All right, folks, moving right along. Happy to turn the stage over now to the third of the big three, which we had presenting in order this morning. Very happy to have Robert and Devon and Abriell here. I think you're going to start out with the, you know, boilerplate stuff, but thanks again for making the trip and taking the stage.
Jenny, thank you.
Yeah.
Yeah. Just before we get started, I just want to make a reminder that today's presentation contains a number of forward-looking statements that represent our expectation of future events. Numerous risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ from those projections. Information about some of those risks and uncertainties is included in our SEC filings. In addition, we'll be discussing a number of non-GAAP financial measures. Definitions of these measures are available throughout today's presentation. With that, I'll turn it over to our CEO, Robert Isom.
Abriell, thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for making time for us this morning. I'm going to start off with a quick presentation, then we'll get into Q&A. Forward-looking statements, as we mentioned. I have to start with this. I've been in the business 30 years, and there's been a lot that's gone on over those 30 years. I can tell you that from a leadership perspective, none has been more difficult than this quarter. It's certainly been a difficult time for American Airlines in regard to Flight 5342, the tragic accident that happened at the end of January. I want to say a few words about this before moving on to anything else, because this has been the primary focus of attention for Americans, you know, certainly since the end of January.
Our efforts have been solely to make sure that we take care of the families of those victims, 70 in total, when you include those from the helicopter as well. That means mobilizing, you know, just an incredible force of people. We train for this, and you never think you have to put it into action. We have had 200 and more people that have been deployed through most of February, taking care of all of the victims' families' needs, you know, up and including travel and funerals and any other type of needs. Those 200 people have been deployed in Wichita. They have been out in DCA at our care center, and they have just done a tremendous job. I could not be more proud of our team and how we have responded. It has obviously taken a toll.
We now still have some people that are deployed and are bringing those folks back now that families have returned to their homes. We are going to continue focusing on that. One of the things that we have done, because, you know, go back to 9/11, you go back to the Colgan Air crash, these events, they stick with us forever. We have actually set up an Office of Continuing Care, and we have appointed a Vice President that will be in that role, making sure that we care for families and their needs going forward. That said, there is an investigation going on. The NTSB, I think later today, will issue a preliminary report. I have been working, you know, almost certainly weekly, if not daily, with Chair Homendy, head of the NTSB.
I want to give a shout-out and a thanks to them for the good work that they're doing, or being cooperative in any way, shape possible. With Chair Homendy and also Secretary Dufty, we're taking this as an opportunity to make sure that we're doing everything possible to make aviation safe, even safer than it has been, the safest form of transportation. I'm pleased with the efforts that Secretary Dufty has taken right off the bat. I'm confident and hopeful that there will be some actions taken soon that will further strengthen our air traffic control and certainly prevent incidents like this from happening again. At the end of this, it is something that has impacted American, I think, more than anyone. That said, our attention has been making sure that we protect American over the long run and our reputation.
I believe that we have done that. I do not believe that this incident will have a long-term impact on the industry or American. That said, it has had a real impact on this first quarter. I will go from there to the first quarter revenue environment. You have heard a lot about this from others. You are probably not going to hear a lot of new news. Everybody was impacted by the wildfires. Sunbelt weather impacted us in some of our big hubs, DFW and Charlotte. It certainly had an inordinate impact on American, I believe, as well. If those were the only two issues, we probably would not be talking about, you know, major adjustments. When you combine 5342 with the uncertainty in the economy right now, and certainly domestic weakness in March, those are the primary reasons behind our adjustments to revenue.
5342 is a big deal. Economic uncertainty is a big deal. We have really seen some weakness in March. That has led to the guide that we issued earlier today. You know, you have seen this. You know, ultimately, it means that we have extended the projected loss for the quarter on an EPS basis. This is disappointing. We had ended the fourth quarter with a lot of momentum coming into this. It is something that, you know, we are certainly focused on addressing as we go forward and improving results from here. That is where I will go. You have, again, the quarter is incredibly difficult, incredibly difficult for American because of 5342, on top of everything else that is going on in the industry. For us, no matter the revenue environment, I believe that American is set up very well.
From that perspective, we came into this year with a measured approach to capacity, and one that I think was in tune with projected GDP growth. American has had a focus on making sure that we restore our network, and I'll talk a little bit more about that. We have built ourselves to be nimble and able to adjust to demand environments as they might change. You know, others have taken some different views in terms of growth, but for us, our growth for this year was estimated to be in the low single digits. It is something that I believe that we have the ability to adjust as we go forward. Now, American, I believe, has the greatest potential for recovery as we go forward. Because of some of the actions that we took, everybody is very well aware of our sales and distribution missteps.
