Scott Kirby, United Airlines CEO, details family travel policies like stroller access and breast milk transport rules while addressing the removal of Stroop waffles. He defends pre-political vaccine mandates, notes 90% of pilots are white men despite merit-based hiring, and cites high Net Promoter Scores during air traffic control shutdowns. Despite parent requests for seed oil-free snacks, data shows passengers prefer cheeseburgers. Concluding with "Would You Rather" answers, Kirby reveals his preference for window seats and dinner guests including Churchill and Lincoln, illustrating the blend of operational rigor and personal insight defining modern airline leadership. [Automatically generated summary]
For those traveling with young kids, what is your piece of advice?
Let the kids do what they want to do.
You may have rules at home about no devices, no candy, no whatever.
On an airplane when you're traveling, just keep them happy.
A lot of companies have leaned into the DEI programs in recent years.
How do you reassure passengers that says who's flying your plane is the one for the job who is qualified and is merit-based?
We hire based on merit.
You've got to have the ability, you've got to pass all the tests, you've got to meet all the hurdles, and you've got to be the best of the best to ever actually wind up in the cockpit.
The biggest thing I can remember getting complaints about was when we took the stroop waffle off the airplane.
Why'd you take the stroop waffle off?
I don't know.
I didn't decide.
We put it back, though.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of the Katie Miller Podcast.
We're live every Tuesday night at 6 p.m. Eastern.
Don't forget to like, follow, subscribe, and share.
We're excited to be joined today by Scott Kirby, the CEO of United Airlines.
Thanks for having me.
Would you mind telling our guests, for those of you who don't know you, the brief 30 seconds about yourself, who you are, your brief background?
Okay.
So Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines.
I went to the Air Force Academy, so started my career early in aviation.
But the more important thing is I am married and I have seven kids, so that's unusual in today's world.
And they're awesome, and that's the center of my life.
Before you were CEO, what was it like flying with your seven kids?
Well, it's similar today.
I get a little more help today, but traveling with kids is hard and stressful.
If you want me to tell you stories, I can tell you.
I do want you to tell me stories.
That's why we're here.
Some funny stories.
So my first experience, Brittany, my first child, I'd just gotten to be the managing director at an airline called America West.
I was 57 years old, or 27 years old, and brand new.
And we're going up to Las Vegas for this big annual convention with all the biggest travel agents.
And I've only been there like a month and really big promotion, big job.
And I get on the airplane, only second time flying with her, and I held her in my lap, and she screamed bloody murder the whole flight from Phoenix to Las Vegas.
And nothing you could do to get her calm down.
And so I show up at this event at night, and a bunch of these travel agents had flown on the same flight with us.
And I'm at this event, and people were saying, oh my God, did you hear that kid screaming the whole way on the flight?
I was just kind of shrieking.
But then I realized, like, actually, you should own this.
And this was a really good introduction for me.
And I've since then, like, dozens of times in my life asked other people on airplanes to be respectful of parents who can't stop their kids from crying or kicking the seats.
And because it is hard.
But that was my second time flying with my own kid.
Do you still fly on United with all seven kids?
I presume now they're grown.
I have three that are grown, but I still have an 11, 9, 7, and 4-year-old at home.
So it's rare that all seven of us are together.
But I often fly with the four kids.
Do you have any trouble booking seats together as a family?
We do.
We have trouble too, and we book late.
By the way, at United, what we do is we run automation for you, for families, and we will use any seats on the airplane to book you, try to book you get.
Sometimes there's not any seats, but we have those problems.
We have those same problems as well.
I had another good story with Brittany when she was two years old, my first daughter that I learned, and this has happened other times too, but this one was I got an airplane and I was sitting a couple of rows.
There's only two seats left on the plane.
I was sitting a few rows away from her, and she was two.
And there were two guys sitting there and asked if they would trade seats because I was with a two-year-old, she might have been three.
And they both said no.
And I said, okay, Brittany, that's your seat.
And I walk back and she started screaming bloody murder.
I'll try.
That's a good solution.
Just accept it when they say no and put the kid there.
So when I book late and I have three very small children, and I won't say this is specific to United.
Yeah.
And I can't book us all together, right?
So now I have like a baby who's sitting like very far away from me, like a five-year-old.
And, you know, you book it and then immediately, which I know other mothers and families do, you immediately call the airline and say, hello, this is a small child.
Can you please help me?
And oftentimes the service person on the other side can't because there's other people in those sites and they say, oh, it'll happen.
Or when you get to the gate, you know, talk to the gate agent.
Do your systems automatically at like that 24-hour marker when check-in is move people around or does it wait toward the gate agent?
No, well, we try.
We try to move to any open seats on the airplane to put it, at least to put kids together with at least one adult in the party.
