As the managing director of sustainability for Alaska Airlines, Ryan Spies is accountable for the development and implementation of the long-term strategy, operational and financial performance of environmental sustainability and the Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) program at the company. In this role, Ryan holds the deep and direct responsibility for the continued evolution of Alaska’s strategy and plans to manage and reduce its carbon footprint, and to achieve Alaska’s environmental sustainability goals. That includes initiatives to scale up use of sustainable aviation fuel, drive operational efficiency, cultivate and leverage new technologies related to achieving these goals including carbon removals, mitigate the impact of climate change on the business, and develop new ways to engagement stakeholders in enabling the journey.

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John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian, and I’m so honored to have with us today Ryan Spies. He’s the Managing Director of Sustainability at Alaska Airlines. Welcome, Ryan, to the Impact podcast.

Ryan Spies: Thanks, John. It’s so nice to be here.

John: It’s great to have you. It’s your first time on the show, and it’s Alaska’s first time on the show, so it’s going to be a fun show and an interesting show for our listeners and viewers. But, Ryan, before we get into all the important things that you and your colleagues are doing in sustainability at Alaska Airlines, can you share a little bit about your background? Where did you grow up and how did you get on this journey that you’re on?

Ryan: Yeah, well, probably similar to a lot of folks in sustainability. It’s been a journey, to say the least. I was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, but I’ve lived all over the country. I went to high school in the Bay Area, California, and ended up in college on the East Coast. Did a little bit of engineering for my undergrad and worked for the Navy for a number of years. And honestly, I saw a movie, probably very familiar to everyone that’s listening to this podcast, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, and that opened my eyes to climate, the challenges that we’re facing, and the emergency that we now find ourselves in. And decided to go back to school, get my MBA at WashU in St. Louis, and focus on corporate responsibility, sustainability, and strategy. And from there, another winding path into the corporate world, but ultimately ended up at a great company called Saint-Gobain, a large French manufacturer, a 350-year-old company where I ultimately became a director of sustainability and really focused on our 120 manufacturing sites here in the US. And decarbonization, renewable energy, all that good stuff, a little bit more winding. And now, I’m here at Alaska Airlines for the last year, leading similar challenges, but just for aviation. And it’s one of those things that we know we have to do it. We know that there’s a big challenge ahead and getting the right partners and teammates out there to achieve some pretty audacious goals, is both exciting, challenging, and rewarding. So, thrilled to be talking about it.

John: We’re really thrilled to have you. Going back to what you just said, shout out to Al Gore and Inconvenient Truth for inspiring you to get on this really important journey. And when I think back to that movie and although it seemed catastrophic and almost apocalyptic at the time when you watched it, now, of course, in retrospect, which is always much clearer than prospective vision. It was actually even underplayed how catastrophic and how quick things were going to change. When you look at all the change that we’re all living in right now, I think it was a very light version. And man, not only did he have it right, but I think the challenges are bigger than we ever thought and we need to make faster changes than we ever knew. So, thank gosh that someone like you is sitting in the position you are and there’s a lot of great people like you now around the world doing the work you’re doing because the change that we need is real. Let’s get into a little bit about Alaska. So you joined about a year ago. Was there already a chief sustainability officer or managing director of sustainability prior to you joining?

Ryan: So, there wasn’t a managing director. So, it’s a newly created role. But I will say that our leader, senior vice president of public affairs and sustainability, Diana Birkett Rakow, has been here and has stood up a really incredible program. So, I was thrilled to join under her and gain from her leadership. So, I would say it was a program that certainly existed and it’s just gaining more momentum and also one of the great reasons to join, right, is you’re joining a program that’s really solid, that has opportunities to grow and impact and that was really interesting and fascinating to me and so far it’s lived up to that promise.

John: Well, the curse and blessing, as you and I know, of sustainability is that there is truly no finish line. The work isn’t done. So the opportunity is as creative and as big as you want it to make it. Talk a little bit about leaning into your educational background. Has your education per se, engineering, helped you in your approach to both decarbonization and sustainability issues that you’re working on at Alaska Airlines?

