Is Las Vegas Out of Luck?

Hello and welcome to the airline Weekly Lounge. I'm your host Gordon Smith and I'm joined you as usual by co-host Jay Shabbat. In this week's show we're talking all things Las Vegas and asking what's behind the dip on the strip. Hi Jay, how's it going? Okay, how are you Gordon? Doing very, very well. We are going to Sins City. Well, you could argue depending on your definition of Sins City that it could be a few places, but we're specifically going to Las Vegas this week, Jay. And as any of our airline Weekly subscribers will know, that was our focus story in the last issue which dropped on, go, have to get my calendar out. June the 22nd as we're recording here on June the 23rd. There we go. Anyway, look on the airline Weekly Archives. If you missed that story, it's a really, really fun one. And Jay, you know, I love your humor as well. You were able to get a little bit of extra wordplay in there. Maybe it's, you know, Las Vegas, a bit of fun and everything else, but it was a particularly good Jay Shabbat wordplay special. So if you're a fan of that, then extra reason to go check it out. Jay, give us a bit of an indication at the start. Almost everyone listening to this podcast will know what Las Vegas is, but from an aviation point of view, give us a little bit of color around what it really means. Yeah, well, we'll do it. And as you mentioned in Las Vegas is a bit of a sad story and we'll dig into that. But worry not because we'll end with a happy story. We'll move over to another market as you suggest, which will reveal this. I don't think you said it yet. Did you, Gordon? I didn't even know. I was a pain, I was a pain's not too. So I noticed the suspense that you were driving out there. So yeah, we'll keep that under wraps until part two. So you have a, the biggest story of Las Vegas is the reason why I say it's it's a sad one. It's Las Vegas airline market is struggling. And if you've read the cover story, some of you may have some, you may have it. The passenger volumes at Las Vegas Airport are down quite considerably. Last year, they were down 6%. So far this year, at least to April, that's the data that's the most current, also down 6%. So something is wrong with this market. I mean, this is what, you know, a legend, which is headquartered in Las Vegas, not the largest airline by or even the second or third largest airline there, but a major player in the market. And they've historically described it as an all-star airline market. And I think you were very much correct. I mean, it was a market with, if you think about it, just so much inbound tourism. And, you know, the volumes are so large there that airlines over decades have made it a very important part of their networks. So what is going right now? What's going on right now? Why is it losing some of its all-star? Well, the obvious first, you know, if we're going down the list of culprits here, the first problem is that spirit airlines is gone. I mean, that's just clear and obviously a difficult situation for Las Vegas. Spirit airlines was up, as recently as last summer, the second busiest airline in Las Vegas. So it wasn't just some small player on the margins. I mean, it was a major, major provider of air service for the city. City that very much depends on air service to bring in tourists. And tourism, to be clear, is the industry in Las Vegas. Not to say if there's nothing else, but it's, you know, very much dominated by the, the economy is very much dominated by the tourism sector. So spirit airlines going way is obviously, you know, it's pretty, pretty big deal. But it's not the only thing that's going on. That's what we'll discuss a little bit now. So the second thing that everybody has to be aware of is that Las Vegas has lost a lot of its international visitors. Now, the most glaring example that are the visitors lost from Canada. Canadians are just not coming to the US as much as they used to for reasons that likely you have to do with politics, maybe not only politics. There are exchange rate reasons as well. The Canadian dollar having lost some value, although I think the Canadian dollar's been up more recently. But for whatever the reason, Canadians are not coming in numbers quite as large as they used to. And I think that generally the same thing is true of just people coming from all over the world. Fewer Europeans are coming, fewer Asians are coming. Las Vegas is not a very big international airline market in the sense that, you know, there's not a whole bunch of foreign airlines flying. There's some, but you know, a few flights to Europe here and there, one or two from Asia non-stop. The people that, people from abroad who tend to visit, many times they're coming in on connecting flights on US airlines. So if you're coming from, you know, somewhere a secondary sea in Europe, you might be getting there via Atlanta or via Chicago or via Dallas or something like that. So don't think of it as a huge international airline market, but yeah, it's substantial. And that substantial amount of