup on than it did before.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the reason back then that we had the more expensive cup is because our customers didn't like the cheaper cup. So we made the decision to put on more expensive cup. And why are we going to take that away from our customer in this environment where they're paying us more than they used to, but they're paying us 10% more than they were a year ago.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Why are we taking the product away way, you know, if we can, you know, put everyone on a pay freeze, you know, and why didn't we talk about doing that before? We didn't, we didn't before because it's the wrong thing to do to people. Inflation's going up. People need, we need to keep, if our people are fairly paid, they need to get a pay increase every year.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So again, having said that, there are certainly times where it gets to where it makes sense to go do some things like that. These kind of crisis cost things, I just hate them all. They one, they don't serve the purpose. They're not big enough to make the real difference in a time like this. They can't offset a hundred dollar crack spread with, you know, a management pay freeze. Yeah. And once you start doing those things, a really slippery slope and it just sends the wrong signals, I think of what, and if we get to you kind of just how you kind of lead to these things, so much of it is just showing that we're okay. Yeah. And you're confident you're okay and you want to keep doing what you're doing and it's not, this is nothing of your doing. You know, management team that wants a pay increase. Sorry, we can't give you one because fuel's up. It's like they didn't do with that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And other companies aren't doing that to them. And you're going to start losing good people. It's just, I don't know, I just, I always come back to if that, if it makes sense now, why would we do it before? And if you don't have a good answer to that, then we're not going to do it.

[A]

Right, right. Or, or would you undo it once things improve? That may not make sense either.

[B]

Yeah, that never happens.

[A]

Yeah. Right, right. So you mentioned crack spread and we should talk about it a little bit. I think a lot of listeners would be familiar and some won't, but crack spread is the cost to refine crude oil into jet fuel, Right?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And there has been a widening,

[B]

it's

[A]

just gotten more and more expensive to refined jet fuel and certainly once the war started in the Persian Gulf, because so much jet fuel did come out of the Persian Gulf. So when we talk about $105 for Brent crude, you know, airlines could handle that. Right. But the crack spread has made jet fuel twice as expensive in some cases. I think it's down, moderated a little bit in the last couple weeks, but the price of a gallon of jet fuel just rose dramatically, much more than what we hear about as price of oil. So this has been a lot more serious for airlines than just the run up in what you see the price of oil each day.

[B]

Yeah, thanks. I mean, and just to expand on that a little bit, you know, I, I, I think like most of us looks to the Brent crude price as the kind of a indicator of where jet fuel prices are in. Back when I was running airlines, it was a pretty good indicator because, because the cost to get Brent to jet that crack spread was pretty constant. It would vary, but you know, my recollection has always had like 15 cents a gallon, which is about $6 a barrel. So if, if you saw whatever $100 a barrel oil is, $106 a barrel jet fuel. It's not that significant, but. And it always stayed there. So. But what's happening in this environment is at least, you know, early on, I think still the correct. That crack spread is almost $100 a barrel, not. Not $6 a barrel. So when we look at Brett and say it's going, oh, my God, Brent's gone from $75 a barrel to $105 a barrel at 30 bucks, it's really gone from $75 a barrel to 205 dollars a barrel. Yeah, because you got to add 105 to that. So anyway, I'm sorry, it's gone from 75, add 6, you know, 70, 81 to 205. It's more than double. So that's a huge problem, and that's not sustainable. Last time I was on, I think I mentioned, well, you know, airlines can deal with $100 barrel, Brent. You know, we did in 2013, 2014, averaged over $100 barrel jet fuel. And those were nicely profitable years for our business. Yeah, it took a couple of years of it being, you know, it was 2011, 2012, where we didn't do that well, but we finally got to where. When oil was that high. But there was four years, 11, 12, 13, 14, all over $100 a barrel. 13 or 14. You know, the airline got itself to where, you know, capacity didn't grow that much, fares went up, airlines dealt with it. We were profitable. That's what I think will happen. If that's all it was. If the crack spread stay here, it's a whole different. That's a whole different story.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So that all gets back to how long does this last? What's driving that? What's driving that is because the street, or hormuzes, closed down in some 25% of jet, at least to Europe and other parts of the world comes out of the Middle East. So it's a supply issue, and it's going to stay that way for a while. So that's what they have to deal with. It's not as simple as, oh, we gotta deal with oil going from 75 to 100. We gotta deal with jet fuel prices going from 80 to 200. And that's a huge difference.

