Andrew Nocella
Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at United Airlines
Thanks, Brent. Before talking about the third quarter results or the fourth quarter outlook. It's important to acknowledge the impact of the delta variant on our business was substantial. However, we expect the worst of this wave is now passed. In the last two weeks, we've seen on several of our leading business indicators have returned to where we were in July or better. Those indicators include, number one, passenger cancellation rates are close to 2019 levels and consistent with pre-delta level. Two, positive domestic co-brand spend for the quarter of new card acquisition is above 2019 levels and retention level is better than 2019. Three, passenger bookings for November and beyond travel have been above 2019 levels for the last week. A strong bounce back from a few weeks ago. Four, demand for Atlantic travel is consistent with 2019 levels since the announcement of lower travel restrictions and yesterday was up 19%. Five, domestic business demand has rebounded to pre-delta levels or better, and our largest accounts are now increasing at a similar rate to our smallest. Six, business traffic across the Atlantic is now tracking [Phonetic] consistent with or slightly better than domestic business traveling. Seven, Brazilian demand is rebounded quickly, matching the strength we've seen in for months, in mere Latin demand. Eight, book yield for upcoming holidays are positive as well as early '22 are positive. Nine, awards booking levels have exceeded 2019 levels this week for the first time.
While we believe these leading indicators are solid evidence of a bright outlook for United, another set of positive indicators that we've been tracking in recent months is the relative strength of our premium leisure business during the pandemic. These indicators include, one, domestic first class revenue reached 2019 levels this summer with paid load factors 5 points above. 50% of our revenue in transatlantic leisure market came from the premium cabins in 2021, a 13 point improvement versus 2019. Three, paid load factors for our Economy Plus increased by 10 points relative to 2019 this summer. And four, ancillary receipt revenues in Q3 were a record $9.17 per plane passenger, and that's basically at 2019 levels, despite 28% less demand.
Whenever I talk about United Next, our long-term strategy, I tend to focus on domestic gauge growth of 30% and it's importance. However, United Next also grows premium seating [Indecipherable] across our domestic fleets, simply closing the gaps we've had to our primary competitors, our matching demand and our southern hubs that we've missed in the past few years. This recent trend of increased premium leisure demand is a material incremental revenues for our long-term outlook and has the potential to increase overall leisure yields by 2 to 3 points versus our original long-term outlook. While we still believe this traffic will return in full, our plans will succeed, even if it only returns to 85% to 90% of these levels given the yield -- these are yield gains if the prove permanent.
Furthering our revenue segmentation and premium leisure efforts, we've made the decision to outfit our 14 remaining 767-300s with our new mid-tier premium plus product, so that all 767s now include this product. We can also confirm that will offer the separate mid tier cabin on future deliveries of the A320 large jet in 2024.
Relative to 2019, premium plus performance across the Atlantic was our best performing cabin. Our revenue segmentation strategies have always been about offering a range of products customers want to use, from Polaris to premium plus to basic economy. Effective segmentation makes our business model more durable when faced with elevated levels of competition, something we anticipate domestically in the coming year.
I'll now turn to my new role [Phonetic] update of our performance in the quarter and our near-term outlook. I'll also provide an early preview of our internationally focused 2022 capacity blend. Traveling for the third quarter, finishing on 5% and total revenues were down 32% versus 2019. United did achieve a positive year over to -- traveling for July as expected. Passenger yields were positive in July and August versus '19 but fell by 10% in September, given the large but temporary industry supply-demand imbalance caused by the delta variant. The impact of lower pricing and yield will continue into the part of the fourth quarter with October performance only marginally better than September. Close-in bookings continue to track below 2019 levels but are getting better week over week for the last few weeks. Just as in previous quarters, our cargo operation again delivered a record quarter for United total cargo revenue was up 84% from 2019, and was the best third quarter on record. United cargo is once again reviewed all cargo flights that are available, wide-body jets, for the remainder of the year, which we expect will once again result in leading cargo performance.
Turning to our fourth quarter outlook, we now expect total revenue to be down 25% to 30% versus 4Q 2019, with November and December at the top end of the range. Though the delta variance impact on leisure demand is now gone, its impact on business travel and yield in the fourth quarter continues. We expect capacity to be down 23% in the fourth quarter versus 2019, down 13% for domestic and 35% for international. We continue to slowly add back capacity consistent with our capabilities to deliver a consistent operation for our customers, while also managing our expectations for demand.
By December, we expect domestic capacity will only be down 9% as we prepare for a very strong holiday season. Our fleet of 52 Pratt & Whitney powered 777s are not expected to fly this quarter and we continue to have 57 idle [Indecipherable] jets temporarily grounded. We expect most of these grounded jets to return to service by June 2022, in time for strong summer demand.
As I indicated earlier, bookings to Latin America and across the Atlantic have reacted well to the lowering of restrictions for travel November 8 and beyond. We remain optimistic that our Latin and Atlantic client [Phonetic] will gradually build to 2019 levels and above by summer 2022 and business traffic will accelerate early next year. We currently expect capacity for 2022 to be up approximately 5% versus 2019. Our plan -- consider our expectation of [Indecipherable] macro demand, supply and pricing and focus 100% of our growth in the international markets where we expect capacity to be up about 10% versus 2019.
As a result, we expect domestic capacity for 2022 to be approximately flat. We remain agile to new planes around as needed or even ground unneeded widebody jets if conditions warrant. Consistent with our plan for international growth for 2022, last week we announced 10 new Atlantic routes that are focused on premium leisure destinations, such as [Indecipherable] or Italy. Most of our new routes have common theme of premium leisure business as we continue to diversify our global revenue streams, which in the past, were very business-centric.
We're also diversifying our geographic scope across the Atlantic to India, Africa and the Middle East. Many of our new routes also have low historic shares with United and our star partners. One additional common feature of all these routes is the potential of our leading gateways in New York and Washington. We have one more significant international network announcement planned for later this month as we work towards finalizing our 2022 outlook. As the leading US airline across the Pacific, we do expect slower demand recovery versus other parts of the world. We've seen some really great news in recent days with the partial opening of Australia and Singapore. Most of our capacity across the Pacific in Q4 is being supported by further [Phonetic] revenues.
We continue to expect international long-haul of flying [Indecipherable] a strong period of margin improvement versus the last cycle and we are positioned in our capacity to take advantage of that trend. Not only have many widebody jets retired across industry, but we expect that the industry premium seat capacity for the largest Atlantic carriers will be down approximately 10% per departure to 46 seats as many aircraft, including the 747s and the A380s with large premium cabins have been grounded. The United widebody jets have an average of 46 flare [Phonetic] seats, approximately the same number as our primary Atlantic competitors.
As we rebuild our global network, our Polaris lounges are now set to reopen over the next few months, starting with our brand new club at Washington Dulles tomorrow. Briefly, I wanted to talk about our United Next signature interior. We've now taken delivery of 13 MAX 8s with the signature interior and it's a hit with our team and our customers. Each of these land has NPS scores materially higher than any other domestic mainline jet we fly, and has large economy cabins with seat-back monitors at every seat. We will soon begin modifications of the remainder of the narrow-body jets so that by early 2025, the entire mainline fleet has this consistent, superior look and feel.
Thanks for indulging me in this rather long explanation of where things stand, but more importantly, where we're taking United. I have to give thanks to the entire United team for delivering this summer in pretty difficult conditions.
And with that, I'm going to hand it off to Gerry to discuss our financial results and outlook.