The places where we have challenges are when the kids are in different records, which you'd be surprised how often people have their kids booked in different records.
So we don't know that they're the same.
Or sometimes just when the flights are completely full and there aren't enough seats.
But we'll also try to do it in age reverse order.
So we'll try to find the two-year-old first.
I know you have a two-year-old.
Try to find the two-year-old and put them with one of the parents.
Sometimes we'll split the party.
There's two parents.
So if you and Stephen are traveling together, we'll try to find two seats here and three seats there.
But it does happen.
It's not 100% because sometimes there's just not seats on the airplane.
But we now run automation to do that for customers in advance.
So that they book, it just shows up as these seats.
We've kind of made a left turn talking about this very quickly.
But like the reason why I'm so excited to have you specifically on the podcast is as a young mother, all of like the most horrific memories I have of having young children is not wanting to fly or go anywhere because you have young children.
I think we would be going a lot more places if it was easier to fly with young children.
And I don't necessarily blame an airline.
It's other people who are frustrated with crying babies.
Or it's the gear you got to lug through the airport, the car seats now.
It would be hard.
And so we have crazy stories of flying with our children, especially three young people.
I have more crazy stories too, if you want to tell for myself.
But I think knowing that you have seven children, what have you done since you've been CEO to make it more family friendly for parents to fly with children?
So I try to do it.
I try to do it across the board, but I am more sensitive to the issues of traveling with children.
And sometimes it has been personal experience or mothers or sometimes fathers, usually mothers, telling me the frustrations that they have.
So some examples were we changed the process long before anyone else was doing it to have automation to try to seat families together.
We've done some other things too now to link to let customers link their, they're called PNRs, passenger name records, so that we can link even if your children are on a different record, so you can link them and put those together to make it work better.
One of the things we do is, this will sound silly, but just doing things like putting stuff on for kids, the little packs that have crayons and toys and stuff in them, encourages our employees to be helpful because they're having to interact with it.
They're interacting with them and helps them there.
One of the problems that my wife had was traveling by herself when she would travel by herself with we would always buy tickets for our kids for their own seats, but have a stroller with kind of the, and on some airlines, they would take that away from her at the ticket counter because they said it was too big.
It actually only weighed 23 pounds, supposed to be 25 pounds.
She eventually bought it at 23, but they would take it away from her and not let her bring the stroller through because they said it was too big.
And so she stuck with, I can remember her talking about, at one point, a five-year-old, a three-year-old, and a baby who couldn't walk.
And she's trying to carry the car seat, 25-pound car seat, and by herself.
And that was an example of I went and said, I don't know what our policy is.
I've never heard it at United, but let me go.
And it turns out we didn't have a policy like that.
But we made sure that we said we're not going to take people strollers away from them.
And we'll figure out how to get them on the airplane when we get down there.
So those are some examples of trying to be breast milk, a bunch of policies around breast milk.
I had poor Kathleen, who's a saint, she's wonderful.
But at London Heathrow Airport, we were there once and she'd been pumping liquid gold and they wouldn't let her bring it back on the airplane and like literally in a fetal position crying on the floor.
So I made sure we changed our policies at United.
That was security at London Heathrow.
That was the challenge there.
But I understand it.
And so we do try to make it easier.
I have one in my brain specifically of a TikTok I've seen recently and I don't know what airline it is.
So in due deference to this probably is not United.
I'll say that out loud.
But it was a woman who got to a gate sitting on the airplane with her three children all under the age of five and they said she couldn't be on the plane with them because there wasn't enough.
I think one was a lap child.
She had seats for the two others, but there wasn't enough infant masks.
And so she couldn't sit.
She couldn't bring her three kids alone on the airplane.
She needed another person to come with her.
Is that something that is a standard policy because you can't sit with that one I'm not sure of, but my guess is that's an FAA law.
And so I'm not 100% sure.
I understand what I'm saying.
But there are times that there are laws that seem nonsensical, but that we can't.
I understand.
So where I was going with this is there's a lot of videos and a lot of customer complaints.
You can find them on X. You can find them, I'm sure, on every single platform, whether it be Instagram or TikTok.
That is an employee doing something, a passenger doing something in which you don't know the full story, as I've kind of just alluded to, right?
Like I've seen a passive video.
I have no idea the truth.
What do you do when that stuff is brought to your attention?
Is that stuff often brought to your attention or is that just handled at a time?
Most of the individual situations are handled through the normal course and the normal process.
But I am sensitive to, I actually get a lot of emails myself and I don't respond to them, but I do read many of them, depending on how they start.
If it starts with F you, I'm never going to fly your airline again, I delete it.
It's a bad way to send an email to me, by the way.
But if they're sort of reasoned and those are the kinds of things, when there are policy issues, those are the ones that I will follow up with the team about.