international traffic is kind of wither because of the reasons that I've mentioned. So that's another reason. Now the number one airline by far in Las Vegas is Southwest Airlines. And Southwest has grown the market quite a bit. If you go back to 2019, you know, if you think about which airlines have grown where in the post-pandemic period, Southwest is rather quite larger and quite a lot larger in Las Vegas today than it was pre-pandemic. But over the past couple of years, that growth has kind of tapered off a bit. I think they've kind of turned to other markets. And I'll turn it back to you in a minute, Gordon. I just want to say, you know, one more big general point about Las Vegas is that immediately coming out of the pandemic. So if you think about late 2022, so in your mind, if you're thinking, you know, when did the pandemic end? If you're an airline, from an airline point of view, when did the traffic start coming back? It was spring of 22. That's for US airlines, spring of 22. Already that year, Las Vegas was moving, the Las Vegas airport was handed more passengers than did in 2019. So immediately when people were felt comfortable to fly again, they were going to Florida, they were going to Vegas, all these, you know, typical domestic leisure spots. Then what happened close to 2023, 2024, 2025 into 2026? Americans had much more of an affinity to go abroad or to, you know, just spend a lot of money on, you know, very, very premium, heavy destinations. Las Vegas has tried to become more of a premium destination. And in some measures, it's probably succeeded. But from an airline point of view, it's still not, you know, as I think I mentioned, you know, it's a, I appreciate your compliments about my wordplay here, but I'll, a lot. I think one of the things I mentioned is that, you know, Americans are spending a lot of money on airline tickets to go to Paris, France, not the Paris hotel in Las Vegas. So ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, yeah, yeah, that's, you know, how to make a little joke out of it, but it's, but you can see the point is a real one, that the, yeah, the, this is where United American Delta, they're making their money in Paris, France, not making their money for Las Vegas. So their attention is kind of elsewhere. So that has somewhat disadvantaged Las Vegas over the, over the couple of years, just by coincidence, the, the Wall Street Journal happened to run an article. I don't know if you saw this one, Gordon, but it was an article about this topic about Las Vegas having used to be a cheap destination, that's premium destination. They just ran it like after just a day after I finished the draft of this article. So it was a, you know, very, very interesting to see their take on it. And I just have one quick quote here, I read from that article, which I thought kind of hits the nail on the head, says, you know, quote unquote, a trip to this desert city once meant dirty hotel rooms and boufays, all subsidized by gambling revenue. Now visitors organized their trips around big ticket events and paid top dollar for everything else while they're in town. Post pandemic Las Vegas is built to cater to the well off. And the final point they need there is just kind of interesting. And I know I'm sure some of our skipped colleagues are intimately familiar with this hotel rates in Vegas. This is according to the journal have risen faster than in any other major market in the US. Makes me think, by the way, if this wasn't the case, if Las Vegas was still more of an affordable vacation for everyday Americans, would spirit still be alive? I mean, I don't know. I mean, maybe, but that was that was a very, very important market to them Las Vegas. Could maybe a stretch, but yeah, so all right. I said a lot. I'll turn it back to you. No, a fantastic scene said, I asked for a scene setter and I suddenly got one there, Jay. Really, really great grounding. And I think a lot of things that we'll try and pick up a little later in our conversation. I think it was in the in your feature story, you quoted Nate Silver on Vegas losing its value to the middle class and you touched on that just a few moments ago. If the city has genuinely moved up market and it's debatable, whether it has, but Fargeman said, let's say it has moved up market. Why isn't that translating into the premium air traffic that the legacy operator's won? Well, I think there is some of that. It's just not, you know, you start getting into search become like really competitive. I mean, if you're selling premium hotels to, let's say, Californians, you know, is the airline really going to get, you know, sell a first-class heat going that very short flight from Los Angeles to Las Vegas? Probably not. So, you know, it's the airlines are driving more of the premium revenue. Like I said, on these long-haul flights to Europe, to Tokyo, you know, I think is one of the reasons why these low-cost carriers have struggled is, you know, they're not, they're not getting any yet premium. So, in places like Las Vegas. So, yeah, I mean, are