Good morning, and welcome to the American Airlines 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Doug Parker, Chairman and CEO. Mr. Parker, you may begin.
Thank you, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am Doug Parker, Chairman and CEO of American Airlines Group, and I will be the chair of this 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. We're pleased to conduct this year's annual meeting virtually, which should allow a greater number of our stockholders to be included and participate. Joining us today are all members of the board of directors, several members of our senior management team, and representatives of KPMG, which is our independent public accounting firm. Our Corporate Secretary, Caroline B. Ray, will serve as the secretary for the meeting. Let me start with a brief review of the agenda. We'll start by taking care of some housekeeping items, then we'll move to the official business for today's meeting, which is consideration of the proposal described in our proxy statement.
At the conclusion of the formal business, I'll give an overview of the company's performance in 2020 and progress in the COVID-19 pandemic, and then we will take questions. First, on the housekeeping. Only stockholders may ask questions in the designated field on the web portal. Out of consideration for others, please limit yourself to one question. Answers to any questions that are submitted in accordance with the meeting rules of conduct that are not addressed will be posted on the company's website following the meeting. If you encounter any difficulties submitting questions during the meeting, please refer to the proxy statement for information on how to reach our technical support team. I will now formally call to order the 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. We will now proceed with the formal business of the meeting as described in the notice of the annual meeting and the proxy statement.
The board of directors fixed April 13, 2021, as the record date for determining stockholders entitled to vote at the meeting. An affidavit has been delivered attesting to the fact that notice of the meeting was mailed commencing on April 29, 2021, to all stockholders as of the record date and will be incorporated into the minutes of this meeting. The stockholder list shows that as of the record date, there were 641,383,123 shares of common stock outstanding and entitled to vote at this meeting. A list of stockholders and the number of shares held by each stockholder as of that record date is available on the web portal for any stockholder wishing to inspect it. The board of directors has appointed Broadridge Investor Communication Solutions to act as inspector of election at this meeting. Broadridge is represented by Thomas Kai.
Its function is to determine the number of shares represented at this meeting and the validity of proxies and ballots, and count all votes and ballots cast as to each matter. The inspector of election has been sworn in, and I have as well. I've been informed by the inspector of election that the shares present in person or represented by proxy are in excess of quorum requirements. We will begin the meeting. The polls opened today, June 9, 2021, at 9:00 AM Eastern Time for voting. There are four proposals to be considered by the stockholders of this meeting as described in the proxy materials. Those are, one, the election of 12 directors, second, the ratification of the appointment of KPMG as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2021.
Third, an advisory vote to approve the compensation of American Airlines Group's named executive officers as described in the proxy statement. Fourth, the shareholder proposal to amend certain voting thresholds. No other matters will be considered. Proposal number one, the election of directors, is the first item of business, and it is the election of the 12 directors nominated by the board of directors. No other nominations complying with the nomination procedures in the company's bylaws have been received, and the nominations are closed. Pursuant to the company's bylaws, the company's directors are elected on an annual basis.
At this meeting, Jim Albaugh, Jeff Benjamin, Adriane Brown, John T. Cahill, Michael J. Geltzeiler, Matt Hart, Sue Kronick, Marty Nesbitt, Denise M. O'Leary, Ray Robinson, Douglas M. Steenland, and myself, Doug Parker, have been nominated as directors of the company to serve until the 2022 annual meeting of stockholders and until their respective successors have been duly elected and qualified. The board of directors has recommended that the stockholders vote for each of the nominees. The second item of business is the ratification of the appointment of KPMG LLP to serve as the independent registered public accounting firm for American Airlines Group for the fiscal year ending December 31st, 2021. The board of directors has recommended that the stockholders vote for the ratification of the appointment of KPMG as American Airlines Group's independent registered public accounting firm for 2021.
