United CEO Says Airlines Are 'Stressed to the Max' — and Shares What It'll Take to Recover
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"Across the board there are strains in the system, aircraft manufacturers delivering, having enough pilots and all of those stresses and strains means that the system is tighter,” Scott Kirby said.
Kena Betancur/Getty Images
The airline industry is in for a turbulent future unless big changes are made, United Airlines’ CEO conceded this week.
To avoid mass cancellations and a domino effect, CEO Scott Kirby told CNN the industry must run with more back-up planes and back-up staff in place. Only then can airlines avoid the kinds of widespread disruptions that can plague the industry for weeks (as it did with Southwest over Christmas week) when something like a storm hits.
“You can’t run an airline like it’s 2019, and the reason is because the system is just stressed to the max,” Kirby told CNN. “There’s strains everywhere, whether it’s in security or FAA staffing or systems. Across the board there are strains in the system, aircraft manufacturers delivering, having enough pilots and all of those stresses and strains means that the system is tighter.”
“And when something happens, the straws are much more likely to break the camel’s back. And you’ve seen it over and over again,” he added. “It just doesn’t take much to break the back of the system.”
For its part, Kirby said United is running its operations with 25 percent more spare planes than before the pandemic with “more buffer and more resources that gives us the ability to firewall when something happens.”
Last year, United States airlines had an overall on-time percentage of just over 77 percent from January 2022 to October 2022, according to the latest available data from the Bureau of Transportation reviewed by Travel + Leisure. United Airlines fared slightly better with an on-time percentage of 79.4 percent during the same time period.
Delta Air Lines, which has consistently been one of the most reliable U.S. carriers when it comes to being on time, had an on-time percentage of 82.69 percent.
On the other end of the spectrum were airlines like JetBlue, which had an on-time percentage of just 64.78 percent, and Allegiant Air, which had an on-time percentage of 63.71 percent.
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