there people from New York City who are spending the big, big bucks flying first class on, you know, United American Delta, JetBlue, Alaska, whoever fly to Vegas? Absolutely there is, but it's not, you know, when I think of premium markets that are booming right now, Vegas is not the one that first comes to mind. Yeah, yeah, I think that's absolutely fair. And there's always being those big ticket events in Vegas. And you know, every year you might have, you know, a special one off, so you might have the Formula One or you might have a Super Bowl or something else. But there's always been things like the, I'm thinking the CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, these enormous events that literally bring people from all around the world. And sometimes airlines we've seen put on special charters to get people directly into Vegas from key source markets. But within that, there was also a very steady stream of just year-round demand. It didn't matter if it was a scorching summer day or freezing December, whatever, maybe, and I can say, last day is does get cold. I was there once and once I'm only in January, and it was snowing on the strip. It didn't lie on the ground, but it was still the white stuff was falling out the air. But my point is, Jay, how have we got into a little bit more of a lumpy peaks and troughs, sort of schedule around Las Vegas, whereas previously, Argumentseg, it was a bit more of a steady eddie crowd pleaser all year round? I think that's exactly what a Legion would tell you. They've specifically said as much that it's, that it has become lumpy or it's more of a seasonal destination. And, you know, it kind of makes sense that if it's, you know, it's not, not the kind of place anymore that you congested the last minute and off, but, oh, I have, you know, just so happens, I have off from work for a couple, I have actually a couple days of vacation to use, and it's, you know, some random time in September. Let me go to Las Vegas, like you just don't have as much of that anymore. So it's people planning the vacations, like you said, or all these big events, whether it's the consumer electronics expo, or, you know, I've got tickets to this fear, or, you know, now sports is like really big, big there with the Raiders and NFL team. I think they have a NHL hockey team. And in 2028, they're going to get the baseball athletics moving from their encirclements, or now they weren't Oakland. So the, yeah, it's becoming like a big sports town, as you said, like an events town too. Now, one thing I didn't mention, there's a theory that Vegas is losing some of its visitors. And forget, by the way, even about air travelers, if you look at the number of visitors, total visitors, whether they're driving to Vegas, whether they're flying to Vegas, if you look at that total number, it's down from where it was in 2019. So one theory is that people are, you know, with the popularity of these online sports gambling apps, and these prediction markets that everybody seems to be, you know, just, just, I'm going to bet that, you know, we're going to, you know, I don't know, Scotland's going to win the World Cup, or so. They're sensible, sensible money. That just not comes to financial advice, but in my humble opinion, very, very sensible. That might not be the bet that I make, but as an example, so it might be that, you know, just the Las Vegas casinos, the gambling sector is just facing a lot more competition, which could, could be why they're, they're casinos like opening up all over the country too. I mean, a lot of these very distressed economies, and, you know, for example, I don't know, some people out there may have read the book that I wrote American places. Sorry, I'm not trying to hawk my book here, but, but I did profile some places in the Gary, Indiana, for example, is one that used to have, you know, bustling steel mill doesn't have one anymore. They didn't know what to do, so they opened the casino. And, you know, maybe some of those people in Gary, Indiana, when Las Vegas was a cheap destination back in the day, they, sure, I'm going to go there for, you know, a couple of days, it's summer, go to the casino. Now they, you know, just stay at home and go to the local casino. So that's an example of, you know, something that's happening in, you know, places throughout the US. More power to you, Jay. Well, it uses a podcast if not hawking your book. Yeah, I always feel a little little dirty doing that, a little filthy doing that, but I, I'm not trying, not trying to sell anything here. I just try, just trying to make, make the point, make making the point relevant to Las Vegas. I hope, I hope, hope everybody takes it as that. Nothing more. I don't have any books to promote, no, yeah. Anyway, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe my memoirs, one year memoirs of the year, 2026, the year that Scotland won the World Cup, and all my memories associated with that, well, I'll, I'll, I'll help you rate that a lot. If Scotland genuinely wins the World Cup, I don't think