We're doing very well at recovering. From that perspective, I feel great. As well, American was probably the slowest to build back our network. We prioritized where we were going to build back. It was in DFW and Charlotte, our strongest hubs. We had probably the largest impact from a regional airline perspective due to pilot shortfall. That meant that we had, up until, you know, last year, almost 150 aircraft on the ground. Before that, I think almost 250 aircraft. We are working now to get our northern tier hubs rebuilt back to where they were. I am very optimistic about that, plus our sales and distribution work to get us back in line with expected performance. On top of that, though, we're set up as well because we've paid close attention to our capital outlays.
From a fleet perspective, we're in really good shape. We don't have extraordinary capital requirements coming up. On top of that, with the debt that we brought through the pandemic, we've done an exceptional job of making sure that that is addressable as we go forward. We don't have debt towers or huge payments that are coming that are of concern. As we go forward, our focus remains the same. That is an effort to produce long-term free cash flow. Last year, American produced over $2 billion of free cash, $2.2 billion of free cash flow, record free cash flow a year. Feel really good about that. 2025 is expected to be more of the same. That's allowed us to strengthen our balance sheet with some other actions that we've taken.
We're a very different carrier than we were, you know, from debt peaks of total debt of $754 billion. As we came out of the pandemic, we've hit our $15 billion total debt reduction target, and we've set a new target. I feel really good about that. It's made sure that we're in a position to take care of American going forward. Ultimately, right now, American is focused on margin expansion, profitability. As we look into 2025, how is that, how do we go about that? It starts with building off of what we're really good at. We run a solid airline. American Airlines has been second to none over the last couple of years in terms of operating an airline in any conditions. While other carriers have struggled in recovery from some, you know, CrowdStrike and weather issues, look, we all get hit.
American, I think, has built a reputation to be able to manage through all of those and do it very well. I'm really proud of the team and the work that they do day in and day out, no matter the conditions. From a re-engineering the business perspective, Devon, when he took on the CFO role, embarked on a path that was, you know, a multi-year effort to reduce expense, make sure we're as efficient as possible, free up working capital. From that perspective, we've taken out almost over $500 million of operating expense, produced $500 million of working capital. Re-engineering the business 2.0 is in the works. We pride ourselves in being the best in the business at managing our costs. To drive long-term margin expansion, we build off of that, and it really is delivering on our revenue potential.
We start with getting back from a sales and distribution perspective, the indirect share that we had had back in 2023. We're making great progress on that as well. There's opportunities to fine-tune our revenue management, make sure that we're revenue management systems, that we're merchandising effectively. We have opportunities with our app. All of that is going on right now. That builds a baseline to ensure that we can capitalize on customer experience investments that we've been making. Ultimately, the other points here that you're well aware of, we're rebuilding our network. The new Citi deal that we inked last year, that comes into play in 2026, and we're well on our path to getting that off to a great start. Delivering on our revenue potential, this is from our year-end earnings report. The progress continues, and I'm pleased with what I see.
As we look to exiting 2025, I anticipate that we will have regained the share that we had lost. That's important. It's important right now. Business has been holding up a little bit better than the domestic. You know, from a high-end leisure perspective as well, that's beneficial to American right now. That's the game that we play in as well. From a customer experience perspective, we've made great investments over the years, and we'll continue to do so. We have a great international fleet, domestic fleet. We were the first with the ultra-premium lounges. The investments in those will continue with our Philadelphia lounge that is opening up. There's ways that we can monetize that, and that's the pursuit that we're looking for. It's anchored on, you know, having a hard product that people want to fly.
You'll see the investment in aircraft for us coming in terms of growing international capable fleet. It's not just that. It's also having an international fleet that has the right mix of premium economy and business class and coach seats as well. I really feel great about where we're headed with the introduction of our Flagship Suites , new XLRs coming this year that will first be deployed from a transcon perspective, and then ultimately, you know, being able to do some short-haul Europe and South America and international overall. We have the new 787-9s that are coming, and we're reconfiguring our 777-300ERs, 319s, and 320 aircraft that will put more premium seating available on those aircraft as well. That's all good news. We're definitely in that market and poised to excel.
