Issue Summary

Polite. Complimentary. Respectful. Nobody would use these adjectives to describe Scott Kirby’s attitude toward low-cost airlines. The United Airlines chief showed up for the company’s fourth quarter earnings call with a baseball bat, swinging at rivals for sins ranging from underinvestment in technology to ignoring new post-Covid cost and supply conditions. Kirby’s thesis: The current state of U.S. aviation infrastructure and labor markets means that airlines can’t produce capacity at nearly the same cost as they could prior to Covid. Ultra-LCCs, specifically, are foolish to think they can maintain their pre-crisis business models of achieving cost efficiencies by growing at…