Ryan: That’s a great question. So, I would say almost all of the experiences I’ve had to date are helping, right? And I think that’s probably true for a lot of sustainability professionals. You can come from a really varied background and all of those things are valid if you’re using them in the right way. Quite honestly, I haven’t engineered anything in a really long time and probably shouldn’t engineer anything, but I will say that my MBA was really valuable as well, right? When you get into big companies, understanding the challenges that every one of my colleagues from their day-to-day job is tremendously valuable, right? To understand, hey, accounting, what’s going on there and how is what I’m trying to change the fact that what they’re doing, sales, operations, all of those things all require understanding, right? And you’ll probably have heard this many times during this podcast, that you posted, right? We are in jobs of influence without authority. And so to influence someone that is not thinking about the things that I’m thinking about on a day-to-day basis, you need to understand them and understand
what are their goals. And so I think my MBA has been tremendously valuable. The different departments I’ve worked in over the number of years at different companies has also given me tremendous insight. And so, yeah, I think education has been truly valuable, but it’s always, you’re always learning more and you should be, so it’s an ongoing exercise.

John: Thoughtful. Now, that you’re in the airline industry per se, talk a little about some of the specific and unique sustainability challenges that the airline industry faces that not other businesses would face. And of course, the big elephant in the room that we’re going to get to is green fuel.

Ryan: Sure.

John: Talk a little bit about some of the sustainability challenges that are unique to the airline industry.

Ryan: Yeah, I think you touched on it, right? The biggest one is flying is inherently unsustainable, right? We are burning fossil fuels right now to deliver our service. And so that’s the absolute number one challenge. And it’s an industry that is also hyper, hyper-competitive. And so you see amongst really all the airlines, everyone wants to take a step forward, but you put yourself at a tremendous disadvantage if you take a big step forward alone. Because we’re so competitive, if we were to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into one area of decarbonization and it’s a long-term investment that is expensive, then that’s going to put a big pressure on prices that we can show consumers, and then consumers won’t choose us, right? So, there is this give and take that I haven’t necessarily experienced before in such a hyper-competitive price-sensitive market. And so that’s a unique challenge, I think, to airlines and where we have to find partners and rely on things like policy to help push this industry forward in a decarbonization pathway. I think B2B, you can see some of that isn’t as true. Some of the great corporate partners that we work with have really solid and incredible margins that they can eat into a little bit to make some big differences. So, that is, I think, a difference. And I would also say the expectations of consumers on airlines are maybe just uninformed, right? So, if you think about where the automotive industry is going and this tremendous upswing in EV adoption, which is amazing and needed, that people look at that and say, okay, where’s my electric plane? Where is my next-generation plane? And the physics are quite different when it comes to delivering on that promise.

John: Right.

Ryan: It is not going to be a quick solution. The airline industry is this, especially here in the US, is the safest form of transportation, right? And there’s no reason for that. There’s tremendous amount of engineering testing and assurance that goes into delivering the planes that we use every day. And to make a change like introducing an electric drivetrain is not going to be a fast process. And the physics today say you can’t do it on coast-to-coast flight. So, there’s a speed challenge that we’re faced with, where there’s an expectation that consumers have, which I too, I want, right? I want that net zero flight or that zero-emission flight. But it’s just not going to be delivered in a short period of time.

John: Got it. And for our listeners and viewers who’ve just joined us, we’ve got Ryan Spies with us today. He’s a managing director of sustainability at Alaska Airlines. To find Ryan and his colleagues and all the important and great work they’re doing in sustainability, please go to www.alaskaair.com. For those listeners and viewers who haven’t had the pleasure to ride or fly on one of your great planes, so they understand a little bit more about Alaska Airlines revenue’s over $10 billion, over 23000 employees. And not only do you serve the United States, but you serve the Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Mexico. It’s a big airline. You’re part of a very big organization. And besides the green fuel issue and, as you said, running the comparison, comparing and contrast on the EV world compared to the airline world, talk a little bit about some of the initiatives that you’re very excited about, that you’ve been working on and that you have forecasted in the future with regards to reducing Alaska Airlines carbon footprint and other sustainability issues that you find important.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. So, we’re not sitting on our hands, right? We have a plan and a commitment to get to net zero by 2040. One of the only two US airlines to try to achieve that ambitious goal. And you need a plan to get there. And so we really think about emissions in really 5 parts. Number one is what can we control today? Operational efficiency. How are we using our planes in the most efficient manner possible? And pilots have an opportunity to affect that, whether that’s through route planning, when they land, how quickly can they get hooked up to ground power, and things of that nature that can take a few%age points here and there off of our total emissions. And you know what that aligns with, trying to save fuel and trying to save money. So, there’s an absolute win across the board with trying to be the most efficient we can with our planes. The next step is, hey, every year we’re buying new planes and retiring old ones. And usually, when you’re doing that, you’re getting a 15% to 25% reduction in the amount of fuel a plane will use. So, fuel efficiency gain, which is really tremendous. And so as one of the newest fleets in all of the US, we’re aggressively upgrading our planes. We expect that that will help us continue to drive down the emissions profile of the airline. The next is, and you mentioned it before, SAF, sustainable aviation fuel, or green fuel. And that probably takes up 80% to 90% of my day is thinking about and trying to find ways to scale up an industry that, quite frankly, doesn’t really exist in any meaningful quantities today. SAF is less than 1% of the fuel used across all airlines globally. And it’s really tough, right? And SAF is not all created equal. So I should say that right from the start, one of the great things about SAF is it’s a drop in fuel. So, why do we like it? It’s recycled carbon in one form or another. And I can talk about the different feedstocks and processes. But why we really like it is it can be used in our current planes and the current infrastructure that exists today. So you don’t have to build new pipelines. You don’t have to build new facilities to get fuel into a plane. So, that’s number one. It’s exactly the same. It ends up being exactly the same type of fuel that you’re burning. So you don’t have to make any big capital adjustments. So, one reason that’s why we like it. Now, I said all SAF isn’t created equal. SAF can be made from, and mostly today, this is what it’s made from is used cooking oils, tallow from food supply.