If it's one flight cancellation, I'm not going to do much about it.
But sometimes there are those kinds of policy things that are getting in the way.
Boarding processes, for example, letting families with two kids two and under board first is one of the kind of policy changes that you can make to make it easier to travel.
And those are the kinds of things.
I look for the policies, not the one-off situations, but the policies that are probably happening in a lot of places.
How many customer complaints do you get a day sent to your email?
I probably get my personal email between, it depends on the day, but 50 to 100.
Many of them are compliments.
Many of them are compliments also, but I probably get 50 to 100 a day of something.
And these are people just guessing your email or Googling it?
I think it's online.
I think they Google it or AI it.
If you could change one policy, whether that be TSA or FAAs, that's not internal United, to make it better on mothers and family, what would it be?
Well, this would be not just true for mothers and families, this would be true for everyone.
I would get the FAA fully staffed.
And the FAA knows that.
I think they're going to work on it.
But probably 90% of delays in the country are air traffic control.
And about half of that's probably weather, but the FAA is close to 4,000 controllers short.
And that just leads to delays every day.
By far, by far, by far, the thing that makes travel stressful for everyone are delays and cancellations and the follow-on effect of the delay and cancellation.
There's absolutely nothing, if you do everything else to make air travel better that you could possibly think of, it would pale in comparison to simply getting FAA fully staffed.
Do you think we should privatize it?
I don't think it's politically doable.
Regardless of whether I think it's a good idea or not.
So speaking of delays, as we wrap up, hopefully the government shutdown tomorrow morning since we will tape, this will air the following week.
How long will it take United to unfoul the delay situation that we're currently in?
So it won't be United.
It's the constraint.
We've got really good systems.
You know, when we first heard that the FAA was thinking about doing this, we've got this system called Orca that can run automatically and cancel flights days out in advance if we need to.
And so it's been actually pretty, it's been really well.
In fact, the most amazing statistic that I've seen in a long time was this weekend when there were all the press and all the shortages and all the cancellations because of air traffic control.
We had our fourth, fifth, and sixth highest MPS days of the year were those days.
Normally when there's a bad operation like that.
What's an MPS?
Net promoter score.
So measure of customer service.
And we had our highest days because we did a really good job of communicating with customers in a tough environment.
And our people did a great job of taking care of them.
So we'll be able to ramp up as quickly as the FAA.
FAA is going to be the constraint.
And by the way, I think the FAA deserves an A-plus.
They've done a great job in a really uncertain, you know, they don't know how many people are going to show up to work.
They want to keep the system safe.
I was 100% supportive of what they did.
And I think they did a really good job in a tough environment.
Do you think it's hard for, which I've heard a lot in the news, on pilots and crew who are in different places, getting them back to where they need to be to resume flight operations?
Or does the computer system automatically know where those are?
At United, it's worked well because we built, you know, we did the system to repair crews.
That's what happens at an airline.
If you get weather delays or any kind of delays, you have impact to the irregular operations, air ops is what we call it.
If you have air ops, it can snowball on you because of crews being out of place.
And there's all kinds of legal rules about how many hours they can work and all kinds of things that can foul that up.
And you've got an airplane that has sometimes a wide body airplane.
You have three pilots and might have 10 flight attendants and one of them doesn't make it.
The whole flight gets canceled.
And so that's the really complex thing.
We've at United at least built really good automation to keep that from happening in an event like this.
I think some other airlines struggled with it over the weekend, but our crews mostly stayed in pretty good shape and healthy.
Pilot Training Hurdles Explained00:07:28
What's one thing about air travel that would surprise whether that be policymakers, people administration, or your passengers about how you are able to function throughout this time period?
I think people will be surprised at the level of technology and automation that we have and how calm it is, what seems chaotic on the outside, how calm it is at our network operating center.
It used to not be that way, but when you have really good technology, a great team with great technology, how calm and how matter of fact it is.
It's not panicky.
We know how to do this.
We ought to manage it.
I think the calmness would surprise people.
Do you ever find yourself wanting to call into your 1-800 number or test it?
And when you go online and you want to chat with the representative, do you find yourself ever doing that and seeing what the feedback time is and what the representative says?
I don't do it through those channels because there's better channels to use than a 1-800 number or chat.
But I often, like using the app, will ask a lot of questions like, boy, this is not intuitive.
I'll tell you one example that, you know, this will seem small, but it annoys me about every app.
You get an alert on your phone that says, whatever, you have something in this app.
And on us, it would be, you can pick your meal now.
Once we started picking meals, so if you were going to get a meal, you can choose your meal, which is great for customers.
But it says, pick your meal, and you click on it, and it takes you to the United app.
It just dumps you into the front of the app.
And tons of apps do that.
It doesn't matter.
