Airline difficulties will persist for at least another year, United Airlines Warns as the CEO has stated. According to CEO Scott Kirby, “Our base assumption is though that it’s going to gradually get better and we’re not going to get back to normal utilization and normal staffing levels until next summer”.
The CEO of United Airlines warns this week that it would be at least a year before air travel returns to normal. The head of United, Scott Kirby, said in an interview with CNBC that while air travel will gradually improve over the next 12 months, it won’t return to normal until next summer due to the ongoing staffing shortages and mass cancellations that have plagued the industry for months. Heathrow Airport in London even asked carriers to stop selling tickets this summer to keep up.
Also, know about what the FAA Chief Reports Fewer Delays and Cancellations at U.S Airports.
United Airlines Warns of the Challenges
“The biggest challenge that faces us probably for the next 12 months is all the infrastructure challenges around aviation. It’s maddening to us at United right now because… we got ahead of the curve, we’ve been hiring,” Kirby said. “But you look at the mess that’s happening in Heathrow or some of the other challenges we’ve had with air traffic control or other things around the system and the system just can’t support our flying… So what we’ve done is just pull our capacity back.
“All the costs are still there because we’re prepared to be a much bigger airline — we have the people to be a much bigger airline — but we’re going to be a smaller airline till the system can support it,” he said.
United, on the other hand, has joined a number of other airlines in anticipatorily reducing summer itineraries. Dozens of flights from United’s Newark hub have been canceled, along with flights to two additional destinations and a third route coming autumn.
Flight delays continue to plague the airline sector, but the acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration has claimed that conditions are improving, with the country’s top 10 airlines canceling only 2% of all regularly scheduled domestic flights in May, down from 2.3% in April.
The FAA has collaborated with the carrier since United made its cutbacks at Newark, according to Kirby, and staffing at “the air traffic control desk [is] improved.”
