Americas Transportation: Airlines: American & Southwest HQ Visit

On 9/30, we hosted an investor field trip to Fort Worth and Dallas to meet with American and Southwest. We met with Robert Isom (CEO) and Devon May (CFO) at American and Tom Doxey (CFO) at Southwest in addition to members of both companies' Investor Relations teams. At both meetings, the discussion around shorter-term demand was positive, with both companies noting demand strength has continued despite higher fares in response to significantly higher fuel, with Southwest flagging strong September trends. Given the material move higher in fuel over the last month, both companies are assessing capacity plans, noting there could still be some changes to schedules in December, but that it would be difficult to make changes to October/November. If higher fuel prices persist, both management teams noted there could be downside risk to 2027 growth plans, which we would expect to be the case across the industry. Over the longer-term, both teams were upbeat on margin expansion, which they expec