Instead of taking you to the place where you pick the meal, you got to search around and find the meal.
I'm like, why do we do that?
But anyway, little things like anytime I see a little thing like that, I ask questions about it.
So if I was a United customer and flying, should I use the call number?
Should I email?
Should I use the app?
You should use the app.
It is by far, it's the best, like, and it's not just me saying it.
Anybody, people that fly on multiple airlines, I haven't met anybody that doesn't think the United app is the best.
It is by far the best.
And that's where we're trying to put more and more information.
You know, like this shutdown, the shutdown happened, and within a few hours on the app, we could tell every customer whether your flight was okay or not for the next three days.
We'd run it out for three days.
We'd canceled everything that we needed to for three days.
We could tell you everything.
We could tell you everything about rebooking.
We can give you options.
We're working on things like let you be on a standby list if there's an irregular operation.
The app is by far the best resource that you can use.
United made headlines years ago for this lifetime pass.
And I've seen like this guy now fly everywhere for millions and millions of miles that I'm sure you guys are losing tons of money on.
Will you ever offer a lifetime pass again?
No, that was a really stupid program.
Every day, never make that mistake again.
How much money do you estimate you've lost from a lifetime pass for $510,000?
Oh, millions.
Some of the people, so this is about, I've been two airlines that had these.
So without referring to a specific individual, I'll tell you some of the abuses.
There used to be, it was the person and you could have a companion.
So there were people who had bought these whose businesses became, I will fly with you to anywhere in the world, business class or first class, and you pay me half price of the airline and I'll sit next to you.
So that was their business, like undercutting us.
There's even one person who flies, who flew just to collect miles after you stopped that part of the program, just to collect miles and would turn them into Walmart gift cards.
His income was he would fly to Europe and take the same airplane home, just fly back and forth to get a lot of miles to turn them into Walmart gift cards.
It's an entrepreneur, if I've ever heard one.
I wouldn't call it entrepreneur.
Let's do something productive for society.
So this is a question from a viewer.
Okay.
Okay.
He's a United Airlines pilot.
Okay.
United and JetBlue.
That'd be a good one.
It's not coming for you, I promise.
It says, United and JetBlue recently partnered through the Blue Sky Loyalty Program.
Is there a possibility of a United JetBlue merger in the future?
We're focused on getting back into two things.
Getting back into JFK.
It was a mistake for United to pull out of JFK years ago, so this gets us back into JFK.
And having a bigger loyalty program on the other side of the Hudson.
We have a big presence in Newark, but on the other side of the Hudson.
So I think that's as far as I want to go.
I won't ever say no for sure, but we're doing a great job at United growing organically.
And I don't really want to do a merger like that.
A lot of companies have leaned into the DEI programs in recent years.
How do you reassure passengers after so much has been said about airlines hiring not for merit, but based on skin color?
The FAA, I want to say specifically air traffic controllers, as recently as January 20th had on their website they prioritize the hiring of those with severe intellectual disabilities, those with dwarfism.
I'm not kidding, this was on the FAA's website as recently as January 20th.
How do you reassure passengers that says who's flying your plane is the one for the job who is qualified and is merit-based?
So I can't speak to the FAA, but I can speak to United.
And by the way, I can speak for the whole airline industry when I say this.
We hire based on merit.
And we only hire the best of the best.
And we have incredible certification and testing programs to get the best of the best.
Now, that doesn't mean we don't go try to source from multiple places.
So we'll go to, you know, Tuskegee Airmen and try to find people.
So build a bigger funnel to bring people in.
But we have the strictest and highest standards possible.
And today, over 90% of our, or about 90% of our pilots are white men.
That's a lot of historical reasons.
But we always do hire the best of the best.
I hope someday that more people will enter the field, either through the military or through all the kinds of training programs that we're building in place.
But they've got to all pass the same kind of certification standards, the exact same certification standards.
Those are color and sex blind.
I do think creating opportunity for everyone is important.
But it's about opportunity.
It's not about who winds up in the cockpit.
You can maybe get into training programs, but you've got to have the ability, you've got to pass all the tests, you've got to meet all the hurdles, and you've got to be the best of the best to ever actually wind up in the cockpit.
Are most of your pilots coming from the military?
No, historically it's been about half.
It's less now than it used to be because the military produces far fewer pilots than when I went to the Air Force Academy.
And, you know, that was during the Cold War.
And we produced far more pilots.
There's just not as much supply out of the military as it was before.
But we have amazing training programs, particularly for commercial airline pilots in the United States, especially.
The training programs we have and what we do with them in simulators at Denver for us.
We put them through situations that nobody in the world has ever even encountered.
And the level of training that pilots get is pretty incredible.
Military Supply Drops Sharp00:09:24
United took one of the strongest stances on the COVID vaccine back when COVID was new.
