American Airlines Group Inc. (NASDAQ:AAL) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Vasu Raja: Yes. And Leslie, we do — we’ve noted it all through the recovery, but we’ve continued to see strength in premium cabin style fares. Our total premium seats across the system are up about 5% year-over-year. Our total premium revenues were up about 15% year-over-year. And notably, it’s pretty consistent across all of our markets in London, for example. We’ve grown our premium seats about 20% or so. Our premium revenues are up over 25%. And that’s at a time when so much of the industry is adding back into London. But we are encouraged, and we’re uniquely encouraged by the trajectory that we’re on different from others. For the first time in our history, our unit revenue performance in Trans-Atlantic will outperform any of our joint venture partners, both for the quarter and for the full year. So we do see that strength. It’s complemented by our distribution strategies, and we see more opportunity ahead.

Leslie Josephs: And just one quick follow-up. When you get out of the summer season, are you seeing any kind of falloff in either fares or bookings with the TRASM coming down and then the inflation report showing that airfares are coming down in the U.S.

Vasu Raja: Nothing beyond historical seasonality, Leslie.

Leslie Josephs: Thanks.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of David Koenig of The Associated Press. Your question, please David?

David Koenig: Okay. Thanks. I didn’t hear my name. I guess it’s me. Robert, you’ve talked about matching the United deal, which APA had valued their previous TA at 8.3 billion, and this is going to add a couple of percentage points. Do you plan or do you need to raise fares to cover the contracts with the APA, the APA or other contracts and still remain profitable, should people expect higher fares?

Robert Isom: David, thanks for the question. Look, over time, we’re going to run a profitable business. So we have to offer a really compelling product offering to our customers. We’re going to try to find ways to make sure that we can do that in a way that customers will benefit and ultimately, it will take more revenue to pay for higher cost going to do everything that we can to be as efficient as possible take care of our team members, but also offer a very compelling and worthwhile product to our customers.

David Koenig: Okay Any other areas for revenue besides fares?

Robert Isom: None beyond what we’ve already spoken about in the call.

David Koenig: Sure. Thanks.

Robert Isom: We’re really proud of our incredible network that we’re flying reliably, and we’ve got an industry-leading rewards program. We’re going to tap into those and make sure that customers are really able to benefit from everything that we can do on that front.

David Koenig: All right. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. That concludes the Q&A portion of this call. I would now like to turn the conference back to Robert Isom for closing remarks. Sir?