351 - Guest Co-Host Christina Cassotis. Guest: Brett Burgess, CEO, ATPCO

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1:00Welcome to Airlines Confidential. I'm Scott McCartney wishing everyone a happy Be Kind to Humankind Week. Be Kind to Humankind Week started yesterday, August 25th, and runs to the end of the month, as I'm sure you all know. I'm not sure why one week is designated Be Kind to Humankind. Shouldn't the whole year fall into that category? But I suppose it is a good reminder. For the curious, Be Kind to Humankind Week is a worldwide event established in 1988. We are all encouraged to practice patience while driving, to volunteer, to forgive past grudges, and to uplift others with kind words. So welcome, wonderful, fabulous listeners.

1:45You are all especially excellent this week. And welcome back, most incredible, superb, outstanding co-host, Christina Casodis. I say that with some jest, but sincerely, it is great to be back with you, Christina. We even have a fan letter in the mailbag with a question for you. That's very exciting. Thank you. although I don't, should it be in jest or would you, you know, anyway, it's always good to be. I looked up the origin of Be Kind to Humankind Week, which is fascinating to me. I completely agree with you that yes, this should be something we pay attention to for the whole year, every year.

2:27And I'm very grateful that this has nothing to do, or its origin has nothing to do with airlines or airports, thankfully. Oh, that's a relief. Yeah, isn't it, right? It was actually triggered by a terrible accident in New Jersey, where two men were clinging to an overturned boat and passing boaters refused to help. I mean, what? So yeah, let's be nice to each other and be kind this week and every week. We do have a lot to talk about, a lot of airline and airport news, more announcements from American Airlines. There are changes coming to airports and a rather fascinating privacy issue that has taken off from the Spirit Airlines bankruptcy.

3:10I think this is really interesting. And you, of course, have another one of your very interesting, although somewhat nerdy interviews to bring us. Yeah, pretty nerdy, but very interesting. I talked with Brett Burgess, the CEO of ATP Co. If you haven't heard of ATP Co, you really should listen closely because this is important stuff. ATP Co is the distributor of airfares worldwide. Just about every single airline in the world feeds its prices to ATP Co, and ATP Co distributes it out to third-party sellers like travel agencies. It's a complicated business that is vitally important, and it's a business that's changing in big ways.

3:54So great time to have Brett Burgess on. Brett has a great way of explaining everything, and I think listeners are really going to appreciate hearing from him. I hope, by the way, that listeners appreciated hearing from Ed Bastian last week. I found Ed to be, as usual, very thoughtful and interesting. It was an important conversation. We made some news, Some other outlets picked up on that. So that was great. We were thrilled to bring it to you. I just want to say, I mean, I was excited to hear Ed and I thought you guys had a great conversation. And it was one of those that I've bookmarked along with several others recently that I feel like anybody in the industry should be listening to.

4:40So anyway. Yeah. Been a great run of late. Okay. News this week. Actually, if you listened to last week's podcast, you heard me rant a bit about the lack of premium seating on American Airlines. I talked to somebody in America this week who said I was pretty hard on them. And I guess I was, but I do believe it. So American 737s, for example, you remember from last week, have 24 extra legroom seats, but a Delta 737 is 36. And both United and Southwest have 48 extra legroom seats on their 737-800 size jets. Well, our prayers have been answered, Christina. American announced on Tuesday, a day before the podcast dropped, unless anyone think I'm suggesting we had anything to do with this.

5:30But American announced on Tuesday that it'll be adding extra legroom seats, more first-class seats, and, drumroll please, seat-back entertainment screens to most of its narrow-bodied domestic fleet. But not all of its fleet. Regional jets and older planes nearing retirement won't get the retrofit. But premium seats will grow from 25 % of the narrow-body cabin today at American to 40%, putting American more in line with competitors. This was all very obvious, right? American has a revenue problem, and this stuff is bringing in lots of extra revenue for other big U.S. airlines. Delta began selling Comfort Plus in 2015, and it had 36 Comfort Plus seats on a 737-800 back then.

6:21American said it would begin flying new configurations with more premium seats in 2028. Screens will start showing up that year, too. It will take until the early 2030s to transform most of the fleet. And that, Christina, is my big worry about all this. It's too slow. Once again, there seems to be a real lack of urgency. America said it has been seriously considering this for months. Gosh, I'd hope so. Seems like it should have been seriously considered for like two or three or starting four years ago. I'm told the real issue with the long rollout is certification, getting the FAA to approve new seats and new seating configurations, plus getting new deliveries with new seats from Boeing and Airbus, plus Americans still hasn't selected an in-flight entertainment system provider for the seat back screens.

7:20I get it. This is complicated. You're at the mercy of maintenance capacity. You're at the mercy of government regulators. you're at the mercy of the supply chain and a lot of problems with the supply chain on seats these days. But I still think you should at least look like you're not the same old slowpoke company. I think this is a perfect example for American to say to customers, to employees, to investors, we are in the fight of our lives and we need to move fast. Put pressure on the FAA and manufacturers. Get creative with maintenance scheduling, and maybe even outsourcing to get seats installed in airplanes faster.

8:02Spend the money to get this stuff in the air. Even after certification, your plan, American, is for a three, four, five-year rollout. Five-year rollout, I can hear Bob Crandall screaming all the way from Florida. Maybe this should have been announced as once we get FAA certification, we'll have this done in 18 months, or we're going to go like crazy to get this done in 18 months or whatever it would be. Maybe it should be a two-step rollout where you take a row out of the back of the airplane and you start getting more main cabin extra seats in the fleet ASAP to start selling long before five or six years from now.

8:45Then the second step is new seats, more first class IFE. But you can rearrange the seats a whole lot faster. Look, the American transformation is a lot more complicated than what Southwest did. However, Southwest reconfigured its entire 800 airplane fleet in about a year. Some of the Southwest seats are new, some are older with a new cover on them, just repositioned on the airplane. It took FAA approval. They got that. It took extra time for each plane in maintenance. They managed that. It took massive coordination and a whole lot of effort, but Southwest successfully reconfigured 800 airplanes in less than a year.

9:28And by the way, that's about the same number as in Americans' narrow body fleet. What was most interesting was that Southwest originally announced a multi-year plan, and activist investor Elliott Management screamed, not fast enough. And what happened? Southwest found ways to make it happen faster. And Southwest executives will tell you that Elliott was absolutely right, and pushing them to move faster was ultimately a good thing for Southwest. There's hundreds of millions of dollars of added revenue this year because Southwest got it done faster. But heck, it's Be Kind to Humankind week. So take all the time you want, American.