Proposal three, third item of business, is the approval on a non-binding advisory basis of the compensation of the named executive officers of American Airlines Group as disclosed pursuant to the compensation disclosure rules of the SEC as described in the compensation discussion and analysis, the compensation tables, narrative discussion, and any related material disclosed in the proxy statement. The board of directors has recommended that the stockholders vote for the approval of, on a non-binding advisory basis, the compensation of American Airlines Group's named executive officers. The fourth item of business is a shareholder proposal from shareholder John Chevedden. At this time, I recognize Mr. Chevedden for a period of two minutes. Operator, if you'd please open the line for Mr. Chevedden.
Hello, this is John Chevedden. Can you hear me okay?
Yes, we can, sir. Thank you very much.
Proposal four, simple majority vote. Shareholders request that our board take the steps necessary so that each voting requirement in our charter and bylaws that calls for greater than simple majority vote be replaced by a requirement for a majority of the votes cast for and against such proposals.
Shareholders are willing to pay a premium for shares of companies that have excellent corporate governance. Super majority voting requirements have been found to be one of six entrenching mechanisms that are negatively related to company performance, according to "What Matters in Corporate Governance?" by Lucian Bebchuk of the Harvard Law School. Super majority vote requirements are used to block initiatives supported by most shareholders but opposed by status quo management. In the past four weeks, this proposal topic has won 84% support at HollyFrontier Corporation, 89% support at Bunge Limited, and 99% support at ConocoPhillips. Church & Dwight shareholders gave 99% support to a 2020 proposal on this same topic. This proposal also received overwhelming 99% support at the 2019 Ford annual meeting. The current super majority vote requirement does not make sense.
For instance, with our 80% supermajority vote requirement in an election calling for an 80% shareholder approval, an absurd 200% of the shares that typically cast ballots in favor at American Airlines would need to vote for approval, 200%. In anticipation of significant shareholder support for this proposal topic, an enlightened governance committee chaired by Ms. Susan D. Kronick could have expedited adoption of this proposal by giving shareholders an opportunity to vote on a binding management proposal on this topic at our annual meeting today. Hence, adoption could have taken place now instead of later. Management promotes the fallacy that shareholders should be complacent in improving our corporate governance and management accountability to shareholders with this proposal simply because management merely has some of the average governance practices that most other companies have. However, most average companies have already adopted this proposal.
The unfortunate mindset of management is that since American Airlines is average and even below average on this proposal topic, that the management goal is to block improvement. Please vote yes. Super majority vote Proposal four.
Thank you, sir. The board recommends we vote against this proposal for the reasons provided in the company's proxy statement. Stockholders who have sent in proxies or voted via telephone or internet and do not want to change their vote do not need to take any further action. Any stockholder who hasn't yet voted or wishes to change their vote may do so by clicking on the voting button on the web portal and following the instructions there. Only stockholders of record on April 13, 2021 are eligible to vote at this meeting. We're now going to take a short pause to allow for any shareholders who have not yet voted to do so. Okay. The time is now 9:09 A.M. Central Time, and the polls are now closed for voting.
The Inspector of Election has advised me that the majority of the votes previously cast have been voted for all of the director nominees listed in Proposal one and for Proposals two, three, and four. The Inspector of Election will prepare the certificate of the Inspector of Election for the company once all votes are tallied, and the results will be detailed in a current report on Form 8-K, which we will file with the SEC. This concludes the formal portion of the meeting. The stockholders meeting is now adjourned. Before we answer questions, let me just take a moment to highlight some of what we see on the horizon for American, which will provide some background for some of the Q&A. As with most presentations, the following discussion contains forward-looking statements, and the company's actual results may differ materially from those discussed here.
Additional information concerning factors that could cause such a difference can be found in the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, and the quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended March 31st, 2021. The past 18 months have obviously been very challenging for our industry, but we are extremely proud, and we've never been more proud of the American Airlines team and everything they've been able to accomplish, not only withstand but accomplish during this time. The resilience of the American team has shown throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and it's been inspiring to all of us. Every day, our team members are putting on their uniforms to go out and serve our customers, serve our country, and the people who need us to travel during the most critical of times.
