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Scott Kirby fiercely protects his time. The 59-year-old United Airlines CEO limits his schedule to a maximum of four hours of meetings a day, pushing back on the norm of CEOs in back-to-back, marathon meetings. 

When he does make time for a meeting, he expects a real exchange of ideas. He doesn’t want a presenter reciting a PowerPoint presentation that everyone can read for themselves in their own time; he wants to talk. 

“My meetings are also quick, and my meetings are almost all conversational,” Kirby said in a recent . 

By keeping his calendar under control, Kirby devotes more attention to the strategic decisions he considers more important. 

“The further you go in your career, certainly by the time you’re the CEO, your job is not to work hard; it’s to think hard,” Kirby said. “If you’re spending your time looking at yesterday’s detailed metrics, you’re doing the wrong thing.”

Kirby received $32.3 million in total compensation for 2025, making him the last year. He has to make bets years before passengers see the results, from aircraft orders to route planning. 

His forward-thinking role explains why he guards time for thinking, outside of meetings. 

“My job is to be focused over the horizon — what’s coming that no one else sees yet,” Kirby said. “It is not to be focused on what happened yesterday.”

Kirby’s daily routine

Kirby told Business Insider that he begins most days before sunrise. He sleeps about eight-and-a-half hours and wakes up naturally at 5:30 a.m. He devotes five minutes of attention to email before he turns to exercise and reading.

Reading occupies about three hours of Kirby’s typical day. He works through The Wall Street Journal cover to cover, reads selected New York Times coverage and keeps up with roughly five magazines as they arrive. He also finishes about two books a week, moving between biographies, history, science and science fiction. 

“Reading, I think, is the number one thing you can do to connect dots, which I think I’m good at that other people don’t see,” Kirby said.

United’s long-term strategy

Kirby sets a meeting limit to preserve time for the work he views as most important, including making long-term decisions. That focus is especially important as United pursues an expansive growth agenda. 

United plans to take delivery of by April 2028. The newer planes are central to United’s push to refresh its fleet and add capacity. 

The Chicago-based company is also making its largest international network expansion to date, announcing for 2027. The new routes include service to cities like Okinawa, Japan and Ibiza and Valencia, Spain. 

On board, United is trying to stand out from rivals like Delta with a better digital experience. More than 400 United aircraft had Starlink Wi‑Fi as of June, and it expected to equip nearly 1,000 planes by the end of the year.