I'll have any memory. I think I'll be into my 10th point of Scottish lagga. I don't think there'll be, there'll be much to remember. Yeah, the memory is more, always, we will, one day, we'll write, we, one day we're going to co-write a book about, I don't know, something in the airline industry. We'll, we'll pick one, pick an airline. We've got to practice. We basically co-write something every week. Actually, yeah, there we go. Maybe we'll turn into a book one day. Yep, the skipped biography of Ryan of Michael O'Leary. How about that? Oh, I'll, I'll pitch it to, uh, to wrap up the big boss straight away. Um, back to the hero now, Jay. Um, let's strip out, pardon the pun, spirit entirely. Is Las Vegas, do you think it genuinely is shrinking market, or is it maybe just a market that got oversupplied and is now in correction territory, back down to a baseline that is maybe a little more suited to, to actually what it needs? Yeah, that's possible. It's always tough to say, you know, how, uh, what's the appropriate level of capacity for a given market? You know, that's, the appropriate level of airline capacity of any market depends a lot on what the fuel price is. You know, it's, it's a fuel price is very low. Any market can support, you know, X percent more capacity because you can bring the, bring the, Las Vegas is a very stimulable, is that a roller stimulable market? It is no, that's one of it. It is now, yeah, it's a good courtesy of me. So that's a market, Vegas, where you've, it's very, you know, very much, uh, if the, if the fuel price goes down, you know, I imagine a very, very low fuel price to where airlines can cut capacity a lot. Maybe Vegas then can become a cheaper destination again. I mean, that's also market that depends a lot about on hotel capacity, but, or even, you know, Airbnb capacity, whatever, if people can, you know, get, can afford the, the airfare, but not the hotel, that maybe negates the, the point, but, uh, yes, it's hard, it's hard to say ever, you know, what's the appropriate level of capacity? Now, was Las Vegas over served 23, 24, you know, when, when some of those post-pandemic trends started, started to share from domestic international, you might, you know, maybe, maybe we can say that, I think, I think it's a fair thing to say. Well, history is a wonderful thing, and hindsight's also a wonderful thing, but, uh, yeah, anything to add on Vegas before we, before we head into the break? Uh, Vegas, no, I think we covered, um, every, I guess the only, um, the airline that, that is still kind of making, making it a growth market is frontier. They are a little bit breeze as well as adding some more Vegas. Frontier is very much kind of looking around the table and seeing, looking for markets where other airlines have gone away, the obvious example being spirit, but even in, you know, Los Angeles's example where a lot of airlines have cut capacity over the years, and Frontier is, you know, trying to get a little bit of a bigger piece of that pie, but Vegas is another one of those where, you know, okay, spurts gone. Let's see what we can pick up. So there, there's, you know, there's definitely some growth activity, but like I said, the big three American Delta United, they're looking elsewhere. Southwest was growing, it's kind of slowed it a little bit. And we'll see Southwest, I think the cadence of their aircraft deliveries is picking up now, you know, with the max, maxes coming, you know, they're, that's, that's sort of getting straightened out from Boeing's point of view. Maybe they'll put more of those in Vegas. We'll see. And then obviously spirit gone and, you know, a legend saying that they very much have lost interest in Vegas. They're looking elsewhere. So it's really just, just Frontier and, you know, maybe Bachelors next to breeze. Fascinating stuff, Jay. And the topic that I'm sure we will keep an eye on because, you know, like we said, is it a dip on the strip? Is it something a little bit more structural, a bit more strategic? Maybe too early to say. We will keep a close eye and present a thing of relevance. We will bring that back into our podcast in a future episode, or indeed in the airline weekly issue. We are going to go into part two with a discussion around air and more positive. Oh, indeed, market. What is it? What is it? Yes, we have to wait for part two, Jay. You don't know. Yeah, we're in trouble. You've got all of 10 seconds in the break to get all your notes. And the Oscar goes to Jay Shabbat for pretending not to know what we're talking about next. There we go. Before that, a quick reminder to send any questions or comments, you might have four or two podcasts at skips. And please don't forget to follow or subscribe to the podcast, wherever you're listening, or watching. And if you are enjoying the show, please visit us five stars, or leave us a post review, so we can get you to spread the word about the airline weekly launch. Don't go anywhere, we'll be right back. Hello, and welcome back to the airline weekly launch. I'm Gordon Smith, joined