They allowed American Airlines to fly more customers than any other U.S. airline, all while producing the highest passenger unit revenue of any global U.S. carrier. In addition to that, our treasury, finance, legal, and government affairs teams worked incredibly well to raise more than $30 billion in liquidity to build a strong cash position at the end of the day. That result is not only a testament to the team's excellent and hard work, but also to the confidence others have in the future of American Airlines, and that includes the U.S. government, to which we are greatly appreciative. As vaccinations have increased across the country, demand is returning. Leisure bookings remain very strong, both in the U.S. and to destinations in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Business travel and long-haul international travel are also showing encouraging signs.
Many of our corporate customers are returning to their offices and have told us they plan to get back to traveling in the weeks and months ahead. Travel restrictions are being revised and lifted in certain parts of Europe, and we expect that will continue to be the case as vaccines continue to roll out. Over the past year, we dramatically reduced our costs at American and built significant efficiencies into the business. Changes we have made will drive more than $1.3 billion of permanent non-volume related savings in 2021 and beyond. While we needed to take on additional debt due to the pandemic, we're prepared and well-positioned to manage it. This is all good news after a year filled with uncertainty.
As customers return to the skies, they'll be met by a different and better American Airlines, one with the broadest and best global network that has been enhanced by new partnerships. An American Airlines with a revamped experience that makes travel more convenient for our customers and ensures they feel safe and comfortable as they return to flying, and an American Airlines that's much more financially and operationally efficient. The foundation for all this is our phenomenal team, who will set our service apart as we continue to welcome customers back to travel and back to American Airlines. We are very encouraged by what we're seeing and believe American is well-prepared for a strong recovery in the months and years ahead. With that intro, we'll begin answering questions that shareholders have submitted on the web portal.
A number of those already come in. Caroline Clayton, our Vice President of Corporate Communications, will read those, and we will do our best to answer them. As we said before, any ones we don't get to will be posted on the web portal after the meeting. Caroline, what do we got?
Great. Thank you, Doug. As you mentioned, the majority have come in through the portal and advance of the meeting, but we have received some this morning that we will ask as well. First up, what is your plan to increase revenue during and after the pandemic?
Well, first and foremost, demand needs to return, of course, which point creates industry revenue. At American, in addition to just recognizing demand as it returns, we've put a lot of effort into improving our ability to generate revenues and a higher share of the revenues. We've talked a lot about what we call the Green Flag Plan. What that means is as the recovery continues, we liken this to a car race with a green flag dropping, and we're going to be ready to go as it does. That's happening today. A big part of that plan is capturing as much revenue as we possibly can. One of the ways we'll do that is making American the easiest airline to do business with. Customers will want to fly with us, and we'll have great demand for our product.
This could be anything from making our fare products as simple as possible, which we've done, to creating more value with our loyalty program, which we're also doing. We're also strategically expanding our network to more places that our customers want to travel. We know there can be tremendous pent-up demand with people that are eager to travel, and they'll be able to do so on a broader network thanks to our network itself as well as the expansion that we put in place with partnerships with airlines such as JetBlue, Alaska, and GOL in South America. This is something I believe that American's done really well during the pandemic. We show them we can put aircraft where customers tell us they want to go, and we can do it quickly. Our team's done that exceptionally well.
It's a big reason why, as I noted in my introductory comments, our unit revenues are leading the industry through the pandemic. We can also redeploy those assets to other locations as demand shifts. Creating a nimble network has been a big asset for us, and we'll continue to make sure we do that as we work to capture as much revenue as possible as demand returns.
Great. Thank you. Speaking of network, one of the shareholders asked, are we planning to grow in new leisure markets with the retirement of 150 planes last year, especially in markets previously served by those retired aircraft, for example, Croatia or Iceland, in response to competitive pressures?
