Gerry Laderman : Sure. Let me answer that. It’s very early in the planning process. So this is all very preliminary. But we do know about some of the headwinds and tailwinds that we’re going to see as we start putting together the plan on the cost side. Headwinds would include the full year impact of the labor contracts and contractual increases. Inflation, which, by the way, what we’re seeing now is a moderation in inflation. We’ve got constraints on growth due to infrastructure. And one of the big ones, and you’ll actually see when we file the Q our expectation for aircraft deliveries next year. Back in December, you may recall when we announced the wide-body order, we gave some multiyear expectations on deliveries and CapEx. On the narrow-body side, now that we’re that much further in, we have a — what I describe is a clear expectation on aircraft deliveries.
I think for the total, including eight 787s, about 110 aircraft next year. That’s down from what we showed you in December. But by the way, if you recall, that CapEx number of $11 billion for next year we had in December, just counting aircraft, that’s going to be closer to $9 billion and $11 billion of CapEx, a good guide, particularly when we are looking at free cash flow for next year. But bottom line, I would say that with a variety of tailwinds we have as well, which would include improved utilization, improved productivity as our junior workforce begins to gain some experience. Putting it all together, right now, six months ahead of next year, I would say we’re targeting high single-digit capacity growth, and in that context, targeting flat CASM-ex for next year.
But much more to come as we get into the planning process.
Operator: Our next question comes from Duane Pfennigwerth with Evercore ISI.
Duane Pfennigwerth : So I agree with your differentiated bet on international recovery, you’re winning the jump ball this summer, winning customers in summer 2023. A question would be, how do you think about keeping those customers as international carriers restore their capacity over time? What investments are you making to keep those customers beyond just metal, especially when we think about periods of operational disruption.
Andrew Nocella : Well, I’ll start, maybe Scott wants to add on to it. First of all, we think there’s just been a structural change in the international capacity relative to GDP that’s very different from 2019, and it will take years of changes of fleet growth by the industry and us to actually make that change. So there’s nothing that we see that’s really going to change the structure back to what it was pre-pandemic, anytime soon, if ever. So it’s a really good reset of the ball. We’re investing a lot in our product. We actually — we talked about the elimination of the old business class seats million times at United. Well, as of today, we are only flying the new Polaris seat on all of our wide-body jets all over the world.
So I think that’s a lot of progress. And we continue to focus on the customer and doing the right thing on high-speed WiFi, you name it. And I think our brand is better and better positioned to compete not only here in the United States but around the globe with an award — just leading partners in every part of the world recently adding Virgin Australia in the South Pacific, which is new and very helpful to our growth down there, and of course, Emirates in the Middle East for that region of the world. So we’ve set this up really well, and we are confident that the international environment is our strongest long-term opportunity. We have a lot to do domestically in the short and medium term as well, but the international environment is really set up well.