10:10There is no rush. Better earnings can wait two or three or five more years. Bob Crandall saying, good plan, guys. It's important to be gentle in the competitive business world. Kindness counts. It doesn't matter if you perform as well as your peers. What's important is that you do your best. Oh, Scott, I'm going to disagree with you. I want to be really clear about something. It is kind to be clear and hold people to account. Yeah. That's good. So I think, first of all, I know there's some new folks. There was a shakeup in a lot of Americans' senior leadership. but also specifically to your point here is in communications and marketing.

11:00And they may be able, I mean, they are doing the right thing. And if the messaging is going to matter, that's an easy fix. Yeah. Really, truly. Okay. No, great point. Yeah. And here's, you know, American through its Atlantic Joint Business Alliance is incredibly important to medium-sized airports in the US. Cincinnati, Nashville, Austin, Pittsburgh, Raleigh. We have investment by American as well as British Airways really led and in some cases, Aer Lingus. So we care a lot about American doing well. And I think that it would be kind to continue to insist that their messaging matches the intent of what they're trying to do.

11:44Because I think this is something that could be cleared up internally and externally, right? Everybody wants to be working towards something that's going to make a difference and make everybody feel like we got this. And that's what I'm hoping for. Yeah, no, I look, I think the employees need to see a plan. They need to see, you know, how are we going to catch up? And it can't be a five-year plan. Right. All right. I want to take a moment to thank our sponsors and a special announcement this week from the Executive MBA in Aviation at the University of Colorado, Denver. If you're looking to take your aviation career to the next level, join CU Denver on Wednesday, September 2nd at noon Mountain Time.

12:27It's Wednesday, September 2nd, noon Mountain Time for a special virtual event featuring Charles Duncan, former chief strategy officer at WestJet, partner at Altitude X Aviation Group, and current co-host of Airlines Confidential. Charles, as listeners know, brings more than 30 years of aviation leadership and experience. And Charles teaches aviation strategy in CU Denver's Executive MBA in Aviation Program. So he'll be doing a webinar for people curious about the program, interested in the program, to answer questions. You can learn more and register for that at business.ucdenver.edu. That webinar will be a great opportunity to learn more about the program Wednesday, September 2nd at noon Mountain Time.

13:19We also want to thank longtime sponsor RTX for making airlines confidential possible. At RTX, a century of aerospace and defense innovation shapes a unique perspective. It takes more than technology alone to rapidly advance the future of flight and strengthen global security. It takes the vision to see what's next, adapting expertise and scaling manufacturing capability to deliver where it matters most. Perspective is everything, RTX. Visit rtx.com to learn more. And thanks to Infinity Flight Academy, the path to the flight deck starts long before a pilot reaches the airlines. At Infinity Flight Academy, they're proud to serve as a flight training partner for the American Airlines Cadet Academy, helping prepare the next generation of professional airline pilots.

14:11Infinity Flight Academy's training is structured, standardized, and built around the discipline today's airlines expect from day one. For future pilots pursuing a career at the highest level, Infinity Flight Academy is proud to be part of that journey. Infinity Flight Academy, training tomorrow's airline pilots through the American Airlines Cadet Academy. There's some airport news, Scott. There's more and more of that these days. The board that oversees Washington Dulles Airport voted to approve the$19.9 billion program to rebuild Dulles Airport. The overhaul plan includes$3.75 billion to build new underground tunnels to replace the iconic and widely disliked slash hated people movers at Dulles.

15:04There's also$6.2 billion to reconstruct the main terminal, and work is set to begin in late 2027, according to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. This is a very interesting program because we know that airport infrastructure nationally definitely needs massive upgrades. And what I found fascinating in the recent conversation that you and Charles had with Jeremy Stone about this mobile terminal concept was the conversation around CPE. And cost per in-plane passenger, I mean, that's been around since deregulation. And the idea is that you really are going to lower that by having more emplainments.

15:53It is cost per emplain passenger. So the more emplainments, the lower the cost, which is why if you can spread out a large capital program among lots and lots of passengers, that will keep the cost lower than if you have fewer passengers, which is for those of us who are de-hubbed, what we ended up facing. But I'm really thinking that how this cost gets absorbed is an issue. And taking a look at what's going on with cost per plane passenger at airports nationally, it's climbing. I feel real. Yeah. Big time. I mean, I think we're going to look like the deal of the century in two years because we got our program done early.

16:32Yeah. Right. And right. And so what I'm starting to wonder is, you know, look, there's, there's several ways that we have to rethink, I think, how the system gets funded because it's based on a pretty old model. And, you know, there's some things we can do in the short term, which I'm going to talk again about, you know, raising the PFC, which is not something that I think airlines oppose. I think they oppose in general the way that aviation is taxed. But, you know, there's a vehicle in which through an MII ballot, majority in interest ballot and discussion with our partners as part of our airline operating agreement, they have to agree to the program that we want to float the bonds for, right?

17:19So in essence, they're saying we agree to your capital program. So any changes to the PFC could certainly follow that model, right? Like if you're going to want to raise the PFC and have this be the user funded system that it is, then you could get, you know, you could take the process we're already using through the official statements and offerings and going to the bond market and say, okay, if we all agree, then we'll raise the PFC. I mean, I think there's something to be done there. And I think there's something to be said about the fact, and this came out in your conversation with Ed, in the conversation with Greg Anderson, that the airlines are making more and more of their money in the ancillary and in things that actually don't have as much to do with the number of passengers as to what each passenger spends.

18:14And that's interesting because that sort of runs counter to how the system at airports are set up in order to manage all of this ground capacity that has to be modernized, updated, in some cases expanded in order to accommodate what's coming for future growth and where it's coming from. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the PFC and all, I mean, two things about it. One is I've never quite understood why it's the same everywhere because the costs are different at different airports, right? $4.50 doesn't go very far at LaGuardia, may go, you know, a whole long way. Doesn't anywhere. Yeah. Right.

18:58But it's the same. And what I hear from airports is the reluctance to raise the PFC is, well, there's got to be accountability. We don't want airports just, you know, running spending. Right. And fine. You know, maybe there should be some kind of local, you know, system in place that. But you can do that through the MII is my point. Yeah. We didn't go to the bond market without the airlines saying they would back them. I mean, as was talked about in that conversation around Dulles, you got to find a CPE that's going to be palatable to the airlines, to the bond market and to passengers. Right. That's what you have to find.

