Robert Isom: Mary, I’ll kick this off if Vasu can handle it as well. No, we don’t think that is the case at all. Look, we’ve got some fine-tuning to do. No doubt the objective here is to save — to hang on to all the cost savings and then also to make sure that we maximize revenue production. As we take a look at the first quarter, there’s quite likely some benefit that our competitors received because of some of the things that we’ve — the changes that we’ve made. That said, this is the opportunity for us to go and to make sure that as I said, the goal is cost savings and especially revenue production.
So as Vasu said, we’ve seen great reception to what we’re doing with the unmanaged corporate business, small and medium-sized businesses in terms of the larger corporates, that’s something that is an opportunity for us. but it will be consistent with our long-range plans of making sure that every customer that does business with American Airlines has access to the full suite of amenities, product services and tools.
Vasu, anything you want to add?
Vasu Raja: No, I feel like it’s a great answer. Look, Mary, the last thing I would add to is also as corporates are coming back, they’re coming in more disproportionately to coastal markets where we’re relatively smaller in as unmanaged business comes back, it comes back in the Heartland and the Sunbelt, where we are relatively larger in. And so that also impacts some of the numbers you see.
Operator: Our next question comes from Leslie Josephs of CNBC. Your line is open Leslie.
Leslie Josephs: Can you compare the bookings for this summer and if any are coming in for the back half of the year versus 2023, both, and where people are going, the pace of bookings and how much they’re paying and then do you have any concerns about kind of a slowdown in economic growth and a lot of consumers in the U.S. across the board, just racking up credit card debt.
Vasu Raja: Sure. This is Vasu. I can start. And I’ll maybe do last question first. Look, we continue to see healthy macro trends. We don’t guess beyond what’s the same information that probably everybody on this call gets to see and report on. As far as bookings go, Look, really beyond the summer, the system has — it’s not very much booked, in June right now in our domestic system where about 35% to 40% booked up, which is pretty normal for that entity. The long-haul network is a lot more booked up. 50%, 60% and building all of the time, depending on the entity that’s there. But we continue to see healthy bookings come in. And like I mentioned before, and when I was talking about RASM by geography.
There are more customers who are coming back and really value traveling. They’re paying more than before. And so far, in Q2, that trend seems to be taking shape. We anticipate that will continue based on all the macro factors that we see today. Should things change, we will too.
Leslie Josephs: So bookings for summer are higher than last year?
Vasu Raja: Yes. We’re booking up higher in part because of the positioning of our airline network and also just overall demand trends.
Robert Isom: Leslie, just to put a fine point on it, we see strong demand, and we’re going to revenue manage appropriately. But the marketplace, domestic international looks very strong.
Operator: Thank you. This concludes the Q&A portion of the call. I would now like to turn the conference back to Robert Isom, for closing remarks. Sir?
Robert Isom: Latif, thanks. Look, we don’t like reporting a loss. That’s a challenge for us. It’s also an opportunity. As we look forward, we are encouraged by what we see in terms of industry dynamics and also by those things that we’ve identified in the first quarter that we can go and address. We’re going to do that. And we’re going to stick to our longer-term game plan that we pointed out at Investor Day, and that is based on this that the environment for air travel is very — is constructive.
We see demand coming back. It’s strong again this year, and that’s favorable for American Airlines because that demand is also coming in the places that we are strong. We are a changed airline. We’re an airline that delivers on our commitments and we will continue to do so.
We will be focused on execution as we go throughout the year and there’s great opportunities ahead as well. And those opportunities, as we outlined on Investor Day are really based on our fleet. We have the vast majority of the assets that we need to fly our schedule and more already in-house. We’re probably less dependent than anyone on outside services to actually run our airline.
We’re proud of the team that we’ve assembled. They’re doing incredibly well, best operational reliability in our company’s history and leading the industry in terms of completion factor. Our network is something that we’re going to lean into. We’re proud of what we’ve built, the regional nature that extends out to global reach in this fantastic set of partners that we can leverage.
And we have this opportunity now. As we’ve talked about on the call and through various questions, to create a travel rewards ecosystem, distribution platform through the renegotiation of our co-brand deals. We’re going to do that. And at the same time, we’re going to be incredibly focused on reengineering our business and running as efficiently as possible.
I’m pleased with the progress we’re making on all those fronts. And as we progress through the year, I expect margin expansion and generation of free cash flow and that bodes well for our shareholders. So we’ll end the call and get back to work. Thank you.
Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
