In August of 2025, I spoke to someone who I had wanted to talk to for years.

My name is Robert Crandall, and I was President, chairman, and chief executive officer of American Airlines when I retired.

Had been with the company for 25 years.

Mm-hmm.

If you wanna make this into a social engineering discussion of flight attendants and all the ways we mistreated flight attendants, let's, let's stop.

So, Bob, what surprises you about the airline industry today? Has it played out mostly as you thought or not?

Well, I don't know, Scott, that anybody anticipates the development of an industry over a 30-year time span.

I've been gone from the industry almost 30 years.

And I'd have to say, although I think about the airline business every day and I think about American Airlines every day, but I never sort of formatted in my mind what might happen.

So what has happened to the business doesn't particularly surprise me.

You know, there has been an evolution of leadership within the industry.

There's been different companies of many different types that are enjoying a share of an ever larger travel business.

So I'm just curious, Bob, What do you think needs to be done? What can we do? Well, you know,