A 2025 Thanksgiving message to employees from United Airlines’ CEO Scott Kirby sounds a familiar refrain: United is the best airline in the world. It’s clear to me what Kirby is going here and I can hardly blame him.

2025 Thanksgiving Message From United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby

A United employee sent me a Thanksgiving message from Kirby, filmed in the cockpit of a jet at Newark Liberty International Airport. Sitting next to a light attendant and two pilots, Kirby, speaking off the cuff, says:

Hello everyone, and Happy Thanksgiving. I just wanted to get on really quickly for a Thanksgiving message and say thank you. But this time I really want to thank everyone personally. What I want to say is that I thank everyone at United for having my back.

As we’ve gone through this year, there’s been some stuff that happened to impact United than really almost any year that I can remember. But we have the absolute best people of any airline in the world. And all of you have just kept going like nothing was happening — whether it was here in Newark, the issues we had this summer, or the recent shutdown. Just done an amazing job of taking care of each other and taking care of the customers, and we’ve clearly become the best airline in the world.

And when all of you have my back, it gives me the ability to make sure that we’re focused on helping the FAA overcome some of these issues, working in Washington, DC, but most importantly, staying focused on the long term. Whether it’s buying new airplanes, taking care of all the people at United, putting Starlink on airplanes, investing in technology, really staying focused on the long term.

And we did that at the same time that we did an important milestone this year, we got back to the best credit rating that we’ve had since before 9/11, which is really important to securing all of your futures. So today, I really just wanted to say thank you fro me personally to all of you, for building the best airline in the world, for always having my back. And I promise I will always have your back.

So Happy Thanksgiving. Thanks for all you’re going to do to connect people and unit the world over the holidays.

Kirby also posted a cockpit picture and written message on his Instagram account:

View this post on Instagram

Why Does Kirby Keep Calling United The Best?

I don’t have insiders at American and Delta as I do at United, but I have to assume that AA CEO Robert Isom and Delta CEO Ed Bastian are not sending out written or video messages like this…it’s not their style.

Kirby, however, is like a coach or motivational speaker (some might even say a televeganlist…). This is how he rallies the troops and I can hardly fault him for doing so.

No, United is not the best airline in the world. Under Kirby, there has been tremendous progress in technological investment and fleet harmonization, but also negatives like a continued erosion of the MileagePlus program and still no flight attendant contract.

But do you really want a CEO who says, “Well, we’re actually quite subpar. Try to do better!”? No, I don’t think so…

From my own observations flying United and speaking to employees, I think employees loved Oscar Munoz but they respect Scott Kirby… they think he’s a good leader and that he is moving United in the right direction. I hear that even from flight attendants who have been working without a raise for years.

And United’s strategy may backfire (we see some transatlantic cutbacks coming next year), but it is a clear and coherent strategy that employees like and Wall Street likes…it’s far better than AA’s approach, which I cannot even describe in a sentence or two.

In that sense, Kirby’s approach is working…and I’d expect nothing less than for him to be a forceful cheerleader for his airline.

And pivoting to the political realm, hasn’t President Trump also shown that when you repeat something often enough, people start believing it? As unfortunate as that may be in the pursuit of truth, it’s a reality of this day and age.

CONCLUSION

Kirby’s 2025 Thanksgiving Day message once again attempts to “rally the troops” by thanking them for making United “the best airline in the world.” By this point, this “shtick” is expected from Kirby and while it may cause some to roll their eyes, it strikes me as a leadership style that is working.

image: @scottkiby / Instagram