as usual by Kost, J. Shabbat, part one we were discussing last of August, part two, Jay, good everyone out of the misery. We are discussing San Diego, is how you've pronounced it? I've been pronouncing it wrong. San Diego, yes, the city in Southern California, very close to Mexican border. This is not to sort of polarize the two and sort of have it very binary. But this is an example of a US city that is performing well. All our listeners, tell our viewers, tell them about the routes you're listening, engaging with us. Tell them why San Diego is a wall market, if not a red hole market. It's, yeah, it's some of you have me just to go back again to the current issue of the airline weekly newsletter, which some of you have seen, that's the one with the Las Vegas future story. There's also a chart that we ran of the, it was a top 100 airports in the world. I don't have it in front of me, but I think it was, yeah, okay, so the 100 busiest airports in the world, and we rank them by which ones were growing the fastest to the least fast. And then we had obviously Vegas towards the bottom. But the number one US airport on that list was San Diego, which came in third in the world in terms of growth. And that's for total seats for the upcoming third quarter. That's a Serium DO data. San Diego's capacity next quarter will be up 15%. So something's going on there. So kind of the opposite of, as we said, you know, Vegas is a market that's losing capacity. San Diego is very much a market that's gaining capacity. So as the detectives that Gordon and I are, we looked into this. And why is San Diego up any one who, you know, introduced the headline there, a little wall between Alaska and Southwest, there's a little war. Some may characterize it as a big war between Alaska and Southwest in San Diego. It's exactly right. And if you look at Alaska's seat counts in San Diego, they're going to be up 35%. And that includes Hawaiian, you know, those that's Alaska Hawaiian together up 35%. So they're really going after this market. I'll talk a little bit about why in a second. And then Southwest, the long time leader in this market has no appetite for letting Alaska come in and, you know, steal, steal food out of its refrigerator. I don't know what the best metaphor is there, but they don't want to, their toes stepped on in San Diego. So they are growing their seat capacity 28% again, that's a Serium DO number. So we've got Alaska growing the market a lot, Southwest growing the market a lot. What's why? What is, what is, why is San Diego such an attractive place to grow? I'll just give a little bit of a background about, you know, San Diego airline market. San Diego is the, let me just, so I don't get around, pull up my census data here. It's the 18th most populous metro area in the United States. It's not, don't think of it as like Los Angeles, which is number two, or even San Francisco, which is, I don't know, four or five, it is, you know, the population is somewhat smaller. It's a, you know, it lies just south of Los Angeles. It's like Los Angeles San Francisco, it's a, the population hasn't been growing recently, but it is an extraordinarily wealthy economy with a lot of inbound tourism. So it is very much a, you know, an attractive airline market in that sense, even though it may not be as big, it does have a lot of, you know, just a lot of business, a lot of premium air traffic, a lot of wealth, and then a lot of inbound as well. So very, you know, excellent market for Southwest. In fact, if you look at all of Southwest markets, San Diego ranks number 12. So pretty substantial, you know, if you think about how big Southwest network San Diego is number 12. So it's not, yeah, it's pretty serious there. Now for Alaska, it's number four. So Alaska has this situation. We've talked about it before. They have a Seattle growth problem. You know, Seattle is, that's where all the fireworks are for Alaska. That's where, you know, they, they make the most money. They just have a, you know, it's a market. They're so strong that they can even beat Delta in Seattle, or at least defend very successfully against Delta in Seattle. Unfortunately, though, their growth limitations at the airport, one step that they took to grow in Seattle, of course, was by buying Hawaiian Airlines. They could take its wide bodies, shift some of them over to Seattle. You grow through accruing your aircraft, but that's not enough. They would have loved to grow, to have grown in Los Angeles and San Francisco. That was one of the motivations for buying Virgin America back 10 years ago. That, however, never proved successful San Francisco and Los Angeles for a whole bunch of other interesting reasons haven't really been great growth opportunities for Alaska. So Portland has been one place where they've attacked and done reasonably well. But they've also found themselves in a very good situation to grow in San Diego. So they're really pushing on all those, you know, buttons there. Now, if you think about Alaska versus Southwest in San Diego, Alaska