So just curious on how you’re thinking about kind of the capacity cadence as we move through the back half of the year to kind of hit your full year outlook?
Robert Isom: Thanks, Andrew. I’m going to hand it off to Devon because we can be really clear on this. Go ahead.
Devon May: Sure. In the first half of this year, we have been building back our capacity. We talked a lot about it last year that we were probably the last carrier to get back to our 2019 levels of capacity production. We came in ahead of our capacity guide due to the strong operation in the first quarter, so grew 8.5% in Q1. We’re guiding to 8% in the second quarter. That’s where we expect we’ll end up with a strong operation. But capacity production does come down pretty materially as we look out in the third and fourth quarter.
Third quarter, we haven’t finalized all the schedules yet, but we’re expecting capacity production probably around the 4% growth range. Fourth quarter, maybe a little bit north of that. So back half of the year, call it in that 4% or 5% range or so and then full year, still in line with mid-single digits, but probably something north of 5% for the year.
Operator: Thank you. At this time, the line is open to media questions. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Alison Slider of Wall Street Journal. Alison.
Unknown Attendee: Yes, Robert, I’m curious if you ended up having a meeting with Boeing’s Chairman or other directors and how it went and what kind of feedback you provided and what you’re hearing about the prospects for Boeing turning itself around.
Robert Isom: So Ali, I’ve gave this update earlier today as well. I’ve talked to everyone at Boeing that I can possibly address, and the message is the same, get your act together. And it starts with producing quality products one at a time off the assembly line, get back to the basics, quality and safety are just paramount. I can’t tell you if they’re making progress or not because it’s all actions that matter, not words. And we’re continuing to work with them.
We’ll do everything we can to support Boeing. We need them to be successful in the long run. But as I’ve said before, as well, we’re going to make sure that we’re protected. So we’ve got an order for an aircraft that I absolutely love, which is the MAX 10, it will fit very well within our network that doesn’t come until 2028.
And hopefully, Boeing has their act together to produce that aircraft and deliver it. And if they can, great, if they can’t, we’re going to be protected on that front, too. So I come at this with a very sober mindset, which is show us, get it done, and we’ll be there. We need Boeing to be successful, and they should just eliminate all distractions from the task at hand.
Unknown Attendee: And do you see any indications from customers that there’s like a nervousness about flying in general or Boeing, in particular, like any kind of book away from Boeing planes or just — yes, any indication that some of these safety events we’ve seen across the industry are impacting customer behavior?
Robert Isom: No, we see nothing. The aircraft that we fly in our fleet, we’ve had for, in some cases, decades. And that product maintained by American Airlines flown by American Airlines pilots. Those are quality products that we’re proud to operate. So no. And as a matter of fact, we’re excited about what we see in terms of customers of 787s and the deployment that we make, we just announced that we’re going to be putting a new interior on the 789 deliveries and the Boeing aircraft that have been produced in the past the 73s, the 777-300s, the 777-200s.
Those have all been very quality products that our customers enjoy.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Mary Schlangenstein of Bloomberg.
Mary Schlangenstein: Some of your competitors have reported that they saw a managed corporate travel volume increase in the first quarter of like 14%, 15%. I wanted to see if you can talk about the same type as a comparable number on that and what it may or may not say about your push for the direct bookings.
Vasu Raja: Mary, this is Vasu. It’s a great question, and I’m happy to answer it. So look, we’ve seen — first of all, we see total business revenues, which is really a very important thing to look at grow similarly double-digit — close or approaching double digits, exiting certainly Q1 double-digit rates of growth.
It’s really being driven by unmanaged corporations that continue to come back and come back to American Airlines. Managed corporates, contract and corporations are growing a little bit less than that, but still high — in the mid- to high single digits. Very importantly, this is actually the great opportunity that we see because really, over the last year, we’ve done a number of things to just transition away from a lot of practices which weren’t great for our customers.
It didn’t give them cheaper fares. It didn’t necessarily give them lower costs. It actually created a more difficult servicing experience. What we’re finding now is that many of those customers, they want the same thing that everyone else has. We can go deliver it a whole lot better with all the tools and the technology and the change we’ve pushed through in the last year.
And despite all of that, we see that revenues are coming back very materially for us. Expenses are down, and we can see more opportunity to optimize it. And frankly, do better both for our corporate contract and corporate customers and our unmanaged customers as well. That’s not sort of guesswork that’s out there. We actually see it. We’re rolling out things right now, and that’s implicit in our guide for Q2 and for the year.
Mary Schlangenstein: So if your managed corporate is growing at a lower rate, is that an indication that you’re seeing some pushback of people that don’t want to go to your direct booking system?
