On this morning’s earnings call:

Helane Becker “So lately, we've been seeing a lot of articles about pilots refusing to move from the right seat to the left seat and being short captains. And that's something that existed for the regionals. But I didn't -- I was surprised to see it exists for major airlines as well. And I'm just wondering if the new contract addresses that and how you think about having enough captains to fly what you're intending to do?

Scott Kirby

“The short answer is, yes, the new contract does address that. It is also -- it's interesting, it's the first time that I've ever known it to happen in the airline industry. And it's one of those interesting artifacts of so much growth at United. In the past, you spent 10, 12 years sometimes before you get your first shot at captain. If you didn't take it on the first shot, it might be another five or six before we came around again and so everyone took it. But now our pilots have enough confidence in the future, I think, as they should in that they can wait and let their seniority go up a little more, which helps the quality of life.

And so we have had not as many captains as we’d hope upgrading. It hasn't affected capacity yet. It is going to impact capacity in the fourth quarter. That's all in our numbers, by the way, already. But the good news is the contract, I think, fixes that. It depends. I'm not sure how long we do we get 100% back. I think it will be the second half of next year. The union leadership thinks it will be a lot faster than that. But somewhere in that timeframe, we'll get back to a full level of captains. That's a transitory issue that's already in our numbers, but we're on a good path.

And the one data point I have is our first captain -- our most recent captain gate closed last night, and it was meaningfully better, and they haven't even seen the new country yet. They just know that there is direct. It's already made a difference. And this is a unique issue that will be in the rearview mirror sometime next year.”