John: Sure.

Ryan: And so you’re seeing that and that’s when people are saying they’re using SAF, they’re likely using that. And so that’s a renewable fuel. It’s probably 60% to 50% less carbon intensive over its lifecycle. And so we count that, we think that’s a really good thing. The next generation of these fuels, that’s what we’re trying to stand up today. How do we start a plant that uses from the ethanol industry, feedstocks from the corn farmers, things that aren’t corn, but that go along all the biomass that goes along with that. So that’s a pathway looking at other feedstocks, that the future state, right? Where we’re seeing a lot of investment are CO2 capture and green hydrogen coming together in a plant to create fuel. So that is your lowest emission fuel over its lifecycle. And we’ve invested in company and companies to do that. There’s one here in Washington called Twelve that we’re going in with and both investment and offtake with a partnership with Microsoft. So, there’s a lot of different cool things about SAF. And why I’m spending most of our time talking about that as the lever is because no matter what we’re doing on all these others, we need SAF. We need a fuel that burns in an airplane that can get us from Seattle to JFK. And if we’re going to talk about battery electric planes and things like that. When you take off from Seattle on a full plane and you land in JFK, you’ve lost weight by the time you’ve got there by burning a fuel. If you do that with a battery electric plane, you’re landing with the same amount of weight. So, physics is inherently working against you that entire flight.

John: Right.

Ryan: And so we see, and lever 4 is next generation types of powertrains, whether that be electric or hydrogen. We see no matter what, SAF is a player through 2050 and beyond because just physics is telling us that we have to do that, right? So, we are investing in SAF and we’re trying to stand up that industry. And as I said, that fourth pillar, the fourth lever would be battery electric, hydrogen power, or hydrogen hybrid-type applications. And so those types of things, we’re making investments in companies. We’re donating planes. ZeroAvia is a hydrogen-electric start-up here in Washington. And we donated a regional plane for them to test on. We’re anxious to see how that goes, right? But we see the limitations of those fuels as regional, 500 to 1000-mile trips. And again, scaling up that industry is going to be a challenge. And then the fifth pillar would be offsets and removals. So, to bridge the gap to get to net zero by 2040. We don’t think any of those first four will get us all the way there and we’ll need to do some sort of CO2 removal offsets and and possibilities there.

John: On SAF, since you’re spending such a large amount of your time and mind share on a regular basis, Ryan, on this issue. Is that something that’s not just specific to Alaska Airlines? Are you also collaborating with your counterparts and peers at the other airlines as well? Not only in the United States but around the world in terms of brainstorming solutions and things of that such?

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. I think the sustainability world has always been and I don’t care what industry you’re in, very collaborative. And that’s no different in the airline world. As I said, right from the outset, we can’t afford to take a big step alone in this industry. It won’t work. And they all feel the same way about that. I don’t think it’s a place that we can be tremendously competitive in. Either we all make it or none of us make it in terms of decarbonization. So, yeah, we are absolutely working with peer airlines, and the OneWorld Alliance, but really across the board to see if we can influence policy, see if we can come together on the science and what we need to see out of producers and those next-generation fuels. So, yeah, absolutely. We’re working together where we can. And I think that’s one of those necessary things, especially in this industry.

John: When you talked about batteries in terms of your top five points of sustainability and the issues you get to work on or you focus on when you bring up the issues of batteries, does that tie into any solar opportunities as well with regards to energy and aviation in the future?

