United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby apologized last Friday for using his private jet to escape New York earlier this week as thousands of passengers were stranded at the airport earlier in the week due to intermittent thunderstorms. . In all, more than 3,000 flights to or from one of New York’s three main airports were cancelled. The CEO was able to make his private flight from Teterboro, New Jersey, to Denver, Colorado, without incident.
Shortage of air traffic controllers
“Taking a private jet was a poor decision because it was insensitive to our customers waiting to go home,” Scott Kirby admitted in an official statement. “I sincerely apologize to our customers and our team members who worked around the clock for multiple days, often in bad weather, to care for our customers.”
The latter concluded by promising to “further demonstrate my respect for the dedication of our team members and the loyalty of our customers.” By contrast, Scott Kirby also blamed last weekend’s outages on the Federal Aviation Administration’s shortage of air traffic controllers. “The FAA has frankly let us down,” he denounced in a note addressed to his employees.
A gradual recovery
Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation of the United States and in particular in charge of the FAA, reacted immediately on Twitter showing – supportive graphic – how well all US airlines, with the exception of United, had recovered from the storms.
Since mid-week, United have been on the right track towards resuming business. The cancellation rate for its flights fell from 26% on Wednesday to 18% on Thursday and then to 8% on Friday night, according to real-time air traffic monitoring site FlightAware. United claims to be able to restore all traffic on time before July 4, allowing Americans to take advantage of a bridge each year to go on vacation.
Source: BFM TV