From a network perspective, again, American has built our network based on a number of constraints that we had to get through. First was getting our regional fleet back up in the air and also addressing our mainline pilots. Fortunately, we've been able to put in place a contract two years ago now that has allowed us to grow where we need to. What you'll see is our growth is primarily in 2025 going to be centered on our northern tier hubs, namely Philadelphia and Chicago. I anticipate great things from the growth plans that we put in place in Chicago right now. We see them booking to levels that we expect. Philadelphia is coming back nicely as well.
It's important because American was really hamstrung by the fact that we didn't have a network that, you know, was quite capable of delivering to our most premium customers. I feel good about the growth that we're putting back in place. I've mentioned about the Citi deal, and we've talked about this before as this progresses over the next few years. As cash remuneration approaches $10 billion, we anticipate another $1.5 billion of earnings to American. It's something that has been a shortfall for us in comparison to other carriers. I'm really pleased with the start here. Citi is a fantastic partner and, you know, really invested in this effort as well. I wrap it up with this: that the focus remains the same. From a margin expansion perspective, we're going to continue to operate with excellence from a reliability perspective.
That's the best, most efficient way to run an airline. We're re-engineering the business. Others that may be coming to this game, we've already started. We're great at it. We've built labor contracts that are fully embedded into our cost projections. We don't have anything new coming, you know, all the way out through 2027. That cost certainty is, you know, a real blessing right now. From a commercial initiatives perspective, I talked to you about restoring our sales and distribution share, renewing our focus on customer experience and monetizing that, strengthening our network and getting back to having full hub strength, and then enhancing the AAdvantage program and co-brand cards. Ultimately, free cash flow generation, which we talked about, record 2024, anticipate more of the same in 2025. Limited CapEx exposure. Fortunately, we have the youngest fleet among the majors.
You know, we invested up to the pandemic over the prior, you know, seven, eight years, almost $30 billion in aircraft. We do not have to go through that. Others, you know, have a different path ahead of them. Ultimately, we have got a much stronger balance sheet and one that is capable of weathering any type of storm that might be on the horizon. I feel great about where American is. It is a difficult, difficult first quarter for so many reasons. We have got a great team and a path that is clear and certain, and we are ready to go and bring this all to light. With that, I have got Devon, Abriell, and we will be interested in any questions that you have.
I guess I will start. We have a shy audience this morning.
Look, when Mark and I do these conferences, the goal is not to engage in tit for tat, he said, she said kind of stuff. You were in the room, you heard what Scott had to say. He is still, Scott Kirby, CEO of United, for anybody listening, he is still of the view that the market can support two premium airlines. The implication is that American is not one of those two. I assume you disagree. Why are you right?
I will just start with this. I work for Scott and with Scott for a long time. You know, I have seen him be right on a lot of stuff. He is a brilliant man. I have seen him wrong on a lot of stuff. In this case, he is dead wrong. The reason for that is American's been around for a long time.
American probably had, you know, a weaker hand going into the pandemic. Certainly, we were hamstrung on the way out. We didn't, again, I mentioned that we had 200 aircraft, over 200 aircraft that we couldn't fly because of regional pilot shortfall. You know, I love our regional network. It flies incredibly well. We've got a great fleet. By the same token, you have to have pilots to fly it. You know what? We're back out. You know, Scott says that kind of stuff. I'm sure because he would like nothing better than to not have American as a competitor. He would guarantee he doesn't like us being a competitor in his backyard in some places. To that end, we're a premium product carrier. We've got a great fleet.
We're not dependent on, you know, a lot of, you know, the issues that, you know, Boeing or Airbus, you know, has to deal with. Our growth is fairly metered as we look back, as we look out. We've grown in DFW, in Charlotte. We have an incredible position, you know, Sunbelt position, hub position, enviable relationships. I see Luis Gallego here from IAG. Anyone would love, you know, to have a partner with, you know, Iberia and BA in their network of carriers. The same thing holds true across, you know, the Pacific with JAL and our other partners. American's not going anywhere. American is recovering. And I can guarantee you that, you know, anything that you hear to the contrary is just concern that we're actually making a lot of progress .
Robert, can you talk a little bit more about, you had the bullet up there on DCA and your market share? Can you talk a little bit about performance there in light of everything going on in Washington related to travel? That was also obviously where the accident was. The weakness that you're seeing there, you know, is some of it attributed to the accident? Is most of it attributed to the government, obviously? Just how should we think about that and how is that playing out?
A couple of things. Devon can join me here. First off, yes, you know, the incident, you know, had a big impact on DCA, you know, shortly after the accident. DCA is also, you know, a center to a lot of government activity.
