United CEO: ‘We’ve turned the corner,’ but a full recovery still years away

United Airlines’ CEO Scott Kirby on Thursday said he expects air travel demand to remain lower than normal until there’s a widely available coronavirus vaccine, but that the worst appears to be over. “We think we’ve turned the corner and can see it,” Kirby said. A recovery is still “a long way off,” Kirby said, adding that demand “is not going to get anywhere close to normal until there’s a widely available vaccine.” He estimates that will be at the end of 2021. United shares fell 3.8% Thursday to end the day at $34.25. Other major airlines fell more than 1% each. After the market closed Wednesday, the carrier reported it lost $1.8b in Q3. But bookings are returning but slowly. “I would say over the last eight weeks or so, we’ve domestically have seen just steady progress,” Andrew Nocella, United’s CCO, said on the company’s quarterly earnings call Thursday. The pandemic has caused outsize damage to international and corporate travel demand, once lucrative pillars of big airlines’ like United, Delta and American. CEO Kirby said Thursday Carriers are now fighting over a smaller pool of leisure travelers. They’re refocusing their networks to build up service to beach and mountain destinations and loosening ticket policies to entice these price-sensitive consumers to book. The crisis is also prompting some strategy shifts in the industry as executives eye a rebound, even though it’s still distant. United plans to relaunch service at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport next year, Kirby said Thursday. The move takes advantage of the lull in air traffic to grab space at what is normally one of the country’s most congested airports. “I look forward to getting back and competing aggressively” for cross-country travelers, Kirby said. <br/>