[A]

All right, so let's take a step back. You know, you mentioned this earlier, and I'm really curious. How do you lead through a crisis or at least lead through, you know, the anxiety that airline employees have from right now? Lead through customer uncertainty. How is it best to lead through difficult times? Like this or worse.

[B]

Yeah. Thanks. Okay. So first and foremost, again, when you're talking about leading, I mean, you just have to lead. And what that means is in that time, in these times like this, is really keeping everyone calm. That's your job, is to make sure that everyone remains calm and keeps doing what you need them to do and what you want them to do. The fact of the matter is, in any crisis, irrespective of severity, there's only, I don't know, 20, 30 people that are really working on the things that can be done to fix it, to address it, you know, deciding, you know, if we're going to, you know, cut costs, if we're going to, you know, reduce capacity, if we're going to defer aircraft. I mean, that's maybe 30 is a little bit there. There are single double digit number of people in the airline that are working on that. What you want the other hundred thousand people doing is doing exactly what they've been doing. Keep doing what you're doing. Don't worry about this. We've got it. You get the bet. The worst thing that could possibly happen to you is in the crisis, all of a sudden have, you know, your team so worried that you're losing people. Your team's so worried that they're not, you know, spending time providing the service that you, they usually provide, or they're, they're not keeping their eye on the ball. You need to be more so. So your primary job is to just make sure you keep everybody calm. And what that means is you project strength as a leader and you cannot communicate enough. You got to be transparent, you got to be approachable and you can't, you know, we, we always believe communication was important. It's five times more important during difficult times that you're out there and transparent people can see you because that's what they need to see. They need to see that everything's okay. Now, look, as I say this, I mean, it makes sense. You have your head in the sand when you're going through something like Covid. That's not what I'm saying. You can't look like you have your head in the sand and you just know everything's going to be okay. You got to at least show that you know, here's a plan.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And even absent a plan like we had it, sometimes you can be transparent. Say, look, I'm not exactly certain how we're getting through this, but I'm certain we're getting through it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the way we're getting through it is, you know, you guys need to go do these. You know, here's what we need to do. And that's what we always try to do. And I think it makes a huge difference. You know, this. This. This strength thing is, you know, just so important, and sometimes, you know, it's not even there. I. I vividly remember sitting in the parking lot at American during COVID a couple times and then give myself a pep talk before I walked in, like, you gotta buck yourself up.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, because I just got off a call that's, you know, things aren't going that well. I'm not sure we're gonna get this support, whatever, but, you know, I can't walk in with my shoulders down and my head down, like, oh, my God, what are we gonna do now?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So, you know, you gotta walk in saying, this is. Here's the news. Here's what it is. And you just buck yourself up and you go. And that's what you need, you know, And. And again, it may sound simple, but it's not. It's really important. Some people aren't made for it. Some people just really. You can see it in the airline. There are some people just. They just freak out, for lack of a better term. They become different people. They start managing differently. They want to just do something for the sake of doing something. And you've got to get all that to come back to. No, no, no. Let's. Let's talk about. Let's call everybody. Calm down. And you have to be the person that's doing that. I mean, the example that. That I remember from this and you, with your airline history, may remember at one point. You remember Hollis Harris ran Continental.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And Continental was in serious trouble. And Hollis sent a note to the entire team suggesting they pray for Continental.

[A]

I do remember that.

[B]