believes probably quite rightly that they have the advantage for anyone that wants to fly premium. And as, as we know, Gordon, we talk about this over and over and over again. More and more and more people, more and more and more Americans want to fly premium. So Alaska feels like it's well positioned in that market. Southwest, obviously, kind of making inching towards the premium market, putting in extra legroom seats, talking about putting lounges in eventually maybe San Diego will be one of those places where it puts lounges in. But it is, yeah, it is very much one of these markets that, you know, they're a little bit too small to be a true hub market. San Diego's case to geography works against it being a hub as well. But it is like kind of that Nashville, Austin, Rolly Durham does kind of, you know, not quite hub level markets that have excellent economies and San Diego's case, the population is not really growing, but still just a ton of wealth there. So it's, you know, very, it's an attractive, it's a market, you can understand why Southwest would want to defend it. You could all just understand why Alaska would want to grow it. Yeah, absolutely. The question that maybe, you know, I speak to people that listen to the show quite often and some of them are in the airport community as well, you know, we're so often focused on the airline and what the airline is doing at an airport, but there are a good number of people that listen to the show who are on the airport side, the traditional airport side. And they share their perspectives with me and I find them fascinating. I would love to hear from anyone listening to the show or otherwise who is at an airport or who has been working at an airport. That is at the center of a little bit of a competitive corporate war like we're seeing in San Diego because I think there's an understanding that when you've got two large airlines battling out for supremacy or for market share, whatever the goal is, it's not always going to be sustainable that one airline is always going to be able to apply that amount of additional capacity. And eventually there's going to be a sort of baseline that is agreed at and other one party, Mr. Feet or you sort of get a new normal. It must be lovely though in the interim period when you've got all of this super sexy new capacity, you're being coveted and yes, it might not last forever, but I think San Diego is in that moment just now where you have got these two carriers, but it's courting it quite heavily. From an airport planning point of view, I don't think that you're going to be rushing out to build a new terminal. This probably will not last forever, but it is going to be fascinating to see how it all settles out. Yeah. Well, in Las Vegas was one of those markets that had that war going on in 2022, 2023. Being spirit and frontier and that kind of ultimately ended in tears for spirit. So I don't suspect that will happen in San Diego, but as they used to say, the Western movies, this town may be big enough for the two of them, but yeah, we'll see. But yeah, that's you're right. I mean, Chicago is another place where you have that two airlines that war against each other and the airport is enjoying it. Yeah, then you have the FAA getting involved in terms of just breaking that case, getting involved. Yeah. And one thing about San Diego is San Diego just happens to be kind of fun fact here. It is the busiest U.S. airport with just one runway. So it's good. Oh, that's good. That's a good fact. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There's not a whole, there's only one runway and, you know, it's California, you're not going to build another runway. It's a, you know, even if you physically, I think there are limits, but even, you know, I don't think. And, you know, if you want to build a. eliminate, eliminate standard Californians. You might have to wait, you know, 10 years and get 12,000 permits. So no, no runways coming to, they actually did build a new terminal in San Diego Airport. So, so we did have that. But yeah, it's, it's not, you know, the airport capacity. And then say, it's like Seattle's in the same situation, right? We said that there are poor capacity is really can't expand much. They're physical constraints. Obviously, you know, Seattle, there's, you know, a chain of mountains running down between the beach and, you know, the interior. So there's, there's land limitations. California is also one, is I heard a great on for our listeners who are interested in these economic development topics. You know, I've heard someone, it was actually someone from, from New Orleans, economic development, planning agency, describe it this way. And I thought it was a really good way to put it. You know, there are, there are places that are, that prioritize wealth preservation. And there are places that prioritize wealth creation. And if you think about California, which has become, California has become such a wealthy place over the past few decades that so many of the people that are already wealthy, their main