United CEO: Air travel system is ‘stressed to the max’

If airlines are to avoid repeats of recent service problems, they’ll need to have a lot more back-up in place, according to United CEO Scott Kirby. “You can’t run an airline like it’s 2019, and the reason is because the system is just stressed to the max,” Kirby said this week. “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 said. “It just doesn’t take much to break the back of the system.” The challenges facing the industry were underscored again Wednesday when bad weather forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights, with Southwest Airlines hit particularly hard. A winter storm battered cities such as Chicago, Indianapolis and Cleveland, where Southwest has a strong presence. Kirby said the only solution is for airlines to run with more back-up planes and more back-up staff in place than they had ever done in days before the pandemic. “We’re running with about 10% more pilots per block hour [of operation] than we did pre-pandemic. You know, we have 25% more spare airplanes, and really across the board, we’re just having more buffer and more resources that gives us the ability to firewall when something happens,” he said.<br/>