Yeah, again, a little bit of what I just addressed. The world has changed, and we reduced our airline to fly very little, and now it's all growing back. One of the nice things about that is we can add back where we see demand. It may not be where we flew in the past, certainly not exactly every route we flew in the past. We're going to bring the airline to the places that our customers the most want to go. For leisure specifically, we've already brought back the domestic system in large part, although we certainly are flying more routes to certain markets we have in the past and larger airplanes we have in the past because it's largely leisure dominated. This summer, we're going to be flying close to what we flew in 2019 in terms of leisure travelers in leisure markets.
We'll bring back long-haul international flying as soon as we can because I know they're in high demand. A lot of that depends on government regulations as governments get more comfortable and lift restrictions. There's huge pent-up demand for international travel, we need those restrictions to be lifted for that demand to not be suppressed. I guess in summary, I can tell you this. As demand comes back quickly, we have flexibility in our fleet to be able to go capture it. I think we've done that well so far. Our network team's done a great job of building and rebuilding and then rebuilding again schedules over the past year. It's all entirely been based on where our customers want to go.
If they're leisure markets or business markets for that matter, the customers show us that they want to fly, we're going to figure out how to be able to get them there.
With that in mind, what is American's estimated operating capacity for the next year, especially against the baseline operations of late 2019?
We can't predict exactly what our operating capacity is going to be next year because of what I said. The return of business travel and international travel are contingent upon still a number of factors. I can say what we've said already is because of strong demand, particularly on leisure markets, we're going to be flying 90%, more than 90% I think, of our domestic seat capacity this summer compared to the summer of 2019 and about 80% of our international-2019. That's where we'll be this summer. Where that goes from there will be entirely dependent upon demand increasing. We certainly expect it will grow beyond that because we expect demand will increase. That's the best I can do in terms of specifics at this point.
Thank you. American took on a lot of new debt during the pandemic. What is the company's plan to pay down this debt?
Yeah, certainly, as proud as we are of what we accomplished, there's no doubt that for all our loans resulted in us having to take on higher debt. We received a lot of support from the U.S. government, most of that in grants, some of it in debt. We also needed to go out and raise more debt. That's not where we were headed at American. We entered 2020 with having gotten through a fleet modernization and had announced we were looking to begin retiring debt in the coming years. We were excited about that. That didn't happen, of course. That's still the plan. Our plan prior was to reduce our debt by at least $8 billion-$10 billion over the coming five years through regularly scheduled debt amortization. That's still the case.
Because we're now starting at a higher debt level, because we know we need to de-lever even more than we planned and more than we will do through regular scheduled debt amortization. In the near term, we plan to keep these very high liquidity levels we expect in the fourth quarter, I'm sorry, the first quarter with over $20 billion of liquidity, which is well in excess of what we will need to have once we get back to sustainable profitability. In the near term, we plan to maintain these higher liquidity levels until we are generating sustained positive cash flow. Once that occurs, and given the efficiency measures I talked about and also a lower capital expenditure profile, which I haven't really talked about, but we have spent more on aircraft modernization than some of our peers.
As a result, we don't have a lot of aircraft purchases in the future to continue to modernize. That will also help us to use excess cash to de-lever our balance sheet by proactively retiring prepaid debt and increasing our unencumbered assets. That's where we stand. It's an issue that, again, is top of mind for American and our board and our shareholders, and one that we know we can certainly manage through a combination of the excess cash, generating cash flow in the future. Every dollar we generate, every dollar of excess cash we have will go toward reducing our debt and getting it back to a more manageable level and getting it back to the point where we were as we started 2020 of retiring debt through regular amortization.
You mentioned fleet retirements as a lot of those happening last year. Has AAL been able to sell any of the planes that it retired?