Do you regret the decision to mandate the COVID vaccine for all employees?
Well, we did it, I did it, before it was political.
And we did it for safety.
So, you know, safety is number one at an airline.
And it was pretty clear, it is clear, that it was safer.
And I looked at it as nobody has to get a COVID vaccine.
I don't think we should tell you when they have to.
But if I'm going to tell you you have to sit in a cockpit next to someone, it's not fair to the other person.
And what we said to employees was, if you're in a job where you have to work with other people, you have to get vaccinated or you can come back and start your job again when it's over.
Which is what we did.
Exactly what we did.
But it was a purely a safety issue for us.
And the standard I hold myself to, partly from being at the Air Force Academy, is if I think an issue is safety, then I have an obligation to do it, regardless of whether people like it or not.
I think most people did.
Not everyone did, but most people did.
And at the time, it became more controversial after the fact.
At the time, it really wasn't because we were the first big company to do it, and it was before it became political.
Back in the day when I remember this time very well.
Yeah.
I do too.
It was existential for airlines.
I remember this very well.
Do you eat healthy in your personal life?
What do you typically eat?
I eat pretty healthy.
You know, I eat a wide variety.
I'm not really a foodie, but I do eat.
I'm going somewhere with this.
Okay, I do.
I eat a lot of salad.
I do get salads a lot, but I also like the kids get Chick-fil-A and they don't finish all their Chick-fil-A, so I eat all the rest of it.
Do you generally avoid seed oils or are you not that far into like the...
I don't even know what that is.
Okay, great.
So one of the big agendas of Secretary Bobby Kennedy is making America healthy again.
And with that, they're working to remove seed oils from commonplaces, have antibiotic-free chicken, which no shame to Chick-fil-A, but they used to have antibiotic-free chicken.
Now they do not.
There are other things that are important, such as removing food dyes and chemicals from the food supply that don't have the same standardization, say, as Europe.
Where say Coca-Cola is not selling the same product in the United States that they're selling in Europe.
One is healthier.
One is not.
And so where I was going with this is that is a big, I would say a big part of President Trump's agenda is this eating healthier for our country, right, to prevent longer-term health issues.
And so on a plane, you have a lot of soda options, a lot of V8s I've seen, and a lot of prepackaged food.
Like I know on Delta they're doing Biscoff cookies still.
There aren't a lot of healthy options that the flight attendants pass out for kids or for families.
Is that something you guys could look at in the future, providing healthier alternatives on a plane where there isn't, say, a place I could go buy it for myself?
So what do you think the most popular things are when we survey customers for the kind of food that they want?
Pretzel?
No, it's healthy.
What do you think the real world number one choice is?
Cheese.
Cheeseburger.
You're close.
Trump's eating cheeseburger.
So the truth is on airplanes, like what people say they want, what they actually pick is different.
Hardly anyone takes the healthy options.
So we go with what consumers actually want.
And so we just use the data of what consumers want to make the picks.
And people tell you that they want healthy, but they get on airplanes for whatever reason.
And healthy is low on the list of things that they actually select.
Watch the snack basket when it goes around.
I take bananas because I like bananas.
And I do actually like to eat healthy.
And almost every time I take a banana, the fly attendant makes a comment, wow, nobody takes the banana because there's all this junk food in there.
That's what gets taken.
No, I get it.
And I've seen it on some flights.
Again, I'm not a diehard for one airline or another.
I pick whichever is going the fastest to whichever route.
Well, that's your mistake.
I'm going to fly United.
I will say this.
My parents are loyal, United Airline flyers.
They only fly United.
Good for them.
So they have it going.
I pick whichever is going at the right time.
But I will say is that I've noticed that certain flights now have like seed oil-free chips or they'll have these options.
And I didn't know if that was a movement or if that's just like, that's much cheaper now.
We do stuff like that.
I'm not the one personally the one that does it.
Like I just told you I didn't even know for sure what seed oils were.
I'm not really into food.
I do eat pretty healthy, but it's just sort of by accident or because it's what my wife has in the house.
She is into it.
I'd be curious what Kathleen has to say about this.
She could talk to you extensively about every single one of those subjects.
The biggest thing I can remember getting complaints about, I told you I got something, was when we took the stroop waffle off the airplane.
Really?
I was a tsunami of complaints.
I believe that, though, because people probably fly United.
They're so used to getting the stroop waffle.
Yeah, and once a month I get, could you put healthier food on?
Why'd you take the stroop waffle off?
I don't know.
I didn't decide.
We put it back, though.
So now I'm going to do this episode is in paid partnership with the American Beverage Association.
Did you know there's a website where you can learn more about the ingredients in all of your favorite drinks?
It's called goodtonofacts.org.