And I don't even know Hollis. I'm sure he's. He's a great man, great leader, but that is not. That does not project strength. And again, I'm not. No comment on the strength of prayer either. That's just not. What your team needs to hear is, here's my plan. All you guys pray. So that's. That's taking it to the absurd. But, I mean, really. But that's. But some people, that's, you know, it's. It's not much different to say everyone pray as it is, to just go run around with your hair on fire and not having a plan. It's pretty much the same thing. You're just. All you're doing is Getting people riled up for no and worried without a. Without anything that's going to make a difference. You know, you're running around talking about, you know, how come we're not using the paper cup anymore. You're not adding value, you're detracting from value. And what you, again, you need leadership that can just lead through, that is comfortable in it, that doesn't get rattled by it. Indeed actually knows that, you know, there's a reason we're here. And this is what, this is the times that all the stuff we've been doing is what makes a difference, which I guess is another really big point is you just keep leading through your principles. You know, you got there. You got there with certain things that you care about. And again, also in. And those things should be what guide you through it. Now, the easiest example of this, I mean, kind of things we talked about, but the one that, That I remember the best is during COVID we, you know, no one's not only not building cash, we're draining cash because people have bought tickets. We got to give refunds because we're not going to fly those lines. We are required to give them refunds. Yeah. And we all tried really hard to, you know, do things to make the customer not want a cash refund. You know, we give you more. We'd give you more in a credit. If you remember all this. This was all efforts for us to keep as much cash as we could.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But at the end of the day, if the customer said no to those things, it's their money. Right. We are not going to provide the service. We know we're not. It's our obligation, our duty to give it back to men. Oh, by the way, you know, think what they're going through, you know, as a family of four who's got a trip to Disneyland that they've saved up for now, you know, the wage earner is worried about their own job, first of all, they know they can't make that trip and we're holding their cash. We're not going to get back to them. I mean, none of it feels right, first of all. So that just, you know, when. When people suggest, oh, gee, let's just hold on to it, the right answer should be, that's not how we lead. And that's what 90% of airlines did, but some didn't. And that's just an example that's visible. But I'm telling you, things like that go on all the time inside the airline. Smaller levels. I'm not trying to sound holier than thou on this because we did. Because like I say, most airlines did that, did that way because it's the right thing to do, but you have to lead that way. When Covid started, our message to our team was, I'm not sure how we're getting through this, but what's going to matter is what I know we're going to get through it. And what's going to matter is when we do how we treated our customers and how we treated our team and let's just. And if you do that, things like that are just easy. What's going to matter is how we treat our customers. We try to get them to take a discount in credit if they don't want. I'm not a discount. We're going to give them more in a credit than they get in their cash. They chose not to do that. They get their money back. It's theirs.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Not ours. And when you do that again, this is one of these things. Well, that was hundreds of millions of dollars. It still wasn't enough to save any of us. Every single airline needed. Needed more than that to survive. We all needed government. So once you agree that, okay, those things are not. Those are, those are not to be touched, then you have to focus on what really matters, which is spending your time like we did, convincing the US Government that the airline industry is so important that if you don't do this for us, we hate to ask you for it, but we. If you don't, we're not going to have an airline industry that no one's going to be flying through this crisis for a long time.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So at any rate, that's what you do anyway.

[A]

You mentioned communications. Yeah. Internal, external, both. Is there a difference?

[B]

Well, external is important because you don't want your customers to be afraid. Of course they need to have confidence that you're going to be there for them. So it's incredibly important. When I was talking about it was mostly internal because the external stuff is, is again really important. But it. That's going to happen. There. There are people reporting on you that are asking you questions.

[A]

They're.

[B]

And there are stock analysts that want to know, you know, tell me how much cash you have today that communication happens.

[A]

The answer is less than yesterday.

[B]

The answer is I'll tell you tomorrow. So, yeah. So at any rate, those things happen naturally and they're really important. But now I was talking more about management and leadership and being out in front of your team. It's just there's a tendency to want to like, oh, I don't have the answers, so I don't want to go out there and talk to everybody. And if you have that emotion, the only thing you should do is go out and talk to everybody because that means they're thinking the same thing, they want answers. And it's totally okay to go out there and say, I don't know exactly, here's what I know and just say what you know. And based upon all that, here's what I believe. And you have to believe that you're okay. That's, that, that's, that's within you. But you got to go out there and just. But you got to go tell people all the time because not being there for a couple of days makes people think you're hold up for a reason, that you don't want to get out and talk to them. So it's just that much more.

[A]

And in a situation like today,

[B]

I'm

[A]

curious how difficult it is to keep people focused. Like if you have an initiative, I mean, JetBlue's got a, you know, a Jet Forward plan. How do you, how do you keep people on the plan when there are so many distractions going on?

[B]

Yeah, good question. Again, it comes back to your communication, but also it comes back to, you should have already been doing that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So, I mean, another big piece of this getting through a crisis is it shouldn't feel new. You should be prepared for the crisis, which again, to our point we made earlier about balance sheets, I think they are much better prepared. Yeah, but you need to be prepared and you need to be. When this shows up, it can't be like, okay, here's a change in the message that throws everyone off. It just gets everyone's like, wait a second. If it made sense before, what you were telling me before is we're going to go focus on the customer. Let's pick America as an example. You know that we've fallen behind in some of our premium products. We're going to go invest in those things. We're going to go win back the corporate customer. We do all those things and all