Yeah. This is Derek. We have, as we talked about, we've retired all the 757s, all the 767s, all the E190s, and all the A330s. We've also retired CRJ200s and Embraer 140s. All of the 757-76s and E190s have been sold and put into contracts to sell those aircraft. We've gained about $300 million in proceeds so far for those aircraft. The 76s and E190s are all gone. The 75s take a little bit more time to go out. The A330s we'll look at as we move forward to dispose of those aircraft. Yes, we have, and we have contracts under that and have significant cash flow in from those aircraft that are included in the $20 billion number that Doug talked about that we will end at the end of the second quarter.
As you think about the younger, more fuel-efficient fleet, we know that sustainability efforts are increasingly important in all sectors, but especially in aviation. What are American's plans in this space, and how do you think you fit relative to competitors?
Yeah, thanks. Well, this is an issue for all of us. All of our competitors are doing everything we can to get to net zero by 2050, which is the goal that we have set at American, that A4A has set for the U.S., that we A4A carriers have agreed to set for the U.S. industry. It's an ambitious goal given how aircraft are powered, but one that we know we can meet and one that we all intend to meet and really proud of what we're doing at American to get there by 2050. I mean, first off, of course, the best thing anyone can be doing at this point is having efficient aircraft, so fleet renewal.
That is both a core of our sustainability strategy and a key business objective as an area where we led the industry in recent years. Since 2013, we've invested $24 billion in creating a newer and more fuel-efficient fleet of aircraft while retiring our older and less efficient airplanes that Derek just talked about. We now have the youngest mainline fleet of any U.S. network airline by a wide margin. That comes first as in today's world is, as we're all burning jet fuel, the best thing we can do is make sure we have aircraft that are burning less of that than others by having newer airplanes, and American's leading the way there. We're also focusing on operational improvements to maximize the efficiency.
For example, last year we began deploying specialized flight optimization software on mainlines fleet, increase the usage of single engine taxi, both of which are helping to reduce our emissions and lower our fuel costs. While we are burning carbon, it's important. Part of our strategy is having carbon offsets. Over time, we obviously cannot rely on carbon offsets, but it's an important part now of the plan. We offer our customers the option to offset the carbon emissions from your flights through a partnership with Cool Effect. It's a non-profit organization that applies extra rigor to the process of verifying that each offset project they work with meets the highest possible standards. That's mostly where we are today. The key to getting carbon neutral for any airline, though, is sustainable aviation fuel, which is the most promising advancement available to our industry in the near and midterm.
We at American are committed to doing everything we can to facilitate the production of sustainable aviation fuels. We've been taking delivery of SAF since last year, and we committed to using 9 million gallons of it between now and 2023. Also in the first quarter of the year, we reached innovative agreements with two of our corporate customers, Deloitte and Kuehne+Nagel, demonstrating that there is real demand for sustainable aviation fuels amongst our customers. Look, while we're proud of all that, this is going to require our government to get involved in helping sustainable aviation fuel to become commercially viable. Just as we as a country did with things like solar and wind, we're going to need to do this with sustainable aviation fuels if this industry is going to get to carbon neutral by 2050. We all know that.
The great news is our government is well aware of that as well and is fully engaged with our industry on climate issues, and it's very encouraging that we do have those common goals, especially when it comes to SAF. That's the long-term answer. What we really need to do is get SAF to be incentives for people to produce SAF, so that we can get it to become commercially viable over time. We're doing everything we can. We're proud of the work our team's doing, and we'll continue to work with the U.S. government to ensure that we are getting interim goals that allow us to meet the longer-term goal. It's incredibly important.
Thanks, Seth. It seems like American is going out of its way to get involved in political issues, specifically voter legislation. Why is that? Why are we taking a position there?
Yeah, thanks for the question. Our view is that we're not getting involved in political issues. This is not us looking to pick one side of a bipartisan issue. It's us looking to pull people together. These, as it relates to the question, I'm certain it's related to our statement that American made about legislation, voter legislation that was introduced in Texas, where we are headquartered. That legislation was put forward as an effort to increase voter integrity, to allay concerns about the lack of voter integrity, obviously something that all Americans favor, ensuring that votes do have a high level of integrity. The problem with that legislation, though, is in trying to help integrity, it also is making it much harder for people to vote, and indeed, for certain groups of people to vote.
