United Airlines announced Thursday that, effective July 1, it will remove 50 departures from the Newark Liberty International Airport schedule in an effort to address congestion plaguing airports amid a surge in demand for the summer travel season.
“After the last few weeks of irregular operations in Newark, caused by many factors including airport construction, we reached out to the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] and received a waiver allowing us to temporarily adjust our schedule for the remainder of the summer,” Jon Roitman, executive vice president and chief operations officer, wrote in an email to employees. “Even though we have the planes, pilots, crews and staff to support our Newark schedule, this waiver will allow us to remove about 50 daily departures which should help minimize excessive delays and improve on-time performance – not only for our customers, but for everyone flying through Newark.”
A United spokesperson told NJBIZ that the 50 departures represent about 12% of the airline’s schedule at Newark and said that the move will not result in any market exits, just frequency reductions.
“Travel demand in Newark has never been stronger and we will continue to partner with the FAA and Port Authority so we can reinstate these 50 daily departures and revert to a full schedule from Newark as soon as possible,” Roitman continued in his email. “In the interim, all carriers – not just United – need to continue to work with the FAA to mitigate Newark congestion.”
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That last line echoed what United CEO Scott Kirby alluded to in interviews with CNN and Bloomberg this week.
“There’s more flights scheduled in Newark, for example, than there is capacity at the airport, even on a perfect blue sky day and air traffic control is understaffed and because of that, there is just more flights than the airport can handle,” Kirby told CNN.
Kirby has called for government help to enforce the rules that limit the amount of flights to a number that an airport can handle. He also cited staffing issues for air traffic control towers as exacerbating the situation, as travelers flood airports this summer season.
“Take an airport like Newark airport, we have had weekends recently where there is under 50% staffing and the controllers are working their tails off to be successful,” Kirby told Bloomberg. “But when you’re at 50% staff, the 89 operations in schedule and they had us on a perfectly blue sky at 36 operations per hour and it is a nightmare for customers, for employees, for the airlines when you’re in the situation. Air traffic control in the United States – there is no margin for error. A little bit of weather can cascade through.”
The move comes amid an especially brutal Thursday at Newark when 10% of flights were cancelled and another 10% were delayed, making Newark the most disrupted airport in the country.
United says it does not anticipate such a schedule change at any of its six other domestic hubs this summer.
“Our recovery plan has been to only sell a schedule we could fly and put customers first, even if that meant sacrificing some short-term revenue,” Roitman wrote in his email.
