United Airlines has so far cancelled 234 or 8% of its mainline flights today, and fully one-third were delayed. That’s down markedly from the last several days, but compares to just 13 total cancellations at Southwest, 2 at Delta, and not a single one at American. While weather and air traffic control issues snarled the airlines, United lost control of its operations.
- It cancelled 529 flights on Wednesday (1415 flights delayed) and
- 786 flights on Tuesday (1304 flights delayed).
Fortunately it appears to be recovering. Planes are full of passengers trying to get where they’ve been, taking up every empty seat, and it’s taking several days to accomplish this. A number of people on my United flight to Austin on Thursday were flying between United hubs by connecting in my home town. Originating at Washington Dulles they were trying to get to Houston, Denver, and Los Angeles. Some had been trying to get home for three days.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby himself gave up trying to fly United when he needed to go from their Newark hub to their hub at Denver. He flew private out of Teterboro.
The airline says that United “did not pay for his flight.” However Kirby apologizes for abandoning solidarity with his employees and customers trying to get through the morass.
“Taking a private jet was the wrong decision because it was insensitive to our customers who were waiting to get home…I sincerely apologize to our customers and our team members who have been working around-the-clock for several days — often through severe weather — to take care of our customers.
Kirby did not choose to bump a paying passenger. That would have been bad. Instead he left United seats for their customers, and apparently paid out of pocket for his own alternate transportation. If he’d found a seat, flying from the New York area to Denver on JetBlue, Delta or Southwest would have been better optics.
His former boss famously refused to bump a paying passenger, flying Southwest and winding up in a conversation around race shortly after the murder of George Floyd. Southwest’s CEO this year flew American rather than his own airline after a contentious run-in with the carrier’s pilots.
United wasn’t reliable this week. Nobody knows that better than Scott Kirby, their CEO. And Kirby’s in a position to come out of pocket to fly private when he needs to. Without knowing the aircraft type he charted, I’ll guess it came at a cost of (order of magnitude) $20,000. He’s being criticized for this as “the single worst possible thing an airline CEO could have done” and “a clearly stupid act” but that seems hyperbolic, no?
Totally moronic and not surprising. So sad.
This is precisely the kind of thing to be expected from Scott Kirby.
The DOT should drop the hammer on United as much as it did on Southwest.
Southwest and Delta will have field days talking about this whether w/ customers whether in public or not.
Ridiculous that anyone seriously cares about this matter. If you buy into the belief that he actually HAD to be be somewhere specifically in his official capacity, then not bumping a customer and paying out of his own pocket seems like good optics to me. Was he rushing home to man the phones, reboot the computers and help United out of this predicament? Probably not, he could do his (advisory / decision making) job from anywhere. My guess is that he was rushing home to start his holiday weekend…
If he truly wanted to apologize, he would resign.
Those advertisments United ran in Denver aged like milk.
Kirby doesn’t cut it. United heads a leader to turn it around, not accelerate its demise.
Apparently the FAA had no issues handling private flights.
So the whole argument that the FAA was to blame for all these ATC delays…yet his private jet flight that uses the same system got out just fine? That’s rich, don’t you think.
Bad optics or no, I’m happy this story is circulating. WHY? Because it sheds light on UA’s poor performance of late…really shoddy.
As an aside, I was among those who suffered through two UA flight delays this past week. In each case, we were strung along as delays were stretched from 45 minutes to 90 minutes to 2 hours. But magically, as the 3-hour mark approached, staff quickly got into high gear and started herding us into the plane! I presume this is because 3 hr delay triggers the airline’s obligation to offer compensation. It all seems pretty cynical…
Is he the guy who ruined America West?
While he was organizing a private jet I was stuck on the tarmac for 3 hours at BWI for a flight to LAX before the flight was finally canceled because they could not find any available pilots. I have never had a worse experience on any airline than I did on United yesterday.
@chase Kirby is a gizzillionaire now after flunking out of pilot training in the Air Force. He was accused of sexually harassing female staff at AA.
Instead of using a rationed takeoff slot for his private jet, maybe he could have given the slot up for use by a UA commercial jet for the benefit of hundreds of others. Furthermore, Kirby now is in no position to talk about the importance of helping the environment. His actions speak louder than his words.
@ted poco – Best response of the week!
