Sorry, Scott, I didn’t mean to not answer that question. Yes, that is still the right number for us for sure.Operator And our next question comes from Helane Becker with TD Cowen.Helane Becker I have two questions. My first question is in February this year, I think you lost a lawsuit. And in the Virgin America case, number one or a, have you taken accruals for that? And b, will you appeal that decision? Or is it not appealable?Kyle Levine Helane, it’s Kyle. This litigation is a long road. We’ve been fighting this for about 7 years. It’s the Virgin Group Royalty license matter pending in London. And the very first stage of that was a ruling by the judge in London, adopting Virgin Group’s interpretation of our contract. There are additional proceedings coming, so continue to watch, and we’ll keep you posted.
On the accrual side, we have accrued $10 million at this point, and you’ll see additional disclosures in our 10-Q in a couple of weeks.Helane Becker Okay. That’s very helpful. And then my follow-up question or another question, you guys announced recently, I think, within the last week or so that you’re eliminating kiosks at the airport. And I’m just wondering how you’re thinking about that? I know most people come to the airport with their boarding pass in hand, but how are you thinking about the acceptance rate of that among your clients?Andrew Harrison Thanks for bringing that up, Helane. Actually, this is very exciting. And the reality is our lobbies are hugely congested. And we’ve actually started rolling these out. We’ve had about 7 or 8 stations done, including Portland.
And what we’re finding is at least a 10-point increase in people coming prepared to the lobby, checked in already, even paid for their bag. And so what it’s going to do is there’s a little bit of change in management, of course, but we’ve seen hugely positive results both from our guests and our agents. And I think what you’re going to see in the future is people only needing to check bags that are going to be milling around in the lobby. Only half of all passengers check bags. The rest need to go straight to security. We’ve had about 1/4 of those being the lobby, using kiosks, do all sorts of things. And now we’re fully mobile and we can do that outside. So I think you’re going to see good productivity, efficiency and a much more pleasant lobby experience as we roll this out over ’23 and ’24.Benito Minicucci It’s Ben.
Like our long-term vision is to have people come in just get their bag tag or have an electronic back tag, which we’ve already introduced, go to a self-backdrop, drop your bag and get to security within under 5 minutes is the goal. So really, make it a wonderful, easy customer experience. So these are the things that we’re rolling out in the next 12 to 18 months. It’s really exciting for us on the innovation front.Helane Becker That’s really helpful, Ben. Are you able to lower facility costs then?Benito Minicucci Well, I think what we would do as we’re growing, as my CFO here is on my right side, he would say, keep the same footprint but process more people. And I think that’s the goal, right, is to increase the productivity of the real estate footprint we have, which is what we’re all about.Operator Our next question will come from Chris with Susquehanna International.Chris Nicholas Ben, could you comment the procedures in place to navigate, let’s say, less than ideal operating conditions versus periods of strong demand, meaning how confident are you in Alaska’s ability — operational resiliency and ability to keep your completion factors north of, let’s say, 95% when conditions are tough?Benito Minicucci Chris, great question.
I would say right now, as we head to the summer, I’m extremely confident. I think two things that have to be in place: One, you have to be staffed properly, and our staffing numbers are quite strong across every labor group. The second thing is, as we’re getting our footing as we go back and you know our history, we’ve always had great performances. We have an operational playbook that we execute, and this is something that we focused on is we have a timeline. We know exactly what to do and when, and that is starting to click in from what I see across all areas and all of our hubs. So I’m quite confident in our operations team, and I think we’re going to have a great summer.Chris Nicholas Okay. And then my follow-up on the stage engage focus this year, as we think about the cadence of second half CASMex, should we expect this benefit to flow through evenly through the second half?
Or is this something that would be more fully realized as we exit 4Q? And I realize there’s also implicitly some type of macro assumption around stage and certainly as it relates to gauge and any order book risk that you’ve contemplated there?Shane Tackett Chris, yes, the CASMex cadence, I think we tried to — we issued some slides that may help if you take a look at them. Certainly, the Q4 exit rate is the best rate of the year, but it’s actually pretty ratable as you get through Q2 to Q3 than Q4. It’s not like all of the benefit comes in Q4. So we’ll have a chance to see how we’re doing against that in the next 1.5 quarters or so. But yes, I think given that we’re lapping the labor deals primarily in the fourth quarter, that’s where you get the biggest sort of CASM-ex tailwind benefit.And thank you everyone, for joining us.
We’ll talk to you next quarter.Operator And this concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for attending.