There you can explore over 140 common beverage ingredients in one place.
No spin, just facts.
As a mom of three young kids, it's so important for me to know exactly what I'm giving them.
And this website created by the American Beverage Association is such a great resource.
Check it out at goodtonnowfacts.org.
As parents, we want to know what's best for our kids.
It's about time we were in the driver's seat.
You spent your career connecting to people around the world.
What does that look like for your family when you're traveling now?
So is your wife at home?
Where are your kids?
No, they travel with me a lot, actually.
I'm fortunate that they go with me a lot.
So I do a trip.
We do a trip to Europe most summers that is combination work and business.
So, you know, go over and I'll do a lot of business dinners while I'm there.
I'm lucky to have a great wife, Kathleen, who has probably been to 100 business dinners with me on other continents that she's gone, which is a great asset.
And we do one a week at our house where people often from around the globe, you know, come here, do dinner at the house, much more personal.
So she's like the best ambassador that United Airlines has.
I'm lucky to be married to her.
And United Airlines is lucky to have her as an ambassador.
What's your favorite family trip?
My favorite trip.
It's probably, there's a bunch that have been good.
But so Croatia, we've gone to Croatia twice with the kids.
We've absolutely loved that.
The kids would tell you their favorite trip.
Last summer we went to Norway and we went to this small town called Bistad.
It's like 500 people.
It's not really even a town.
Stayed in someone's old, it's an old farm and, you know, there's no, like we went fishing and hiking and rock climbing.
And somebody from the local high school helped us make little boats that we raced in the river.
And they would tell you that's the most fun.
But we have, we do lots of great family stuff together.
My favorite really is probably actually during the summer, we have a house in Beaver Creek, so we moved to Beaver Creek.
And I travel from there, but I try to travel less during the summer.
I should have known when you said that flight into Eaglevale.
Eaglevale, yeah, we fly in Eaglevale.
But we do, like, so this summer, you know, I would play, there's a little Parthi golf course there.
And so I would take an hour and a half break somewhere during the day, or sometimes I even did calls from the golf course.
But I took the boys, the three boys, out, me and the three boys, to play golf probably five times a week on that little part three course.
So just doing anything with them is fun like that.
Are you the meticulous planner or do you throw everything in the suitcase?
I'm not a meticulous.
My wife is, so she does plan a lot.
I'm the kind to want to just go and figure it out when I get there.
But she does plan.
She doesn't like that.
For those traveling with young kids, what is your piece of advice?
Just be calm.
Also, my advice is let the kids do what they want to do.
Like you may have rules at home about no devices, no candy, no whatever on an airplane when you're traveling.
Just keep them happy.
Let them basically do what they want.
Is that what you guys do on the airplane?
Like give them whatever they want, make it work?
Only the ones that are sitting with dad.
The ones that are sitting with mom follow the rules.
Don't tell her that.
Oh, she doesn't watch.
I'll sneak candy on and let them out.
Keeping Kids Happy Onboard00:08:51
So for those who are upgrading or book a seat in your Polaris business class or first class, what is the ultimate meal?
Have you contributed at all to what they're serving in first class?
Because I know this is a big competition among flyers of which first class you're going to book based on what they're serving you.
Yeah.
I have not contributed at all to that.
I'm good at some things.
That's not one of them.
And in fact, I've probably flown them back and forth across the Atlantic probably 100 times.
And I have never eaten a meal going from the United States to Europe ever.
Why?
Because I have to sleep.
And I sleep eight and a half hours a night is my norm.
And going across the Atlantic, as soon as the wheels come off the runway, I put the seat back and try to go to sleep.
My goal is to be asleep before the ding at 10,000 feet.
I've never eaten a meal.
So you like, that's wild.
Most people like fly first class to eat the food.
Yeah, I know.
I've realized I'm weird.
I know I'm the weird one.
But I don't do it.
In fact, once I was flying, this side is American and our partner was British Airways.
I was flying on British Airways and I was the only person in first class.
And I was rushing through the airport, but I got some kind of fast food because I was hungry and I wanted to eat.
And the flight attendants, I could tell, were just mortified.
Like, I'm not going to eat.
They're like, I don't know if it was McDonald's or something like that.
They just like, they couldn't believe that I was eating fast food when I could have had the gourmet meal, but I went to sleep.
Do the crew, the flight attendants, know that you're going to be a passenger on board and do they treat you a lot differently?
And what's it like being the CEO flying on your own airline?
In theory, no.
In practice.
100%?
Not 100%, but a lot of times they know that I'm coming.
But it's great.
They're always, I don't think they're all that special for me.
I'm sure they're a little bit, people are a little bit more, but, you know, I love flying and getting out and talking to them.
The feedback that I get secondhand from people afterwards is from pilots and flight attendants is often like, wow, we've heard he's just a normal guy.