That made them feel disenfranchised, and we began to hear about that from our team members. We began to hear about it from Black CEOs around the country, Black executives around the country. Our view is, and will continue to be, that we need to support our team. As our team came forward and let us know that this was really important to them, and they know that American Airlines has a voice in this regard, that we should raise our voice in their support. Again, not on one side of a partisan issue, but rather to try and get people to work together.
If indeed voter integrity is a large concern for a group of people, we should work to address that concern. We should work to address it in a way that doesn't make another group of people feel disenfranchised and make it harder for them to vote. There have to be ways to do this. Corporations will go away on this point once those that are working toward voter integrity, in doing so, don't generate large concerns from particularly from groups like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, like a group of Black executives around the country, and like team members at American Airlines who feel like this is going to make it harder for them to vote. Again, that's what it's about. It's what we're about. We have an obligation to support our team. What we do is bring people together.
We're trying to bring people together on this point, on what is clearly a divisive point. Again, not picking one side of the divided point, trying to get people to work together.
Thank you. A couple of questions specifically on the board. It seems like the company's board members have been selected for their experience with large, complex, and international companies. Might it also be good to include board members whose background is more entrepreneurial, small business, or the like? What is the strategy for the current makeup of the board of directors?
Great. Thanks for the question. We have a fantastic and diverse board, you're absolutely right that having a board with diverse backgrounds and board members who bring various experiences to the table with different perspectives makes us better. That's why we've worked so hard on specifically that and made some nice progress over the past year as well. Like I said, we already had an experienced board with phenomenal experience, large complex companies, many of whom have weathered significant cycles, which is invaluable in our industry. We also recognize there were places where we could add some fresh thinking, so February, when we welcomed Adriane Brown to our board. We felt we could benefit from Adriane's experience in the technology sector, an area known for where she's known for innovation and quick thinking.
She also brings a wealth of experience in the ESG sector, which we just talked about, an area that's becoming increasingly important. She's a managing partner of a venture capital firm. Anyway, I can just tell you in the few months that Adriane's been on our board, she's had huge value with her outside the box entrepreneurial thinking, and that's been a huge asset. Another area where we look to expand our board's existing expertise was leadership in aviation, in commercial aviation. So we were really fortunate to be able to add Doug Parker, who brings over 20 years of experience as an airline executive, including CEO of Southwest Airlines.
Doug as well has been incredibly helpful in his short time on the board to the management team and to the board with his perspectives and his perspectives in addition to just being an airline executive is a variety of board leadership positions that has been extremely helpful to us as well. Anyway, we're very happy with the adds we've made to what was already a great board, and we will keep doing just what the question asked, which is ensuring that the members of our board are chosen based on what our business operations and our strategy needs to serve the long-term interests of American shareholders. And we're really proud that we have one of the most diverse boards in aviation, and that'll serve us well as we charter future.
Thanks. As shareholders prepare to vote on board members, can they receive brief professional bios on the board of directors in advance of voting?
Of course. The bios for our Board of Directors are available on aa.com at any point in time, and they're also included in the proxy statement and in the interactive materials that we make available prior to the annual meeting each year. We encourage everyone to press through everything.
Looking at fuel, that remains one of American's largest costs, and oil prices have doubled over the past year. What impact will this have on American's profitability?
Yeah. Fuel is our second-largest cost behind salaries and benefits. We're obviously well aware of the recent uptick in the price of oil. It's a cost that we and all airlines will need to bear as we go forward in our pricing. I will note that while the prices are higher in 2021 than they were in 2020. 2020 got a pretty low comparative basis as a result of the pandemic. The reality is, correct me if I'm wrong, Derek, our 2021 fuel price forecast at today's prices is still lower than what we experienced in 2019 and 2018. Again, I'm not trying to minimize the fact that fuel prices have gone up. They have, but they're still below 2019, 2018 levels.