19:41But we have a mechanism for doing that through our airline operating agreements that then allow us to go to the market to float bonds. It's already there. Yeah. So that one to me feels like that's easy. I think the harder thing is how do we rethink how the system gets funded? And what does aviation taxation look like? Because it's based on a 50-year-old model and things are changing. I mean, just listening to the conversation around the mobile lounges and what that could do for capacity through construction, somebody has to pay for that. So I don't know. But, you know, the mobile lounge is maybe cheaper than expensive train system.

20:28A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, I my my big thing has been I wish cities would look at airports more as civic infrastructure in the sense of, you know, the local taxpayers through bond programs and all. Maybe they should shoulder some of the cost of building the airport just as they may do, you know, building the convention center or building the sports arena or building bridges or whatever. It is basic infrastructure. And I'm not sure why airline passengers, you know, other than it was an easy way to offload costs of what what historically were the responsibility of the of the local community.

21:15So so there's that. That would be a tough one because then what you'd have is you'd basically go back to having every city council having say over what gets built. And that actually, as somebody running an airport, that makes me nervous. There are city-run airports. This is a hill I will die on. I do not think that that model is as effective as the quasi-public authority model. I just don't. Yeah, it's because your your your accountability is to a city council that has interests. We they're trying to balance the airport with, you know, school buses and, you know, public works and things like that.

21:58Whereas a quasi public has a board that is focused only on the airport. And in some cases, you wouldn't want an airport not to get investment because the local community can't swing it if there is sort of this demand that requires it that is largely, let's say it's largely inbound. Or I don't know. I don't even know what I mean by that. But I do think that that one makes me more nervous because I don't I wouldn't go I wouldn't want to work for a city run airport, candidly. No, but I there there has to be some middle ground. Can't you can't you have some city funding into airport authority or. I don't know, because then then people, you know, it's I think it's it's who who's paying the bills right now in airports.

22:52The bills are getting paid and the infrastructure is supported by the federal government through a lot of the AIP programs that take care of taxiways and runways in apron area because that stuff is really expensive. And that comes through, you know, the airport improvement program funding. And then there's the PFCs that are paid for by the passenger per segment. And then there's the revenue that we generate from parking and, you know, our percentage from concessions and advertising, et cetera. So none of that is local, which means that our accountability is to the industry. And if it is local, it's coming in through philanthropy, like in our case, for certain types of projects that, you know, the airlines wouldn't necessarily put at the top of their list.

23:37Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. A lot to look at. A lot to look at. And yes, you know, the bottom line of this is the price keeps going up, right? 20 billion to rebuild Dulles. Look at what LAX is spending and it's going to get more and more expensive to travel, period. Yes. And so the question is, who pays and how? So yes, that was a big one. Also, Palm Beach, the airport code officially changed from PBI to DJT. So travelers will now see DJT on tickets and baggage tags for what is now President Donald J. Trump International Airport. And one other story out of Florida. Well, actually, this one is fascinating to me.

24:25Out of the New York Bankruptcy Court, but dealing with a Florida airline, Google offered to pay$10 million to buy all the internal business data from defunct Spirit Airlines. That means internal emails and reports and analysis and customer data and employee records. Apparently, a third-party company would scrub the data of any personal identifying stuff before Google got it. And the tech giant says it wants the data to actually help train AI because apparently AI, you know, maybe they'd like to learn how to take airlines into bankruptcy. I don't know, but it just seems a little silly. So a U.S.

25:06bankruptcy court delayed a hearing to approve this sale because, you know, here they come again, the Association of Flight Attendants, CWA, AFA, which I think is fantastic, representing the spirit crew, filed an objection to the sale. And I just think I love that flight attendants were the ones who are like, hey, hang on here. Yeah. And I just think this is fascinating that somebody is saying, hold on a minute, and it's the flight attendants again. They seem to be the ones who call things out and get us to pay attention. So well done, ma 'am. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, Sarah Nelson in the AFA, really on top of things.

25:50And, you know, this isn't cheap, right? They got to have their lawyers and they're going to get billed for it and, you know, file that. But I think it's great that they stepped up and they're really stepping up for everybody who works at any company. This is not just a flight attendant issue by any means. My friend Jeff Shane pointed out to me an excellent LinkedIn post on this by Timothy O 'Neill Dunn, who's a longtime industry executive consultant and former head of international technology for WorldSpan. He was also a founding team member at Expedia. He knows his stuff. And he had some great points on this.

26:28O 'Neill Dunn says that the package Google wants includes roughly 100 million corporate emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, 30 million lines of proprietary code, 175 ,000 employee records. Obviously, that's the flight attendant's interest. Dating back to 1986 and billions of transaction logs. He points out that while a vendor to be hired and paid by Google, by the way, would be told to de-identify the data, what's called referential integrity would be preserved. So any AI likely could reconstruct whatever is scrubbed, right? There's enough hints in there for referential integrity. They can, the AI will reconstruct it, but there's no accountability in this in the first place.

27:29Who's going to check to see if Google handles this stuff properly? No one. Who's going to protect 17 ,000 former Spirit employees or Spirit vendors or reporters who communicated with Spirit, for example? I pulled the flight attendant's objection from the bankruptcy court and really thought I was smart. Kudos again to AFA and Sarah Nelson, because this is not just an airline issue. The AFA objection notes the de-identification requirement only applies to consumer data. Customer profiles, loyalty, free spirit data, the loyalty program, active email addresses, chat sessions, call recordings, telephone numbers, website analytics, DOT complaints are all designated not included.

28:21That's all the consumer stuff. But time card information, employee data and employee records, employee business travel records, corporate and crew training records, payroll records, employee tax forms, for crying out loud, and employee documents, including disciplinary cases and everything else. Those are all included. Decades of payroll, timekeeping, training, travel, recruiting files are included. A flight attendant's disciplinary correspondence, a crew training deficiency, a leave or accommodation request, an internal team's exchange about staffing or scheduling grievances or payroll adjustment history, all included.

29:03emails between executives. The AFA objection says, quote, the employee data is far more confidential than the customer data, yet receives far less protection than the customer data. And, you know, inside a company, there's an understanding that internal communications are private, that personal data is private, that disputes and ideas and lunch dates and expense accounts and tax forms and everything else, that's not stuff you post on the internet. So it seems wrong for creditors to have this information to sell in the first place. But let's see how this plays out. Yeah. Well, to your point, and I want to emphasize credit to Sarah Nelson and to Timothy O 'Neill Dunn.