And he is.
He came back into the galley and his four-year-old daughter came back with him because the kids who I walk back like to go when they're with me.
That very much normal.
And I love going into the cockpits before takeoff and into the galleys during the flight and just talking to them.
You learn a lot too.
You know, like that's one of the things when you're the CEO, the further you go up, you know, the more you have to realize everything that's being told to you is filtered.
But you get on an airplane.
It's not filtered.
You get to be undercover boss.
Yeah, I'm not really, you know, some people have said to me like, oh, have you ever thought about going on undercover boss?
I'm like, anybody that could go on undercover boss should be fired for being able to be undercover.
How often do you fly on a private plane versus flying on a commercial airliner?
Very rarely.
I probably fly, and it's always some extenuating circumstance once or twice a year.
I think that would surprise a lot of people.
I think most people presume a CEO of an airline probably has a lot of small jets at their disposal.
I don't.
And it's unusual that I fly with.
Sometimes it's been personal where I'm going somewhere that it's hard to get to, but mostly I don't.
All right.
So now we're going to play the time-honored game that we've got on every episode of my podcast of Would You Rather?
Okay.
Would you rather be stuck in this?
Somebody, 11-year-old likes to do this game too.
Your questions are better than his.
I hope they're better than his.
Me and the kids have a lot in common.
We're all on TikTok.
We're on Instagram.
It's great.
Would you rather be stuck in the middle seat on a long haul flight or be the one sitting next to someone eating tuna salad mid-air?
Middle seat.
Would you rather spend a whole day answering customer tweets or be the last passenger to board a full flight with no overhead bin space?
Last passenger.
Would you rather give a TED Talk on why I eat salad with a spoon or have your salad spoon habit go viral on TikTok?
Both are great.
Eating salad with a spoon is so much more efficient.
Why?
Because most of what you eat with a fork is for stabbing.
So like steak, it's good.
But everything else, everything falls off.
A spoon, it will stay on.
And so like you eat a salad, like I'll watch my wife eat a salad.
She gets a piece of lettuce.
Then she gets a tomato.
Then she gets a strawberry.
Like I chop it up, mix it up, and eat it with a spoon.
You get a little bit of everything.
It's more efficient.
I'm going to agree to disagree.
You could just take a knife and put it onto your fork.
No, but it falls off.
You can't get, like, let's bring a salad in here.
Try to get it with a fork.
Like, everything falls off because it's not curved.
It's just flat.
It falls off.
Would you rather get lost?
Try it.
You got to try it.
Okay.
I'll take a video.
We'll post it on TikTok, see what happens.
Would you rather get lost in a mountain trail with no cell service or stuck overnight in an airport with no Wi-Fi?
Mountain trail.
And that's happened to me.
Would you rather land a plane yourself in bad weather or sit through another round of congressional hearings on flight delays?
Probably try to land a plane.
That's a good one.
When you're on a plane, do you prefer the window seat or an aisle seat?
Window.
I love to watch all the geography go by.
I've climbed that mountain.
I've hiked there.
I've done that.
What's your favorite route that you fly a lot now?
Probably flying into Eagle, Eagle Vale.
What happens when you're on a plane?
It gets hopelessly delayed.
You just sit there like everybody else.
Yeah.
But one of the things we're doing at United, it's called Every Flight.
We're getting better at it.
We're not quite there yet.
AI is going to help us with it.
The goal is I've asked the team to get to a point where pretend I'm on a flight that's every single flight if it's delayed.
Pretend I'm on it and I've asked what's going on.
Tell the customers exactly what you would tell me.
So we, like, I told you earlier that, you know, during the shutdown, we had our highest net promoter score days.
That's because we communicated really well with customers.
So I view those when I do have a delayed flight as an opportunity.
I am looking to how are we communicating?
I don't want to get special communication.
I want to hear what we're doing to say, here's what we can do better.
That's one of the things like I really am passionate about doing better at communicating when there's a delay and giving people clear information.
And so I want to hear what we're doing without getting anything special so that we can make it better.
Do you think more moms should bring and dads should bring car seats on airplanes?
Yes, it's safer.
Why?
Just for everyone out there.
I agree with you.
It's safer.
I mean, you know, we've always done it.
Having a seat for a child in a car seat in the unlikely event doesn't happen.
I mean, unlikely event, anything, you know, if there's an incident, the kids are going to be much safer.
But even in turbulence, turbulence happens.
So the accidents on aircraft are really, really rare.
And turbulence is rare, but it does happen.
And a lap child or a child that's not strapped down can get hurt.
What's the earliest acceptable time to have a drink in an airport?
I don't ever drink at an airport.
I don't drink very much.
Recently I was on a plane and the guy, it was me, my nanny, and my three kids were flying.