Ryan: Yeah, I think potentially, you’re trying. Obviously, your goal with using a battery is to use green electrons [crosstalk] at the end of the day.

John: Right.

Ryan: And I think from our perspective, that’s probably pretty far down the line. And luckily, I think the grid is greening at a rate that by the time there are a lot of battery electric planes, the electrons will also be pretty green. So, yeah, I think that’s that’s probably the connection there. We certainly support from a policy perspective, the expansion of renewable energy, where it where it makes sense. And I’ve worked in that field before. So, I’ve signed long-term offtakes of green electrons before. And it’s super-, we need it. We need it across the board. So, airlines would be no different.

John: Switching to a topic that’s near and dear to my heart, which is waste management and recycling processes.

Ryan: Yeah.

John: Are there big initiatives that you’re at Alaska Airlines with regards to waste management, diversion, recycling, both with regards to your wonderful aircraft, which, again, I’m a huge fan and I’m a big user of your airline and also the operational hubs that you work in and around.

Ryan: Yeah. So, waste and recycling is one of these really interesting things. And it’s always been in the sustainability world a big challenge because waste is tremendously hyper-local, right? What I can recycle here in my office is different maybe than what I can recycle at my home, which is different than where you can recycle. And so that’s a big challenge when you’re flying all over the country, right? And all over the world to have a streamlined answer.

John: Right.

Ryan: And so we think about it as how do we remove from the system things that even need to be recycled? Or eliminate at the outset single use items where we can. Part of our goal is to remove our biggest 5 single-use plastic items in our cabins. And why would you do that, right? People can feel and touch and see that action. They don’t understand the type of fuel that’s going into planes. So it’s a super big part of my job is, right? Making sure that people identify, hey, Alaska is treating this a little bit differently and we can feel and touch and see these changes. Alaska was the first US airline to remove all plastic bottles from all of our flights. So you will never find a plastic bottle in our flights again. And you will never find plastic cups on our flights, single-use plastic cups. So, we’re really proud of that. We’ve been doing that for a number of years. And our guests notice that. They’re excited by that. And it’s our goal to continue to march down, to eliminate those types of those things. And then you don’t have to worry about where to recycle it because you’re not introducing it in the first place. And we’re excited to be looking at reusable throughout the main cabin as a next opportunity that introduces a whole lot of challenges as well, as you can imagine, with storage and cleaning and washing and all that. But we’re not going to stop with the tremendous success that we’ve already had in reducing single-use items and always looking to innovate and pushing our supply chain to do so as well. And then in terms of recycling what we can, we audit quarterly a number of flights across our network to make sure that we’re recycling where we can and really trying to keep those rates up. By the end of 2025, our target is to be back where we were pre-pandemic, which is recycling 83% of items that we provide on board. We’re [crosstalk] on our way.

John: That’s true.

Ryan: We were at 70% this year, so far tracking. So, we have a little bit of work to do, but we have an opportunity to meet that goal.

John: That’s a fascinating point you just made, Ryan. What happened because of the pandemic that created setbacks? Because everyone, every industry, my industry, and every industry that I get to work with had some version of a setback or more than one because of the pandemic. Why did that hurt the diversion rates and recycling rates for the in-cab and service materials?

Ryan: Yeah, I think there was, obviously, a lot of hesitancy to fly, right? And just [crosstalk] generally, we had to really clamp down and focus on how do we just keep the business operating?

John: Right.

Ryan: And so you lose some of the controls that you had because you have to focus on other controls, keeping people healthy and safe and feeling comfortable on board. So, I think that just generally, we removed a lot of in-service items [crosstalk] from the outset.

John: From the [inaudible] That makes sense.

Ryan: And then you also had, where we landed and where we worked. You had a lot of speed across the country. You saw recycling services literally just stop. Original hometown, I mentioned with St. Louis, right? They didn’t start recycling just municipal recycling until earlier this year, maybe late last year, right? It’s been years since the shock. And so those things filter down and we’re not immune from those challenges.

John: Fair point. Yeah, you’re right. When you had to choose your priorities, it’s the people, health, and wellness of your client base before it is recycling. That makes a whole lot of sense. For our listeners and viewers who’ve just joined us. We’ve got Ryan Spies with us today. He’s the managing director of sustainability at Alaska Airlines. To find Ryan and all his colleagues and all the great work they’re doing in sustainability, please go to www.alaskaair.com. We did talk about and I want to go in a little deeper about the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance, REBA. Talk a little bit about why that’s important, why partnerships are important for you to keep evolving and advancing your renewable energy initiatives that you laid out earlier on in this broadcast?