You know, while corporate, our government contracted business for us is only 1.5% of our total revenues, there's associated, you know, impact to that. Whether it's, you know, 1.5% is just our straight government contracted, but there are government contractors, you know, that have been impacted. Anyone as well in that area, you know, is feeling the, you know, the concerns of uncertainty. We know that there's some follow-on effect in terms of leisure travel associated with that as well. I'll note this: DCA historically has been one of our most profitable hubs. We have an enviable position there. Over the long run, I'm confident that it will return to its, you know, full share of profitability. Realize that it's actually a fairly small part of our network. Total ASMs is, you know, 2%.
About 2%. I'd love to get it back to that profitability level that we had seen. We've taken some actions to address capacity. Over the long run, that's going to work out really well for us. You know, government travel has a way of coming back.
You know, can we take that and lead us to sort of corporate travel recovery on the network, the Vasu unwind, whatever we want to call it in terms of your attempts from over a year ago now, right, to disintermediate and sort of bringing back the direct booked corporate revenue? You're recovering. You're not yet fully recovered. You know, is the expectation that you will get fully recovered? You know, have you seen any?
Is there any sort of, do you think there's any reason for sort of permanent corporate share shift because of the experience that you've gone through?
The answer to that is no. The reason is I've been out there as much as anybody else on our team talking to, you know, CEOs and corporate buyers and the travel management companies and to a person that all say, "Hey, we'd much rather have, you know, more competition than less." The door is open, right? You have to come in there with a compelling offering. From that perspective, we've retooled our sales and distribution teams. You've seen that we've reorganized on that front. I feel great about the progress that they're making.
The good news on that front is that you can see as you sign new contracts, as there are new commitments that are made, right, those take some time. When we talk about what we're seeing right now, the seeds are planted. I know that we're going to harvest them this, you know, later on this year. As we talked about, as I mentioned in my comments, as I take a look at exiting 2025, I think that we'll be back to full share restoration.
Last one for me, I'm turning it over to the crowd here, hopefully for some questions. Northeast Alliance, there's obviously some legal activity related to that that I know you can't speak to directly, but maybe just bigger picture. Can you talk about, you know, where you stand with that process?
How important is it to do something, you know, whether it's what the government allows or whether trying to rewrite what the government said was the path to go forward with that? You know, what sort of thoughts can you add for your presence in the Northeast?
I’ll just start with this. The Northeast Alliance, it benefited consumers. Plain and simple, it did. You know, it's disappointing that we, you know, had the outcomes from a litigation perspective. Disappointing that we had the, you know, the judges that were chosen in those cases. I think that, you know, different courts, you know, probably different verdicts. At the end of the day, the reason that we continue to pursue, you know, efforts is just simply because I don't like the precedent. It's just, it's wrong. It doesn't benefit anybody.
Consumers, you know, had a much better opportunity to get where they wanted to go at the price they wanted to go with three really strong competitors in the New York region. For us in New York, you know, look, we've got a great JFK hub, you know, for us from an international perspective. I mentioned again, you know, the relationship we have with IAG. We've got the premier, you know, New York to London, you know, franchise. We're going to continue to build on that. LaGuardia will be our largest operation, you know, since the pandemic this year. We've seen some improvement in business there. All carriers have their strengths. Others, and all of us have, you know, areas where we need to shore up. We're going to be focused on the Northeast. We're going to make sure that we take care of ourselves.
If there are partnership opportunities, we'll pursue those vigorously. If not, you know, you'll see us make sure that we leverage the assets that we have throughout the country and our, you know, just enviable domestic position, you know, largest among the network carriers. Especially in those places that are growing, you know, the fastest in the country.
The last time I was at your headquarters was fall of last year. You hadn't inked the new loyalty contract yet. You were still pitting the two partners, you know, off one another, presumably. One of the questions I asked you at the time was whether it was a priority to also be able to improve and expand the disclosures of the program. You kind of shot me down. You're like, economics first, you know, first and foremost.
You have certainly given us high-level color on the improvements to the contract. Were there any changes in terms of what you can ultimately disclose going forward that would better allow analysts and investors to actually begin modeling advantage returns? You know, I know Chase still puts a lot of handcuffs on what United could say. My question is, Citi and American, can you give us more, more data?
Yeah, I think we gave a lot when we announced the new agreement in December. Probably more disclosure than there has been, at least in our business, and maybe with any loyalty program. What we announced in December when we announced the new agreement is a couple of things. One, we expect this to drive a lot of growth in this part of the business. We would be growing by 10% a year for that 10-year period.