29:51I follow him on LinkedIn as well. And I felt like I learned something from that post. And anytime Sarah gets involved and the AFA gets involved, I'm intrigued. So I think that I give them a lot of credit for taking this on on behalf of staff. And I'm sure it's going to raise awareness among a lot of people. You know, I live in a world where we're subject to Freedom of Information Act requests at any point because we're government. But a lot of private companies don't think about this. And this is something that I think will probably send shivers down the spines of many people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

30:36And if you don't recall, we had Sarah Nelson on back a year or two in a terrific session with Doug Parker. OK, one other quick news story before we move on to our guest. This one falls into the category of deja vu all over again. And I hate to see this, but perhaps inevitable and perhaps expected. Politico had a story saying that Federal Aviation Administration officials are raising concerns about the performance of the main contractor, the aggregator, overseeing the Trump administration's overhaul of the nation's air traffic control system. One FAA official told Politico that Periton, a Herndon, Virginia-based contractor with little prior FAA or air traffic control experience, we talked about that before, was, quote, not meeting the moment, end quote.

31:33This is just eight months after the FAA made a big splash hiring Periton with a$1.5 billion contract to coordinate the overhaul of air traffic control technology. Story said unhappiness could result in scaling back the company's role. Uh-oh, is this, here we go again. The history of air traffic control modernization in the U.S. is literally covered, splattered with problems between the agency and contractors. Granted, The administration has set a crazy timeline to get this done within its four-year term in office. But the problem demands rapid-fire fixing, too. Why it hired a contractor new to air traffic control is one mystery.

32:23The public reasoning was that Periton is an experienced systems integrator for the Pentagon and others. So just what the FAA needs, it does have a lot of government experience, just not FAA. Let's hope this is just a kick in the seat to get things moving faster and not the first sign of the next big failure. Yeah, I hear, hear. Yeah. All right. This this really is UC Denver EMBA and Aviation Week at Airlines Confidential. We mentioned Charles Duncan's webinar and now our guest this week happens to also be on the faculty at that really amazing MBA program. So let's bring in Brett Burgess. Brett Burgess is president and CEO of ATP Co., airline tariff publishing company, really the central backbone of the pricing and reservation world.

33:16ATP Co. collects and distributes something like 99 % of all pricing data worldwide. Brett has been in the job since February. Immediately before that, he led Jeppesen ForeFlight, a Boeing company that provides safety-critical flight data and software used by airlines and pilots globally. Brett has had senior leadership roles at Sabre in airline distribution and pricing, and before that, he was a management consultant at Bain. Perhaps most notably, he's a fellow faculty member at the University of Colorado Denver's Executive MBA in Aviation program, taught his course right after mine, so we probably have a lot to talk about there as well.

34:00Brett has a bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University and an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management. He's based in Denver, Colorado. Brett, welcome to Airlines Confidential. Thank you, Scott. And thank you for the kind introduction. I can say confidently that you were a tough act to follow. So teaching after you in that program, I got a huge kick out of it. But the students definitely loved your class. I love that group of students. Really, really fun, fun cohort, incredible talent in the room. So it really was fun. Definitely. All right. So as you know, we always start with the Ben Baldanza question.

34:43How did you get into this crazy business? Yeah, it's a great question. You know, sometimes I feel like I'm still a total rookie. You know, so many of the people that I get to work with on a daily basis have been in this industry for decades. And my time directly in the industry started in 2013. But my interest and passion for aviation and travel started well before that. My grandfather was a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Corps, which is, you know, obviously the predecessor to the Air Force. And he flew the B-17 and the B-25 during World War II. I don't believe he actually saw combat, but he became a training pilot.

35:27And the first flight I can remember ever in life was actually in my grandfather's Cessna 172 when I was five years old. And I didn't take another flight for another 13 years. And that was a commercial flight. So I, you know, I grew up just feeling like flight was something people did. And my uncle was a maintainer on the C-141 and the C-5. So, you know, in a way, flight is in my blood. Yeah. And I've always just carried a fascination for it. And then in my undergraduate, I studied management and information systems and came out of college around the time that, you know, the dot-com bubble was busting.

36:11And I was fortunate enough to find a great role and opportunity at Baring Point where I focused on technology development. And it wasn't until I was at Bain and doing some business development for some partners in the office in Dallas that I discovered this really fascinating intersection of travel, aviation, and technology. And it involves huge data sets, a lot of analytics and statistics. And I was instantly hooked when I discovered that and that actually, you know, became what I wanted to do when I left consulting. So when I left Bain & Company, I joined Sabre and got to join their technology leadership team and spent a lot of time learning the industry, learning the technology that runs the industry and understanding the data that flows behind everything that we do in the industry and the importance of the interconnectivity and the interdependencies that we have.

37:08That's my story. It's hard to imagine more important data to the industry than fare data. So explain ATP COSUM. There's a lot of mystery of how ticket prices get constructed and distributed. They're constantly changing. Airlines file millions and millions of prices. but it's different than pricing one fare from Cleveland to Albuquerque. It all gets put together. So tell us how it happens. Absolutely. So the shortest version, I guess, I can tell of how it happens is airlines file what is called fares. And the fares that they file with ATP Co. contain all of the information that you need to construct an offer on the airline's behalf.

38:05And we aggregate and normalize that data from hundreds, over 450 airlines actually across the world. And we then package and redistribute that data to partners throughout the industry, such as online travel agencies, GDSs, and other customers who subscribe to our pricing and fares data. So that's maybe the simplest answer I can provide. The somewhat longer answer is ATPCO has actually been in business for something like 80 years. And it formed initially as part of the regulated commercial aviation industry in the United States. It was actually a tariff department that was a part of the Air Transport Association, ATA, which was the predecessor to today's Airlines for America.

38:56Sure. And the responsibility that HPCO had at that time was essentially filling the role of providing the government with visibility and transparency into the fares that were being charged as a regulated part of the commercial aviation industry. Right. That was when the government was setting or approving fares. Approving fares. That's right. And so airlines had to file that. So it started actually not as airlines filing for distribution to consumers, but airlines filing as a way of fulfilling their regulatory obligations to the U.S. government. And that progressed. And then in 1965, ATP Co. was officially spun out of ATA and became its own company.

