Vasu Raja: Yes, absolutely. Because this is related to my earlier answer, as we go and get more regional supportability as the year progresses, you can already see it in our published summary and early 3Q schedules, we’re driving a lot more connectivity into all of our hubs. Dallas and Charlotte, our 2 largest hubs will not just have some of their large capacity base as ever.
The same thing will be true in Phoenix and Miami and all the core parts of our airline, which perform well in the summer and drive the most in profitability. And so really, this ties back to my earlier answer as we are now in a place where we can go and optimize so much of the — so many of the things that are unique to us. We will see an increasing amount of really P&L benefit as the year progresses.
Conor Cunningham: Awesome. And maybe to stick with that comment. Just on DFW and Charlotte, like you said, it seems like you’re entrenching or doubling down whatever the term that you want to use there, you’re adding a lot more service there. I would have already thought that your market share was really high. So as you bring on that new service, I’m just trying to understand the dynamics of how those 2 hubs play out and if there’s still incremental upside as you allocate more resources there.
Vasu Raja: Yes. Sure. And there certainly is incremental upside because every time we go grow in DFW or Charlotte, we grow at a relatively low marginal cost. We’re not adding gates. We’re not doing anything else to go drive the expense of the airport and they’re already low-cost airport platforms for us. So the more we go and do that, it doesn’t really drive a lot of incremental cost.
But very importantly, every connection that we go stick into DFW or Charlotte comes in a really high marginal RASM versus the system. And so we’re very encouraged by as we bring back the RJs, as we upgauge in those hubs, really what we go and do is not to drive more market share in DFW or Charlotte, but we create a lot more connectivity for customers all across the U.S. And just like I mentioned at Investor Day, in a ton of markets where customer demand is growing, wealth is growing, but frankly, their options are limited and American Airlines gives them really great choices and they want to pay for it.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Sheila Kahyaoglu of Jefferies.
Sheila Kahyaoglu: Vasu, I’m sure you’re going to get your share of Latin American comments here. So I just wanted to dig a little bit deeper into that Q1 PRASM performance was 1 or 2 points better than some of your network peers. There is obviously concern about that, you talked about Q2. Last quarter, you talked about Miami being as profitable as it’s ever been. So if you could just walk us through short and long-haul dynamics in Latin America near term and how much of a driver the region is an inflecting RASMs in Q3 and Q4?
Vasu Raja: Sure. And let me start by saying this, the short-haul international network, as we call it, Mexico, Caribbean and Latin America or short-haul MCLA for short, is actually a really key part of our system, and it is a place where we are competitively advantaged, not because of any one hub like Miami, but the combination of all of our hubs and our fleet structure means that we can go serve a lot of markets at a very low cost base and drive a lot of revenue for our customers over it.
So it’s a big chunk of our flying. It can be 1/3 of our flying, which is much larger than what our competitors are. In Q1, the industry grew a lot into the market, too, which impacts us on a RASM basis. But RASM doesn’t necessarily turn into profitability. And as we look at that, it’s a market where seasonally, other people will go and put more capacity in it. But if you do look at the grand scheme of things, we’ve always been big, we’ve always grown, and it’s going to be a really key part to what we do. And you’re right, it was implicit in your question that the short-haul network is faring differently than the long-haul network. We see a short-haul network, which has double-digit negative RASM but is not, by any means, unprofitable for us yet.
There are some other things that we’ll go do and we’ve already loaded some things where we’re actually endeavoring to grow it. But our long-haul network is positive as we go into Q1. We anticipate a lot of improvement to both short haul and long haul as the year goes along to.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Jamie Baker of JPMorgan Securities. Jamie.
Jamie Baker: First question on Chicago. So just looking at domestic seats, Vasu, the scheduled growth rate in the second and third quarter is well over twice that of the system. I totally understand growth in places like Dallas and Charlotte, you just addressed Charlotte. But Chicago is obviously a more competitive market. I guess I’m just trying to square this growth against your demand confidence in the second quarter. It seems like a lot of growth for the market to accommodate.
Vasu Raja: Well, actually, Jamie, it’s an excellent question. I’m happy that you saw it because that is actually part of it. And Chicago, as we see it more and more actually plays a really complementary role with DFW and Charlotte because we can go drive a lot more connectivity on it. To my earlier point about the RJs, as those RJs are coming back, what we get to go do in Chicago that we haven’t been able to do in a long time, is put connectivity into Chicago from places like the Upper Midwest that are either unique to Chicago or can serve more efficiently over Chicago.
But it creates more pathways for customers across the upper Midwest to go and access more parts of the world. And we find that to be actually really high marginal RASM, marginal profit flying to be able to go and do, but it’s uniquely made available through the increasing supportability of our regional fleet.