Ryan: Sure. So, REBA is now CEBA. So, they’re the Clean Energy Buyers Alliance now. And I’ve been involved with them since their outset. And really, it was always about bringing corporations along and organizations along a renewable energy journey and getting them comfortable, making big commitments to long-term offtake, and understanding the roadblocks to doing so. So, when I first started, I was with Saint-Gobain and the people out front that were leading were companies like Google and Microsoft. And they were coming up with innovative solutions. They say, how does a company claim credit and get credit and pay for credit to build renewables out there and lower their emissions? And they came up with tremendously valuable but complicated contracting opportunities with renewable energy developers, 10, 15, and 20-year deals taking on market risk, trying to understand wholesale pricing. When I first entered it, I was lost. And I thought, wow, there’s no way, just one person. And they come out, how can they figure this out? And REBA and now CEBA are organizations that help you do that, right? They have conferences, they have boot camps, and they have forums where you can learn how to do these things. And then you have people out there that are willing to give your time, and tell you, and walk you through the process, and walk you through the risks, the pitfalls, the challenges that others have faced. And it was tremendously valuable, and it took me years to eventually sign a big deal at Saint-Gobain, but we did. And it was the biggest in a 350-year history company, right? And we’re in 76 countries and we built it here in the US. A nice wind farm in Illinois. And so that was really exciting. So, I couldn’t have done that without collaboration of peers. And REBA, and now CEBA are forums for that. And so at Alaska, we’re members. We’re not building a lot of renewables again. Our fuel is really the primary focus on what we’re trying to achieve. But we see the benefit in being a voice to understand where those organizations are. Many of the organizations at REBA and CEBA travel on us and are thinking about emission. So, it’s a great forum to provide expertise, but also to understand and learn.

John: Ryan, as you well said earlier, to accomplish anything relevant or important, you need a plan. Obviously, sustainability is very important to any organization now and in the future in terms of their survival, resilience, and all those other wonderful, important things. But besides needing a plan and setting goals, then you need to benchmark those goals and then also report on them. Do you guys put out an annual sustainability report?

Ryan: Absolutely. Yeah, we have a great report. In fact, we just published ours here in June, the first week of June, documenting all the great work that we did in 2023. And hopefully, our next one will be up a little bit earlier. Reporting is one of those things that it’s been voluntary up until this point for just about every company. But that is changing right now, right? So, if you operate in Europe, which we don’t, you’re under a whole host of reporting requirements. But we’re not far behind here in the US and in the state of California. Rules and laws have been proposed and accepted to start having to require companies to report. We’re well ahead of that. We’ve been reporting for a number of years, and feel very comfortable and confident in the data that we’re showing. And so I think you’re wearing a little bit of a transition phase right now, what you’re seeing from different companies, the companies that had never done it. They probably feel behind the eight ball and the companies that are already comfortable doing it, probably feel pretty confident and actually a little bit of relief to have some rules out there.

John: Yeah [inaudible]

Ryan: And that it’s no longer voluntary. But these are the things that we need to know so that we can start comparing apples to apples where that’s possible.

John: And then your report lives in perpetuity on alaskaair.com.

Ryan: Yeah, you can find all of our past reports and there’s some great stories in there about some of the work that we’ve done and lays out our plan for the future. No, I think there’s also been a transition to from these used to be marketing documents to now they are… But investors want to understand exactly what the risks a company might have in this space. And so now we’re designing our report to be a little bit more actually investor-focused and less on the marketing part. We market everywhere else. So, we’d rather rather take a little bit of that out of this one.

John: Ryan, you’re young and your airline has been here for a long time and it’s going to continue to be here for a long time. So, let’s look at the long-term. Let’s look at the next 5 or 10 years. There’s not a day that you and I can turn on our TVs or open our browsers and look at the news without seeing the terminology, AI. Talk a little bit about AI innovations and technologies and how that’s going to affect the important and great work you and your colleagues are doing in sustainability at Alaska Airlines.

