United CEO Calls Out Budget Airlines

United Airlines has never positioned itself as a budget airline. Based on some recent comments from CEO Scott Kirby, it sounds like there is a good reason for that.

Kirby, who became CEO of United Airlines back in 2020, spoke with The Wall Street Journal's Kate Linebaugh about the current state of the airline industry.

During the wide-ranging interview, Kirby was asked about his thoughts on the budget airlines and the budget airline industry as a whole, and he did not hold back his true thoughts as he spoke out against the entire model.

"It's dead," he said of the budget airline model. "It's a crappy model."

Kirby made it clear that he thinks the entire model is focused on trying to "trick people" and get as much money out of a consumer rather than actually meet a consumer's needs.

"The model was screw the customer. I mean, it was. Trick people, get them to buy, get them to come, and charge them a whole bunch of fees they aren't expecting," Kirby said.

While this practice might work once, Kirby points out that passengers rarely want to go back to those budget airlines, so it's hard to build customer loyalty.

"Their problem is that they got big enough that they needed repeat customers. They don't get them," Kirby said.

Clearly, Kirby wants United to take a different approach. Rather than luring in customers with cheap prices and hidden fees, he wants to provide a good service that results in customers returning for the future.

That said, he did point out that United will have some of the lowest fares for the foreseeable future this summer, and customers should take advantage.