Although I like Scott's optimism, can we just revisit a few of his quotes from the 2nd quarter of 2021 earnings call (which was also quite bullish)?
Before I really begin, I thought I'd take a moment to address the most talked-about issue among airline investors recently, the delta variant. As you'll hear from our bullishness today, we haven't seen any impact at all on bookings, which continue to just get stronger and stronger every week [...]
That all said, we think the most likely outcome is that the continued recovery in demand continues largely unabated. [...]
But if I was going to briefly summarize where things stand right now, I'd say the demand is recovering even faster than we had hoped domestically, both leisure and business demand. [...]
Today with the robust demand trends that we see and our return to profitability, we don't just see the light at the end of the tunnel. We're exiting the tunnel.
And from the CFO as well:
In closing, our expectation for adjusted pre-tax profitability in both the third and fourth quarters represent a milestone that the entire United family has worked toward since the beginning of the pandemic. Gone are the days of talking about empty aircraft, cash burn and job losses.