Ryan: Yeah. So, AI has been a part of our road map for a number of years already. And obviously, it has expanded and blown up in society, which is really interesting. And sometimes scary, but sometimes really mind-blowing and really cool. And so I think there’s a really healthy public debate about the right place that AI has in our society. We’ve used it and continue to use it today to make ourselves more efficient. And it aids our air traffic controllers and our route planners in finding the most efficient routes for our planes and to use less fuel. And that saves money and that translates into lower ticket prices, which is great. We’ve been using a program called flyways through airspace intelligence that really helps you find the smooth air. Sometimes the straight line is not the answer that you want to be on time. And for a plane, you can slow down because there might be traffic ahead. And that’ll save you some fuel and you’ll still land on time. So, there’s things like that that we’re implementing today and then the next version of that. So that’s all pre-departure. The next version of that is actually to give some of that control to the pilots while they’re flying to see, oh, this is the route that I planned. But things have changed and along our way. And maybe there’s a better route. So, we’re excited about testing out those futures and using AI to help us think through those. It’s a dynamic. How you’re flying across the country may feel like a straight line, but it’s it’s a dynamic and always changing space. And so AI can really help with that to determine those better courses.

John: That’s interesting. In terms of your own goals, how do you get inspired yourself now? You’re in an industry that’s very important, as you say, very safe, and is a part of our lives. Do you benchmark your success and your colleague’s success in sustainability, Alaska versus other airlines? Well, Ryan, do you look outside of your industry for both inspiration about what’s possible, and what can be, and just for ideas yourself that you could bring back to Alaska Airlines?

Ryan: Yeah, I think it’s yes and, right? So, I certainly look at our competitors in the airline industry. And again, I said we’re very collaborative, so I don’t think anyone’s doing anything tremendously different from anyone else. There are going to be some first steps here and there, and that’s always exciting. And we like to make those first steps as well. So, right, like removing plastic bottles, removing plastic cups. We see other airlines following that trend now. So, that’s really great and actually really positive, right? In the space that I work in, I want people to copy the good things that I do. And I want to copy the good things that they do. So, I think that’s true. And actually, coming from outside the airline industry, I brought a unique perspective. And I think that’s been valuable in this SAF world, right? I see SAF today as where renewables were 15 years ago. And I have a background in renewable. So, I can see some of these market changes that maybe some other lifetime airline employees haven’t seen. And so yeah, I absolutely look out, and those forums like REBA, as we mentioned, or CEBA, as we mentioned, are great places to do it. GreenBiz is another good location to collaborate with sustainability professionals and understand what’s going on out there out. And in terms of inspiration, I’ll tell you, this week, my team and I, we went up to the San Juan Islands, which are about two hours north of Seattle, and met with one of our environmental NGOs that we provide money to on an annual basis and learned about…So, we offset our water footprint every year. So, the amount of water that we use in our planes, in our buildings, we offset through water restoration. And so we met with an organization that does that for us. And the areas that they have invested in with our money are all about saving these orcas that are in the San Juan Islands called the southern residents. There’s only 74 of these orcas left, these beautiful creatures in the seas. And our money is going to restoring wetlands, restoring streams and rivers that then filter down to providing the ecosystem for the fish that the salmon eat, that the orcas then eat. And it’s tremendous. I was just blown away. I didn’t really understand our position in that and why a company like ours or other companies would invest in a water footprint. Why does that matter? Well, it matters tremendously to the ecosystem in the world that we live in. And so I found tremendous inspiration from something that was decided before I came, but that we do. And yeah, super exciting.

John: That’s really great. Is there any long-term goals at Alaska in sustainability that we haven’t discussed that you want to share with our audience before we have to sign off for today?

Ryan: No, our 2040 net zero goal is the longest-term one that we have out there today. We are finishing up our 2025 goals here next year. And then in all likelihood, we’ll restate or introduce some new goals, probably 2030, or 2035, that will continue to push the envelope on our way to 2040. Super excited about it. And then as well, we are in the midst of trying to acquire Hawaiian Airlines, and learning all about that culture and learning about their goals and integrating their goals in ours is our big step for the next year. And super exciting to be a part of.

John: Well, and there’s no other great airline to make sustainability in the forefront than taking Hawaiian Air and making that, also bringing it up to the standards that you’ve created in Alaska Air. So, I look forward to hearing that, as you and I know, sustainability is a journey. There is no finish line. So, I just want to extend an open invitation to you to always come back on the show whenever you’d like and continue to share the important journey you and your colleagues are on at Alaska Airlines in sustainability. It’s really important for us to learn about that and hear about that. Since your airline is such an important part of all of our lives, including mine myself. I want to thank you, Ryan, today for your time. And more importantly, I want to thank you and all your colleagues at Alaska Air for making the world not only more sustainable but a better place.

Ryan: Thank you, John. It was such a pleasure to talk to you today.

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