39:37And it became ATP Co. in the 70s. So our mission has been really consistent since that time, which is to help airlines distribute offers into the market in the way that they desire to do it. And that's changed considerably over the years, right? I mean, I just threw out like Cleveland to Albuquerque. Does everybody file a fare for Cleveland to Albuquerque? Or is there some constraints and a fare is constructed when somebody has a query for how much does it cost on Tuesday to go to Cleveland? Yeah. Yeah. Well, so the answer to your first question is really interesting. Most airlines who fly routes that are scheduled file fares with ATPCO.

40:28And when they file fares with ATPCO, it allows them to reach points of sale that they may not be able to reach themselves on their own. Some airlines don't actually use ATPCO to distribute and rely simply on travelers visiting their website to become aware of their schedules and what's available. But for those airlines who do file fares and want to go from, in your example, Cleveland to Albuquerque, it is a very complicated process, not only for how airlines file that data with us, but also how the offer itself gets constructed. Because to your point, what sounds like a really simple route, Cleveland to Albuquerque, may not be.

41:12There may be, you know, some airlines may offer connecting service instead of direct service. And so the math and the statistics that go into constructing the offer that will fulfill your search is quite sophisticated. And it happens billions of times every day and all over the world. You can imagine the kind of statistics that have to go into it to avoid silly responses. For example, going from Cleveland to London to Albuquerque. You don't want that kind of fare showing up. It doesn't make sense, but theoretically it's possible. So it is a lot of work and effort to keep the data clean and also to actually build offers that make sense.

41:55Right. Right. And not only are there different airlines serving that route, but they can take you through multiple hubs or each airline. At least, you know, U.S. airline could take you through multiple hubs and they may price differently depending on if you're, you know, going through Dallas or going through Chicago. That's right. And the pricing decisions are also, you know, quite sophisticated and becoming even more so. For example, price today conveys much more or a fare today conveys much more than simply what it costs to get on a plane and go take your flight. Fares include rules about when that fare applies.

42:41The classic example is, does it require a Saturday night stay? It can also include limitations on days of the week that it's available. The fare is incredibly rich with information about what the airline is offering, what benefits come with it, and when it can be sold. And to your point, all of those variables affect the price. And the fare represents the price point that an airline has decided to make available in the market that includes all of the features and benefits that they want to convey with that fare. So it's much more sophisticated than it used to be. And it's becoming even more sophisticated as we go forward, as I'm sure you've heard and listeners will have heard, you know, the concept around dynamic pricing.

43:33And the math and the approach to how that works is incredibly sophisticated. It also holds tremendous potential for airlines and their ability to reach travelers with a compelling offer. Yeah. And I want to talk about that more, but just to get my head around, I mean, we talked about all that. And then there's the reality that each itinerary, each flight has multiple fair buckets, right? Right. For there's basic economy, there's there's first class, there's everything in between. And then you have to keep track, I assume somehow of how many seats an airline is willing to sell at a particular price point.

44:20And that all comes through ATPCO, right? So, yeah, there's some nuance there. One of the requirements that ATP Co. has actually is that because we hold all of the data on the world's fare offers, we have to be very careful about how we use that data. And so one of the things that we don't do, we don't make pricing recommendations and we also don't even compose offers. So we distribute what airlines ask us to distribute into the market. And then as those offers are generated, let's say you're on a travel agency's website and you're searching for this flight from Cleveland to Albuquerque, the website will actually go check with each of the airlines to determine what is still available in which fare buckets.

45:13So they consume the data from us. They use the rules that are contained in the data they get from ATPCO to actually compose the offer and put that in front of the traveler. But the responsibility for making sure that the fares are still available is on the end point of sale. And they have to make a check with the airline to see what's available. In terms of ATPCO's physical presence, I visited many years ago. It is basically an unmarked building right near the Douglas Airport. Is that still where it all happens? Are there data centers around the world? How does it work? Yeah, we are not located in that building anymore.

45:57And by the time I started in February this year, the company had moved out of that, but just barely. So we just moved into a beautiful office, still in the same area. It's across the toll road from Dulles now in a high-rise building. And we retired the building that you have in mind. And I think the benefit of that is we get this gorgeous office space. The downside is some of the longtime employees will recall that they had easy Dulles parking by parking in our parking lot because it was actually on the airport campus. So kind of a backdoor to the airport. So that's a downside. But that's where we are.

46:37We have employees all over the world. There's 475 employees of ATP Co. So most of them concentrate in the Dulles area, but we have sales office in Singapore and another in London. And our data is both collected and distributed all over the world. We have technologies ranging from mainframe technologies that help to manage the large volume of the fair filing data all the way to the most modern cloud technologies you can think of. And that is a major point of emphasis for our team is investing currently to ensure our data is in a place where AI can make best use of it. And that's a lot of our focus right now is on the technology side.

47:23But definitely a global reach and all of the things you would expect to come with a modern technology company. So let's talk about AI and dynamic pricing. I think people are really leery of this, of the notion of customization of fares. I'm only going to get offered this price and somebody else gets offered a cheaper price or whatever. But tell me how this works in a world of airlines giving you all this data, but somehow the data can dynamically change with AI working on it. Yeah, yeah. Fascinating area to explore. When airlines talk about dynamic pricing, I think it's gotten misunderstood. stood.

48:19And there's a belief, a prevailing belief that what airlines are trying to do is charge you one price and me another price and we get the same thing. And they're taking advantage of a difference in willingness to pay. What they're actually focused on is understanding who you are as a traveler. So what they offer to you, it contains the attributes that you value. So it's not the case that they're trying to gouge you or gouge me because we're willing to pay more for a ticket. What they're trying to do is match what are the things I value and make sure they include that. My personal trends, when I shop for travel, I will not prioritize the lowest price ticket.

49:08I will prioritize the ticket that has the shortest duration. I travel so much, I just want to get to where I'm going. right? But other people are looking for the lowest price. If the airline knows what I prefer to travel with or how I prefer to travel, then they will show me an offer that's different, perhaps, than what they'll show you and based on what you value. So that is really the essence. When we talk about dynamic offers, dynamic pricing, that's the idea behind it. The math and science that goes with it then requires a much broader source of inputs because in order for, I can set up all of the product SKUs, if you will, that I want to, and I can have an engine that determines when I put those SKUs together in a certain combination, what's the total price of that bundle going to be.