[A]

of a sudden fix the operation.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. If anything sounds different than that, it shouldn't. I mean, because that's the right plan. If that was the right plan before, it's still the right plan now. Unless you're telling me something has changed in our business. And that's not. No one's saying that. All we're saying is this is a, this is a crisis driven by high fuel prices. Everything else we're doing is working well, keep working on the operation, keep working on getting, you know, premium customers, keep doing all those things. That's what you want. So the last thing you want to do, you need to be prepared. So hopefully you've done all those things already. And there are going to be different things where you're going to. There are going to be different things, but they shouldn't be those. They shouldn't be, you know, in how you're going to run the airline, you are, as you noted, you're going to be going out and raising capital. But that should just, when people see it, they should say, well, of course, that makes sense. We're losing, you know, oil prices where they are, you know, we're doing anything right, we're still losing money. We need to raise some capital. That shouldn't be. If you've done this right and you're gonna need to go get some, go talk to some people for maybe for some help. And that's the other point I like is that's part of being prepared is that you don't want to do that. You know, in the crisis. One of my favorite quotes about a crisis is a crisis is no time for introductions. It's like you do not want to be showing up in front of, you know, again, this won't get to that level, I think, but you don't want to be showing up in front of a congressman or a senator saying, hi, I'm CEO of X Airline. Nice to meet you. That's work you should have laid well before. And that's the same with, you know, your creditors and your shareholders. Because none of this should feel unnatural. It should just feel like a change in circumstance, which is what it is. And in this change of circumstance, hey, you know, before we were talking about how, you know, we were doing good stuff for you, Boeing. Now we might need a little help from you in this circumstance. And they understand that we're partners and. Okay. So I don't know, you have to be prepared as well.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. All right, Fascinating.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Thank you. That was, that was really informative and interesting. I really enjoyed that. Thank you.

[B]

Okay. Okay. I'm glad you did.

[A]

I hope listeners did too. All right, before we get to the mailbag, thanks to the Executive MBA in Aviation at the University of Colorado Denver. The Executive MBA in Aviation at CU Denver is the first degree of its kind in the world, taught by industry experts and designed for ambitious leaders from across the aviation ecosystem. With classes located at Denver International Airport and week long residencies in Washington D D.C. and shout out to the first cohort of students because they are in Washington D.C. this week at their residency meeting with all kinds of people and learning all kinds the ways of Washington and aviation. It's really fascinating program so residencies in Washington and at airports around the world. Students experience a hybrid flexible court structure that balances in person and online classes without career interruption. Go to business ucdenver.edu to learn more. In addition, thanks to RTX for its longtime 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 business businesses Collins Aerospace, Pratt and Whitney and Raytheon to drive progress for generations to come together. RTX pushes the boundaries of known science and finds new ways to connect and protect our world. Visit rtx.com to learn more. Promotional support provided by the Ultimate Avgeek

[B]

website theairchive.net A vast collection of airline memorabilia, timetables, route maps, rare cat cabin

[A]

and airport photos, special flights and more. All at the archive.net, the hub of air transport history. In the mailbag this week, longtime aviation consultant Adam Thompson had some interesting details on the discussion from last week about renaming West Palm Beach Airport for a sitting president. Adam says, just wanted to point out a misstatement about naming airports. While I fully agree that the marketing agreement for PBI as the Donald J. Trump International Airport is new in the industry, it's actually not unusual to name an airport after a living president. Examples GRR Gerald R. Ford International Airport IAH became George H.W. bush Intercontinental Airport. DCA, as everyone knows, became Ronald Reagan National Airport, Little Rock lit now the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport. All these airports were named in the lifespans of these presidents. What is new is naming one for a sitting president. Also, Scott, as historical note, you called o' Hare General o'. Hare. Yeah, I gave him a promotion. The Chicago o' Hare International Airport is named for Lieutenant Commander Butch o', Hare, US Navy, a recipient of the Medal of Honor and the hero of the Battle of the Coral Sea. As always, what a great show. Well, thank you for that Adam. Much appreciate the corrections, clarifications and the good thoughts. Please, please everyone send your thoughts and questions to us. Go to airlinesconfidential.com and click on Contact Us. Well Doug, as always, informative and wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone for listening. As I mentioned, I'll be back next week with a sit down interview with FAA administrator Brian Bedford. We're really looking forward to that.

[B]

All right, well, thank you, Scott, and thanks, everybody, for listening. Have a great week. This podcast is produced by mass media infomassmedia.net.