That is just remuneration. What we also disclosed, though, effectively is the earnings from that remuneration. For the year-ended third quarter of last year, we had about $5.6 billion of remuneration. For the full year 2024, we are a little over six. That included a bonus in there. Let us just go off that $5.6 billion base. We said we would grow that by about 10% a year. As we approach $10 billion, when you do the math, that puts you around the end of the decade, you would be at around $10 billion of remuneration. That marginal growth would drive an earnings improvement of about $1.5 billion. So 33-35% type margin on that remuneration growth.
I don't know how much more disclosures need to be on that, but it felt like there was a ton of disclosure at the time, more than anything I think that's been done in our business. It gives people a really good feel for just how valuable these programs are. Thank you.
Devon, we spoke a little bit with Mike Leskinen and at United before your presentation about balance sheet strategy, the shift at United from not targeting investment grade to now targeting investment grade. The question I want to ask American about the balance sheet strategy is you've set these deleveraging targets. Yet if we run the math on your free cash flow, we've written about this and talked about a little bit, but there's still some wiggle room in there for capital return to shareholders.
When you think about the industry environment, you know, how you're thinking about when is the right time to sort of flip the switch and, you know, how are you trying to balance, you know, those debt reduction goals? You're going to have a choice whether to tighten those further or to turn that switch back on and return capital to shareholders. What's the debate like internally? How are you thinking about it?
It's fun to start talking about it again. Like we have been solely focused on repairing the balance sheet since we came out of COVID. We, in the middle of 2022, had $54 billion of total debt. We set a target that by the end of 2025, we'd reduce total debt by $15 billion. We did that by the end of 2024.
The latest target we put out there is that we would reduce total debt by about another $4 billion by the end of 2027. We had talked about that at our investor day. At that point in time, we said it would be by the end of 2028. We brought that forward by a year. You're right. If our free cash flow projections are right and we think we're really well set up to produce really nice free cash given our capital requirements, we should have excess cash to do something else with. We'll have that decision to make. It's something that Robert and I will talk about with our board. Just do we want to continue to accelerate the deleveraging or do we want to do something else with that excess cash? Obviously, first priority is investing back in the business.
We think we've made the right investments there. If there are great opportunities there, we'll continue to do that. We'd like to position where we're in. We have the lowest net debt right now that we've had probably since, I don't know, for sure since 2019. By the end of this year, I think we'll be in the lowest net debt position we've had since 2016. I feel great about the progress. Excited to have more of these conversations as to what to do with excess cash.
One question we didn't get a chance to talk about with United that I want to ask you because you obviously have aircraft on order from both manufacturers. With Boeing specifically out of Seattle, for you or Robert, you know, are you reacting favorably to the change of regime there and what you're hearing out of Seattle?
Obviously, you've had 787s that have been on constant delay. Are you feeling better about Boeing's ability to deliver airplanes to you on time?
Yeah, I think we're seeing progress for sure on the 737s. You know, we gave a range of deliveries this year of 40-50 aircraft. That's really going to be dependent on how many airplanes Boeing can deliver. I think on the narrow bodies, it feels like they're making nice progress. The wide bodies, we're still waiting on a handful there. We would like to see progress there. We're really excited about the product, as Robert talked about earlier. Yeah, I think they're doing a nice job right now. The wide bodies maybe are a little bit TBD for us.
Thanks. Good morning.
Given some of the pressure you talked about on the demand environment, would you think at all about accelerating any retirements?
We feel really comfortable about the growth we have planned for this year. I'd leave it at that. We're building back, you know, our northern tier hubs, Philadelphia and Chicago. We were already very measured in our capacity growth for this year, you know, low single digits. I think the question comes in is, you know, what does the economic, what economic conditions do we face later in the year and what kind of impact does that have on 2026? From that perspective, I'll let Devon talk. I think we've got a tremendous amount of flexibility to do to meet whatever demand needs are out there.
Yeah, that's the greatest part about our capacity plan and our fleet plan right now.
If we are heading into a softer demand environment, you know, right now we're growing low single digits. If we need to pare that back a little bit, that's pretty easy. It's not like we're growing at some multiple of GDP. As we look out to 2026, we have a fleet that could allow us to grow 5% or 6%. More likely, though, we're going to grow in line with economic growth. If that continues to come down or if that is showing any signs of weakness, we can pull back on that growth through some retirement of older airplanes, return of leased aircraft, or we can work on our delivery schedule a little bit. Our fleet has a ton of flexibility to meet really any level of demand.
Thanks, everybody. Take care.