50:05And there's a lot of research going on into the math and science behind that. And ATPCO obviously is a part of that body of research in the industry as well. But the additional information they need is, okay, but who are you as the traveler? And what are the attributes that you care about so that I can put the right product bundle together, price it, and put it in front of you so you can make better decisions? And that is really the transformation that we're seeing right now that is shifting away from statically filed fares that change based on the fare availability and moving more to dynamically constructed offers that contain the components you and I value the most.

50:51That kind of an approach has been attempted through other means that is not dynamic pricing. So for example, with ATPCO, we have a type of fare called fare by rule. And the rule set is what actually helps to determine what the price should be depending on which rules get triggered. And so some airlines are using that kind of an approach to emulate or simulate the same kind of outcome that dynamic pricing might go for, but in a less mathematically sophisticated way, perhaps. So there's all kinds of ways that airlines are trying to do this. Another one that airlines have been pursuing for over a decade now is the idea of branded fares, the brands being bundles of or components of the offer that a traveler might value, lounge access, early boarding, things like that.

51:48And those things come with the brand or don't come with the brand. So your example of basic economy is a good example of one of those branded fares. Long answer to the question, but that's really what we're talking about when we talk about time pricing. Yeah, no, it's also fascinating. With branded fares, does ATPCO make that happen or does that have to live in the airline website or directly with Sabre or Amadeus or whoever? Yeah. So airlines will file their branded fares data with ATPCO and ATPCO will distribute it in the same way that we would distribute non-branded fares data. So the branded fares concept was built to use the existing kind of rails and distribution methodologies that all of the other fare data was used for.

52:38And that's how they show up. Now, branded fares, they come with special attributes and additional data that makes it clear how to interpret them. And airlines have worked closely with their partners to help with the presentation aspect to them. because the introduction of branded fares at first in some markets was confusing to travelers and it took a little bit of education. But I think we're by large parts through that education period and travelers now understand a lot better that if I buy a basic economy ticket, I'm getting a great price, but I'm also foregoing some other things that might come with a higher price ticket.

53:21So the industry is moving towards what IATA has called offers and orders, right, away from the old PNR model. Offers and orders is a retailing model using the new distribution capability, NDC. What is it and how is ATP Co. supporting that shift? Yeah, great question. So first to clarify, offer order and NDC are not the same thing. Okay. The offer order approach or paradigm can make use of NDC as a distribution method, but we shouldn't confuse the two. So offer order, the move toward offer order is really about making airlines behave more like modern retailers. In other words, a retailer today, especially when you're shopping online and you have so many products that you can see when you're shopping online, the retailer decides what products to show you and how to bundle products together to complete the intent of your shopping session.

54:38And the modern retailer determines what price they're going to charge for that bundle. And then once you've bought it, we all experience this. The retailer then manages what you've bought as an order. And that's a shift to how offers and orders have been fulfilled, both constructed and fulfilled, using the traditional fare filing methodology. So we, as I described earlier, we've distributed fares, booking classes, rules. Airlines provide availability responses on those fares through systems that essentially use the data we give them to reconstruct the offer. And then they represent the ticket or the purchase of that in historical legacy technologies like the PNR, the passenger name record.

55:31And modern airline retailing turns that around with offer order, where the airline creates the offer, potentially dynamically priced and likely bundled to include the components that a traveler wants. And then when the customer accepts that offer, that offer becomes an order and it becomes managed as an order with the different components that make up the offer. The idea being that taking an approach like this allows airlines to construct offers that are more relevant to the traveler that they're talking to. It also allows airlines to differentiate their offer from other airlines and allows them to put products into the market that are better aligned to their retailing strategy or to their revenue strategy at the end of the day.

56:22So it really, Offer Order, is a story of airline differentiation. And the technologies involved, ATP Co. is very involved in helping airlines understand how to navigate the transition. So if you're going to build offers but not price them using the traditional fare approach, then you have to have a different means of exchanging product information. and ATP Co. has built technology that helps to convey that product information across technology systems so that it can be defined and understood in a consistent way. And we call that our product catalog or product data exchange. And there's other examples of that.

57:07So offer order really represents a paradigm shift in how airlines distribute their offers. But there's some things that will also still, the needs they have will be the same. Interlining is still complicated. Sharing offers across different airlines, especially where those different airlines have divergent revenue strategies can become a challenge. And so HPCO is in a great place to help resolve some of those things. So what would be a practical example? What would I get in an offer that would be different from just a plain old price query? Sure. Well, you can probably today find offers in a fair that are going to be the same as an offer that you get from an airline, but you may have to dig for it.

57:59And the reason for that is the paradigm in flight search has always been low price led. So you create in a huge matrix, all of the possible connecting flights, all of the associated fares and the prices attached to those fares. You put them all together and then essentially you sort by price and you take your top 250 and the rest gets truncated. Well, if I'm somebody who prefers to find a non-changeable, non-refundable business class ticket, and I'm willing to pay a little bit extra for that kind of an experience, that's not going to come out in the first 250 lowest cost results. And so that's probably the biggest difference, Scott, is it's not that airlines are dreaming up wholly new to the world, things that they can provide a traveler that nobody can get today, but the retailing experience is improved because I don't have to search for it so hard.

59:03In some cases, the airline will actually, like I will learn something about what's available on that airline because the offer is being made more directly and more inclusively on what I'm looking for. And therefore, the airline's chance at an upsell to me as a traveler is greater. So that is what I believe airlines are pursuing. And in so doing, improving the travel experience from the very beginning, because I don't have to look so hard to find what I'm looking for. And also, I get a product that I really value. So when I actually go to the airport and get on the plane, you know, it's now about fulfilling that offer.

59:45But you started in a pretty good way by helping me find the right product. Okay. So, Direct Connect. I'm curious if because airlines have been pushing the notion of reservation systems directly connecting with them. Right. Been an issue. American Airlines quite famously went a little far and pissed off corporate customers and had to rescind a lot of stuff. But, you know, I'm sure you know this well through Sabre experience and everything else. What is the future for ATP Co. in a world where there is more direct connection with airlines themselves? Yeah, great question. And honestly, that's a question I had before I took this job.

1:00:36What is the future for ATP Co. if everything is supposedly going direct? And what I've learned since I joined and got a much better onboarding deep dive into not only what we do, but how much of it we do. There's some interesting things to share. First of all, in the last five years, the number of fares filed with ATPCO has grown at double digits each year, double digit percentages. So the intensity with which airlines use ATP Co has grown. At the same time, the number of changes, so not only the absolute number of fares, but the number of changes that airlines make to those fares on a daily basis has grown in a similar way.