We certainly have an airline that has demand returns and can be nicely profitable with fuel prices at this level. It'll just be something, an expense that we're going to need to overcome versus where it was in 2020 as we move forward. I also talked about, in relation to ESG, a number of things that we're doing to make sure that we are as fuel efficient as we possibly can be, both because it's good for the environment, but also because it allows us to spend less while taking care of our customers.
Thank you. I'm going to jump in. As we look to the year ahead, is American planning to implement dividends in the recovery?
Well, we are precluded from issuing any dividends or doing any share buybacks per the CARES Act through a point in date that I don't know off the top of my head. September 30th. September 30th of what year? 2022. September 30th, 2022. We, American, and all airlines that accepted funds from the CARES Act and the two acts that followed are precluded from doing so until then, which is all airlines, all U.S. airlines, by the way. Beyond that, I don't know. As I said, our first order of business is going to be retiring debt. Right now it's certainly not an issue we could do even if we wanted to. We're not talking about it at this point. All of our effort right now is looking to retiring-- as we generate cash, using that to retire debt.
When we get to the point that we're comfortably doing so, we obviously understand that we need to give returns to our shareholders, and some shareholders are very focused on dividends. We'll address that as we get to that point, but right now there's nothing we can do about it.
One final question. I think we will address the majority of shareholders as you mentioned earlier, and then we'll get to the others online if we haven't. When do you think demand will fully recover? Specifically, what are you seeing with corporate travel?
Yeah. Okay, thanks. It's a question that we get all the time. We all obviously interested in the answer, and I won't be able to give you a perfect answer because much of it is dependent upon one of two things. Business is dependent upon business getting back to companies relaxing their travel policies, being comfortable sending their teams on the road again, and being back in the office regularly. We know we've had many customers come visit us at our headquarters in recent weeks. We've been open for business here throughout the pandemic, but most companies haven't, and we're starting to see a lot of uptick in visitors to our headquarters because we are open. 47 of our top 50 corporate customers have told us they plan to return to traveling this year. We know business travel is coming back.
How quickly it comes back is yet to be seen. It's certainly going to be better in the third quarter than it was in the second quarter, and better in the fourth quarter than it was in the third. It is recovering. The other point is what happens with international, long-haul international travel. Short-haul international travel, places like Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean are doing quite well. Transoceanic travel is largely hurt by the restrictions we talked about between countries. That'll be the last return, in large part because of that regulatory environment and restrictions are still in place. What we've seen is when some of those restrictions are lifted, as happened in Spain and Greece and other countries, bookings pick up considerably every time it happens. We're actively engaged on this.
We've been talking to regulators in the U.S. and abroad about the importance of reopening borders. We had an online press conference earlier this week with the 6 largest CEOs, the 4 largest airline CEOs in the U.S., transatlantic, and the 2 largest to the U.K., talking about how we believe and asking our respective countries to please join us and get to work on opening up a U.S.-U.K. corridor because we know that we can do that safely given the vaccination rates on both sides. Anyway, that'll be the last to return. When it returns, again, is largely dependent upon when countries decide that it's okay to lift those restrictions. Long way to say, I don't exactly know, other than we've seen a huge increase as vaccination rates return between that and leisure travel where domestically, leisure travel when there aren't restrictions.
Once restrictions are lifted, both in business and in long-haul international, we know the demand is there. We hear about it all the time from our customers, and we'll just keep working to get those restrictions lifted. As they do, I fully expect you'll see air travel demand return to levels it has been in the past and higher in the future. Do you have any more, Caroline?
No, I think that covers most of what was submitted.
All right. Very well. Thank you all very much. Thanks for your interest. Thanks for your interest in American Airlines. That concludes the question and answer session of the annual meeting. We thank you for attending. Again, if we didn't get to your question, we will make sure to have it answered on the web portal. Thank you all very much.