goal translated through, you know, the, the political, the government structure is, is to preserve their wealth. So don't build anymore houses. Don't build anymore airports. Don't build anymore anything. We want to preserve our wealth. Whereas, you know, there are some other states, particularly, you know, further East in the Sunbelt, you think of Texas, you think of, you know, some of the southeastern cities where they're willing to forego. So, you know, there's not, there's not that established wealth to preserve. So, you know, sure, let's, let's build it and get more. And then you have places like Austin, Austin, Texas, which, you know, were wealth creation type places. But they're becoming wealth preservation places. And you're seeing, you know, more, you know, regulations against expanding business, regulations against opening new businesses and things like that. So, I went off on a major tangent that I'm sorry. I just, just, just, you know, when you think about, yeah, if you think about, I mean, California has been, and we, you know, we haven't talked about the Los Angeles market, which has lost a lot of, I mean, that's another market we could have grouped with Las Vegas as one that has lost a lot of capacity over the years. You know, Southwest is deprioritized did. American Airlines doesn't really do nearly as much as they used to do there. And some of that has to do with, you know, place like Los Angeles has just lost a lot of population. I mean, people have been moving out, which hasn't been the case for, you know, Los Angeles was for decades, one of the faster growing places in the country. But during the past 10, 15 years or so has lost population. Some of it has moved to Las Vegas. And the very, very simple, I mean, there's a simple explanation is just, it's too damn expensive. You can't afford to, you know, I remember at one time, you know, we were thinking of maybe moving to California. And it's just, you can't, you can't afford a house there unless you're a millionaire, particularly like a San Diego, or if you're willing to, you know, live very, very far from where all the economic activity is. So, you know, you've seen this major, you know, migration of people from a place like Los Angeles to a place like Las Vegas, just because you can afford a house. I mean, it's, you know, and there's that, yeah, California very much has that wealth preservation at those don't build a house next to me. It'll, you know, destroy my property values. I'll get more traffic. I'll have my school's name about it. Nimbism. You said it, right? You said a lot more, not in my backyard, not in my backyard. That's, that says it more simplistically than in my long-winded explanation. Wow. No, first thing stuff. A dozen questions on Los Angeles now to ask you, but we are clean out of time. I dare say, I was ready for on two, but okay. We'll get, we'll get, we'll get, we'll get. Indeed. Indeed. I was going to say we're coming into sleepy summacies, but actually we just had in the past couple of days Delta confirmed when there are mixed coordinates coming through. So the relentless pace of quarterly earnings continues. So it won't be too long before we've got some fresh insights there, Jay. Yes. Well, I'm, I'm, I'm ready already because it's, there's always that wall between, you know, the end of one earning season, the beginning, you get those couple of weeks where there's not a lot of news. All the airlines are, you know, in quiet period and things like that. And I, I get, I get a little restless and antsy. So I'm, I was, I was very excited to see that we've got the, the date is, is set in stone now. And we will, yeah, before, before you know it, we'll have an airline weekly issue featuring Delta's second quarter, 2026 earnings. And another date for your diary, Jay, alongside the Delta earnings, is the Skift Aviation Forum. So we are going to be returning to New York City and not just anywhere in New York City. We've been to the TWA hotel at JFK. This is on November 12th, 2026. Seems like it ages away, but, you know, we're already more than halfway through the year. I must, so go to live.skift.com. We have just put the initial landing page up, but keep an eye on that over the coming weeks because we will be adding much more detail. And of course, we bring the first speakers in terms of who we've had on previous speakers. We've had everyone from Robert Eisenbob, John, Johnny Garrity, Willie Walsh, Steven and Varhazi. It is one day and we just get to go unashamedly into the weeds of the industry. It's so much fun. So live.skift.com and LR Weekly subscribers get a special discount as well on the tickets. So keep it out on the details there. If you're really keen, look at your ticket now, but we look forward to seeing you there on November 12th. Okay. Thanks, Jay, for joining me this week. Thanks as always to our producers, Sean Monaco, Kelsey and Will. And wherever you are in the world, thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time. Bye for now. 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