Kirby is sorry all right, sorry he got caught. Yet another illustration why the whole catastrophic AmericaWest management legacy believes in management, not leadership.
Love the defense here of a callous disregard for passengers and employees. Let me ask you this, Gary….what would the greatest CEO of our times have done, Herb Kelleher? He would have been with his employees, his passengers, on the front lines. Not chartering a private jet to get home for the holiday weekend. A great leader with any sense knows when and where to be. Kirby chose poorly.
Your excuse that he paid out of pocket and saved a seat for passengers on United must rank as the most inane thing you have ever written here. And that’s saying something. He also could have rented a car, driven to Dulles, and met with his employees there to thank him. Then flown from there tomorrow, as seats begin to open. Is that so hard?
And this is coming from a guy that had no real issues with Kirby prior. Now I am starting to understand why so many dislike him. Anyone that would make this choice is clearly entitled and out of touch.
Kirby is now a lock for the Ron Allen Incompetent Airline CEO of the Year.
Does United’s BOD even have an Executive Committee? Obviously, not…
The least Kirby should have done was take a few stranded passengers or employees at EWR on his private flight to Denver.
When did flying privately become a felony? The next thing is that some people are going to call for a 30 year prison sentence.
Kirby should do the right thing and resign. He knew darn well it was a poor decision to charter a private jet and consciously did it anyway. JERK.
After firing hundreds of pilots for not taking the jab during Covid, and then rehiring them, Scott Kirby has shown everyone that as a CEO he is only marginally competent.
Of course, this new debacle “renting a private aircraft“ at his “personal expense“ is ludicrous. Surely a CEO has the wherewithal to use his platinum or black American Express card to do any damn thing he wants and write it off on company business. Anyone stating or thinking, otherwise is a fool.
The United Board should request – rather demand – that Scott Kirby should either step down or dismiss him.
He was never a competent CEO.
@ted poco
Technically, if the plane stayed below 250 knots below 10,000′ and below 18,000′ MSL in general, they wouldn’t need ATC services other than local permission to take off and land. I wonder if a private jet ever did that to skirt the problems in the past.
Anyone that attempts to defend Kirby this week at all shows their complete lack of objectivity and their loyalty to the America West management team that has done more negative than any other airline executive group in US aviation history.
Kirby railed against the FAA when it was clear that United was distinctly having operational issues that other airlines were able to overcome – and other airlines did not have problems impacting other hubs.
Kirby bragged a year and a half ago that he would get an industry leading contract for United’s pilots and it was Delta that not only finally delivered a contract that was worth twice as much as what United offered and American has been willing to match that.
The cost to United will be very high. UAL lost over $1 billion in market cap this week while DAL tacked on more than that with AAL and LUV stock also having very good weeks. Sales teams for other airlines are having a field day even as Kirby clings to his strategy of aggressive growth in an environment where neither his airline or UA suppliers or the US aviation system can support it.
@ Emily Ratajkowski — If you buy into the belief that he HAD to se somewhere, he would’ve flown an airline other than United. OH, wait, that’s exactly what he did!
I vote for FAA fines if he isn’t removed as CEO.
It’s funny that no one seems to be focusing on the fact that if Congress had provided the FAA with the money it needed to modernize the ATC over the past four decades we wouldn’t behaving an ATC shortage. Instead, we would have technologies that would enable the network to handle more flights with fewer controllers.
But, who cares about that. Let’s just focus on someone who leads a multi-billion dollar business deciding to take a private jet to get where they’re going. That’s almost as unheard of as politicians passing legislation that benefits those who write them checks.
Doc,
while it is true that the US needs for ATC controllers, the issue that cut air traffic control capacity at EWR so badly and resulted in equally long ATC delays at JFK and LGA as well as EWR was the location of the thunderstorms this week.
No amount of technology or staffing can keep planes moving when thunderstorms are directly in the path of arrival and departure corridors. It is simply not safe for planes to fly through thunderstorms esp. at low altitudes.
Add in that NYC airspace is highly interlocked even on a good day and there are very few logistical possibilities to move arrival and departure corridors because there are multiple other airports that are also operating and you get the situation that resulted this week.
Blaming the FAA and ATC when weather itself dealt the FAA an unworkable hand can’t and won’t UA’s screwups esp. since it is obvious that the NYC problems were uncontrolled and spread to other hubs.