Recently, United Airlines reported its second-quarter earnings for 2025.
The company said its profits beat Wall Street expectations, and that the airline grew both its earnings and pre-tax margin in the first half of 2025 relative to the same time period in 2024. The pre-tax earnings totaled $1.2 million, and its pre-tax margin was 8.2%.
United attributed its growth to increased revenue across a variety of product tiers, including a 5.6% year-over-year increase in revenue from premium cabin sales, a 1.7% increase in revenue from basic economy, a 3.8% increase in cargo revenue, and an 8.7% increase in loyalty revenue.
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“Our second-quarter performance was more proof that the United Next strategy is working. I am extremely proud of the team for executing a strong operation and navigating through a volatile macroeconomic period, while still growing earnings and pre-tax margin for the first half of the year,” United CEO Scott Kirby said in a press release on the company’s second-quarter results.
Kirby also had a lot to say not only about his own airline, but also about competitor airlines as well. Specifically, in the July 17, 2025, earnings call, Kirby shared some insight into why he feels most competitors, with the exception of Delta, are not performing financially as well as they could be.
Here’s what Kirby had to say about United’s rival airlines.
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Kirby says rivals’ flight plans are money-losers, and they’ll need to make a change
Kirby discussed a wide range of issues in the earnings call, including trends in supply and demand for travel.
He acknowledged that while there have always been ups and downs in demand, he believes it is on the “road to recovery” after a bumpy period over the past several years caused by Covid, inflation, and economic uncertainty from tariffs.
Delta’s CEO also indicated the airline expects demand to stabilize when the airline reported its own earnings recently, so this isn’t an unusual position.
Related: JetBlue cancels all flights to major US airport, offers customer refunds
However, Kirby's take on supply is a little more controversial because he thinks that many of his competitors, with the exception of Delta, are not in solid positions right now and won’t be until they shake up their flight plans.
“If I dig deeper into it and I look at every airline that’s not named United or Delta, I can find at every single one of them, a double-digit percentage of their route network that loses money. And the only way for them to get margins that are anywhere close to their WAC is to stop flying places that lose money. And that is going to ultimately happen.”
While Kirby doesn’t think that other airlines are going to have to cancel a good portion of their flights immediately, or even in the near-term, he does think that it is an inevitability. “I can look at how much money is being lost route by route and know that economic gravity is ultimately going to win,” he said.
Many other airlines are struggling, but flight cancellations may not be the answer
Kirby is right that both United Airlines and Delta Airlines do seem to be performing better right now than many competitors, to varying degrees.
For example, American Airlines reported a net loss in the first quarter of 2025, JetBlue has not been profitable since 2019, and Spirit Airlines recently undertook the process of Chapter 11 bankruptcy to restructure debt.
Related: Southwest Airlines cancels hundreds of flights from July to Sept.
Some airlines have also already begun to trim their flight schedules, including JetBlue, which pulled out of Miami International Airport. American Airlines also cut 70 weekly flights from 34 different routes in August.
Still, Kirby has pointed out in the past that flying low-revenue flights isn’t necessarily the wrong move, since airlines already have fixed costs — including gate fees, plane maintenance, and employees — that would remain despite flight cuts.
Yet if these other carriers are indeed flying a ton of unprofitable routes, something may have to change eventually. This could take many different forms, including other airlines maintaining their routes but making strategic changes to increase revenue for these flights.
More on travel:
- U.S. government issues serious warning for cruise passengers
- Delta Air Lines makes a baggage change that travelers will like
- United Airlines passenger incident triggers quick response
In other words, while United Airlines' CEO may hope that other airlines will move forward with cutting more flights and decreasing competition for United, this could be simply wishful thinking.
Related: Veteran fund manager unveils eye-popping S&P 500 forecast