So we're three and two.
The guy who sits right here, it's a 7 a.m. flight, is drunk.
Yeah.
Is drunk with my little kids.
I was with your husband earlier today and he asked, have other people, you know, drink on airplanes?
Like they drink like fish.
A lot.
I flew a flight this morning at 7 a.m. and there were people ordering Bloody Marys at 7 a.m.
Rules do not apply.
It kind of made me feel sick to my stomach.
Rules do not apply.
At what point do the crew cut passengers off from alcohol?
I don't know for sure.
They're pretty good at knowing what it is.
Our flight attendants, we try to empower them, but also tell them not to be police.
That's not their job.
And, you know, if people are disruptive and creating problems, we'll deal with it after we get the plane on the ground after the fact.
But I don't want them in any kind of conflict situations.
What's the craziest story that's been brought to you about something or a conflict on an airplane or something?
You're like, oh my God, how is that real?
Well, most of them are not PG.
The craziest story.
I think the funniest one, which is PG, the funniest one, it didn't happen on Ireland Island, but it happened on another airline, is a woman flying to India suspected her husband was cheating on her.
And so she got his phone while he was asleep.
And it was when he still had the finger and used his finger to open his phone and found all the text messages and started beating him.
And they diverted the airplane because she wouldn't stop beating him.
Craziest Flight Conflicts00:03:49
So I found that one amusing at least.
I probably shouldn't.
What's your favorite route that United has added this year?
Well, the coolest route, both literatively and figuratively, was Nuke, Greenland.
They do this thing, the head of our network, guy named Patrick Coyle, sends me a deck.
And I started out as a network planner, so I really, I'm into the network, and I'm a history buff and like follow the world and the globe.
And he sends me a route network, and it has the three airport code on it.
And a few years ago, for the first time, like, oh, I had to Google the airport code because we're flying places I didn't know.
So now it's a big game.
Every year when we have the new cities and the routes, they put up like, here's the airport code, Scott, do you know it?
Like, no.
And then they start putting up facts.
And they did it on Nuke.
And, you know, I went through all the facts.
Like, I don't know.
Like, I hadn't heard of the city of Nuke.
Like, I was kind of embarrassed, but that's a pretty cool place to fly.
Do you pick which plane goes to which route based on, you know, if you just invested in new flights or new planes, which one is going to fly on those say that's exciting routes?
Well, I don't personally do it, but Patrick and team do it.
And they do it based on both the characteristics of the airplane.
So there's some airplanes that can only fly certain routes, like the big wide bodies can fly the longest.
Flying to Eagle Vale or to Aspen.
There's some airplanes, because they're airports, small runways surrounded by mountains.
There's some airplanes that can fly in there, some that can't.
And then they do it based on the demand.
So, you know, bigger airplanes tend to fly to bigger cities that have more demand.
What's your favorite place to hike?
In Colorado.
So we've been doing the 14ers.
We've only done 19 of the, there's 54, but 19 of the 14ers.
So I love doing those in Colorado.
We also hike with the kids.
The kids have gotten pretty, you know, the boys especially.
But even Scarlett, who's four, started hiking with us this summer.
What's one Air Force Academy habit that has stuck with you?
Eating fast is one.
And no excuses, ma'am, is my best lesson from the Air Force Academy.
That's one of your basic responses.
Like that's just, that's a life philosophy.
Like if you whine about stuff, like bad stuff happens, you know, the Air Force Academy just got to learn to deal with it.
But there's three things from the Air Force Academy that are anti-habits that I swore I was never going to do after I left.
Not shine my own shoes.
So I try to get them done at the airport.
You got to look, I look down and see how they go.
Maybe that's the thing to take a man again.
But not shine my own shoes.
Not make a bed.
Making a bed is so horribly inefficient.
My wife disagrees, but not make a bed.
And not eat box lunches.
We called them box nasties, you know, these box lunches when we were out, you know, doing stuff.
So those are my three things that I've tried to not do since I left.
Are you an early bird or a night owl?
I'm definitely an early bird.
I prefer to be in bed by 8.30 or 9 at the latest and usually up by 5.30.
Do you take the red-eye flights?
No.
Only to Europe.
I used to, but not anymore.
It's not long enough to sleep.
So the last question we ask on the pod for every episode.
If you could host a dinner party with three people, dead or alive, who's at the table and what are you eating?
That are alive.
Dead or alive?
Oh, dead or alive.
Oh, that makes it easier.
Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln.
Those are my two favorites.
And I'll put George Patton on the list.
And I'm eating whatever they want to eat.
I don't care about food.
Thank you so much for doing this.
Thanks for having me.
I really appreciate doing this.
It's fun.
Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of the Katie Miller Podcast.
Don't forget to like, subscribe, share, and follow.