1:01:27and uh and so what that means is on on a daily basis we have 447 million fares in the database and airlines change on average 18 to 20 million of those fares daily and we then turn around and distribute all of those changes within an hour to the market and make sure that those offers are making it out to the endpoints. And so that's data point number one, I suppose, is in spite of this idea that airlines would like to make their offers more directly, at the same time, they're still using ATPCO to help them get their offers into the market. And I think what that says is airlines are becoming increasingly sophisticated about the channels they choose to distribute through.

1:02:17and they also recognize there are some travelers that they won't be able to reach through some kind of direct connect or directly on their website and therefore they still value the ability to distribute those offers through other points of sale. Huh, huh. It does seem like it has gotten so complex and so huge. I mean, all those fairs, all those changes, it's just hard to imagine not having a central clearinghouse for all of that complexity. Well, you know, it's a little self-serving for me to agree with you, but I agree with you. And there's a reason why we do what we do and we've been doing it for so long is because it is actually quite efficient.

1:03:06Another example is in March of this year when the conflict with Iran and the surrounding countries happened and the oil prices spiked, as you've covered this extensively, airlines needed a way to affect their pricing globally quickly. because airlines quickly realized that the jet fuel price was going up so much that they did not have the ability to compensate for it and they needed to raise the price to do that. And ATP Co. was the way they did it. And during that period of time, our volumes were quadruple what they normally would be. So instead of 18 to 20 million fare changes a day, we spiked to as much as 80 million in a day.

1:04:03And that was essentially airlines looking at their total fare structures. And there's different ways that ATPCO makes this easy to do. Some airlines just increased their price. Some airlines added surcharges. And we have kind of special categories for how they do that. So it was an incredibly efficient way for airlines to get price changes out in a go globally and also has helped them keep up with the fluctuations since then. And so it's a good example of really how efficient a system like this can be. And I think it points to, back to the earlier question, you know, my reason to believe ATP Co still has a lot of important roles to play in the industry, even with the concept of directly generating offers for travelers.

1:04:59Uh-huh. Uh-huh. In a given day, are changes made continuously or are there sort of uploads every two hours or that kind of thing? It depends on the airline. You know, some airlines do it more or less frequently than others. Some do it as needed. Some do it as a matter of just competitive dynamics. I think Oscar talked about this a few weeks ago. talking about his experience at United and how United treated that. Every airline has a different revenue management approach and a different strategy on how they are going to respond to competitive moves in the market. And so ATVCO provides the ability for them to update their pricing as often as they need to, but it is done today still in a batch type mode because that is the lowest common denominator that's easy.

1:05:49It's an easy technology for the most number of companies to adopt. And so that's the way we've done it. And that means we have kind of pre-scheduled times where, assuming your filing is in by a certain time, it goes out in the next batch. If we miss that one, it goes in the next one. But it's usually not longer than a few hours. Mm-hmm. So over time, as technology has advanced, as revenue management, the science of revenue management has advanced, airline pricing has gotten more complicated, more and more complicated. And sometimes that really frustrates consumers. Do you see it getting to a point where it'll get easier and simpler, or are more tools just going to add to the complexity?

1:06:36Yeah, there's a lot of focus on this question. And I don't know that I have any great research to back it up. But my personal belief is at the end of the day, the customer decides, you know, dictates everything that we do. And I think that's true even for airlines. And I think travel search has gotten so complex that travelers are looking for an easier way. And I believe that the technologies that are available to now, including AI, are serving to simplify that search. Now, simplifying it for the traveler doesn't mean that it's simpler in the background. And so we're still learning the patterns of how to facilitate what travelers want to do in their AI channels in a way that makes it simpler for the traveler, but we may need to introduce some new technologies.

1:07:34And actually, that may increase the complexity in the background. We don't really know that yet. That's still work that's unfolding. But I think travelers really do want it to be more simple. And for that reason, we've seen significant participation by travelers in the AI channel. We're not seeing the booking yet, And so we can talk about the importance of trust in commerce. Certainly, that's what we're experiencing right now in the AI channel. But when it comes to inspiration and search, we see very clear interest from travelers and clear interest from airlines figuring out how they participate in this new channel.

1:08:17So I think that probably holds the most potential really to simplify it. because instead of scrolling through webpages where you're presented with hundreds of different options and you're trying to figure out what's the difference between this one and that one, if you had an assistant that could just help you find the one that matches what you're looking for, that understands your preferences and then returns a fare that matches that, I think that's a really compelling value proposition and one that personally I'm advocating that as an airline community we lean into, because I think it brings tremendous value to the traveler and the potential of more direct relationships with the traveler, which, as we talked about earlier, can lead to more upsell opportunities for a given passenger.

1:09:05So you can see or track people actually using ChatGBT to, hey, find me a flight to Cleveland on Tuesday, or, you know, hey, Google, I want a trip to Los Angeles on Thursday. Are people using AI agents for that? Is it increasing quite a bit or moderately? Or what would you say? They are. They are using it, and it is increasing. And I think Skift recently did a really nice piece on the travelers adopting AI to help with their travel planning. And so I think we're seeing that grow. ATPCO doesn't see that directly because ATPCO is not involved in the active process of creating search results. And we're not involved in the booking process either.

1:09:59We get some of the data on the back end when it comes to taxes and settlement between various entities in the ecosystem. But we're not a part of that live shopping or live booking process. So we don't see it. Our consultants do, though. So this is an area that we're actively researching. And what we're seeing is really significant participation by travelers in the AI channel. and depending on the service that they use or the service that's responding in their chat, the results are quite accurate. But we're also seeing that it stops at the booking. So people are getting referred out to an Expedia or referred out to an airline website to complete the booking.

1:10:45So it's not really a well-defined model yet. Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. Fascinating. Well, Well, Brett, this has been most interesting. Good luck with it all. I think you've really taken on some fascinating challenges here. And I look forward to checking back and keeping abreast of all that's going on. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity, Scott. And all the best. Still a huge fan and a huge listener. So I look forward to hearing what else you have up in store for the rest of the year. That's great. That's great. Thanks so much. All right. We will be right back with more on Airlines Confidential.

