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A lot of airlines have come and gone.

The fact is Qatar, Etihad, Emirates, Singapore, Garuda, all of the three Chinese airlines, Air New Zealand - the fact is that international aviation relies very much upon agreements between nation-states, and it is not an area in which you have free market operations.

The alliance with air Berlin is attractive for me. I can use the whole sales network of the air Berlin and 24 percent of my own airline at air Berlin sold.

Airlines are interesting. They not only favor celebrities, they court them.

Aircraft are always going to be something that terrorists are interested in because you bring down an airliner, you have drawn the world's attention.

There is something about the airline industry that really grabbed me.

The airline business is the biggest team sport in the world. When you're all consumed with fighting among yourselves, your opponents can run over you every day.

I think airlines have been very much parrots. They'll just follow what everyone else is doing. Why change a model that they're happy in? And it takes someone like myself or Richard Branson who comes from outside the industry to say, 'Hey, let's try something new.'

You can't imagine a world, quite frankly, without a safe and secure aviation system. And so our job is to really focus on that, and what we need to do to keep it safe and secure.

At American Airlines, we have built a business around the love of travel that has lasted three quarters of a century. And I'm pretty sure we're just getting started.