1:11:28Promotional support provided by the ultimate avgeek website, the archive.net, a vast collection of airline memorabilia, timetables, route maps, rare cabin and airport photos, special flights and more all at the archive.net, the hub of air transport history. Thanks again to Brett. Before we get to the mailbag, I want to thank Cerium for its support of Airlines Confidential. Serium offers the most accurate and precise data and analytics to enable airlines to optimize planning, operations, and passenger services. The right intelligence drives operational efficiencies, enables you to predict market shifts, and helps airlines respond quickly to maximize revenue, manage costs, and seize commercial opportunity.

1:12:12Visit serium.com for more. And we want to thank Ontario International Airport for its support of Airlines Confidential. ONT just launched the ONT Bold program, a proposed vision to transform the airport's facilities to streamline the passenger journey while also creating jobs, growing the regional economy, and building on ONT's legacy as a global gateway. The program includes plans for a new terminal, a multi-story parking garage, upgrades to existing terminals, enhanced roadways, and new utilities. The ONT BOLD program is early in the planning phase, so visit flyontario.com slash BOLD, B-O-L-D, to learn more and join the journey to ONT's boldest chapter yet.

1:13:02Okay, Christina, loyal listener Daniel from Atlanta has a question for you. Christina, thank you for your guest host work on the podcast. I appreciate getting an airport leader's perspective on issues. As an airport leader, what do you weigh in terms of pros and cons for being part of the TSA screening partnership program and TSA Gold Plus? These seem like great ways to bypass budget cycles in order to get new technology in quicker and avoid disruptions when there's a government shutdown, but there's only been limited buy-in to those programs. Thank you, Daniel. What do you think? Well, I think, first of all, great question and something that a lot of us are looking at.

1:13:49I know a couple of my colleagues, Tampa, Charleston, Des Moines, have signed up and expect implementation sometime, I think, in 2027. The way that we're looking at this, well, first of all, we have all brand new equipment in our brand new terminal. So I think one of the things that we want to understand is, you know, this is different than the program that they had. I can't remember the name of it. something where, because I know Sarasota has a program where it's already privatized, but this TSA Gold program appears to go a lot further in looking at screening operations technology and maintenance.

1:14:39And it seems to be tailoring their services through Gold Plus specifically to each airport. So what we're trying to understand is what are the differences and what are we looking at in terms of, is there anything that's going to be different in terms of security outcomes? Does it maintain or demonstrably improve? Is it meeting minimum TSA requirements or is there something extra that we would see? What about passenger experience? How do we think about surge times and what does that do in terms of staffing? What about, are there any operational control issues that would change because still TSA would be overseeing this program?

1:15:25What about, is there a material acceleration in technology deployment of screening technology that we don't already have? Is there something coming that would go to the TSA Gold Airports first? What about workforce? Where does that fit in? You know, the transportation security officers who are already working in TSA, would they get rehired? Are we going to have to start over with new staff? Obviously, is there an economic or some sort of cost impact to us as airports? And then, you know, in terms of governance and risk, one of the things that we would be looking at is if something goes wrong, where does that risk sit?

1:16:08So we know how it works with TSA today. And we are very, very lucky in Pittsburgh. Through the government shutdowns, we have seen minimal call-offs. There's quite a bit of, I would say, support from the community at large when something like that happens. but we're watching as these programs start and certainly taking a look at this because it is something that TSA is offering. So those are the types of things we're considering. I think it's a, you know, to me, it's a question of, well, who's going to benefit here? Is it the airport that's going to benefit or is it TSA that's going to benefit?

1:16:48And maybe by TSA benefiting, the airport does benefit. So that's what we're trying to understand. And, you know, I've had some quick conversations with colleagues around this. And, and yeah, I think we're, we're all looking at it. And given the fact that we just opened all of that new infrastructure in November, this is, this is something we're looking at, but we're also still working through our punch list to finalize what we built or opened in November. So it's, it's not the first thing we're looking at, but it's on the list. All right. I got one for you. Nick. Yes, this one's for you. So Nick from the Mariana Islands wrote to say, gentlemen.

1:17:31I've been there by the way, and love that we have listeners all the way out in the Mariana Islands. This says gentlemen, so I'll read it anyway. I love the show, but I'm sorry. I have to criticize you here for giving American Airlines a pass for having two flights with the same call sign in the air at the same time. There is absolutely no excuse for that. It's an extraordinarily easy fix and has been implemented many other places. You simply need to change the call sign of one or both by adding a letter to the end. If there's even a small chance of both planes being near each other, you file one as AA-2482A and one as AA-2482B.

1:18:18It doesn't affect reservations, systems, or customers. The only people that know are ATC, the pilots, and the dispatchers. This problem has been solved over and over again by many airlines, including American Airlines. Their failure on this one is just negligence, not some deep problem of lack of flight numbers. So there you go, Scott. Yeah, no, I listen, I think it's an excellent point. And, and, and I want to thank Nick for, for bringing that up. I just, I love that we have the most intelligent, most informed listeners out there. Really great. You, you had, speaking of dispatchers, you had some Oh, yeah.

1:19:03I agree. Yes. Speaking of the best listeners. Interested and engaged. The smartest listeners. That's right. Yes. The best, most interesting, most engaged listeners. We hosted the AAAE Association of American Airport Executives Northeast Chapter Annual Conference. I was in Pittsburgh recently, and lots of people attended. and I had welcomed everybody. And I was approached after the first session by a young woman named Sydney Ream, who is an account executive at Luminix AI. And she was actually a couple of our retirees had come to see a bunch of us who are still working at the airport. And I was talking to two former heavy equipment operators and drivers.

1:19:55And this woman was standing there. She said, I don't mean to be rude, but my dad and I listen to Airlines Confidential and we love listening to the podcast. And my dad said, if you ever get a chance to meet her, meaning me, you have to take a picture. So I thought that was really sweet. And her dad is Tim Ream. He's a dispatcher for FedEx ground. And we took a picture. I think she sent it to her dad. I think she also posted it on LinkedIn. And I said, I'd give her a shout out and tell you, Scott, that good job. You're inspiring industry folks who've been around for a long time, like her dad and younger folks who are coming up in the industry and they're learning a lot.

1:20:39So thank you to Tim and Sydney. Yes. Yes. It was really, it was really fun. Oh, love that. Love that. All right. That's all for this week. I'll be back next week with Dave Helfman, who's fresh off a big award he received from the Global Business Travel Association. And we'll have our roving correspondent, Chris Sloan, who has been, lucky Chris, has been roving in cold climates this hot summer. Have a great week, everyone. Thanks for listening. This podcast is produced by Mass Media. Info at massmedia.net.