On November 4, United Airlines sent out an email to their customers where they trolled their competitors for the operational problems they had, and promised that they would be the carrier everyone could rely on for their holiday plans.
At the time, I wrote that United's operation appears to be melting down, and that it is tempting fate.
Scott Kirby wrote that because they kept their pilots flying throughout the Pandemic, they wouldn't have the problems that American Air has.
What is going on?
Chinese airlines and Air India are the only ones that have had to cancel or delay more flights today than United has.
They have already canceled over 100 flights for Christmas Eve. Neither American nor Southwest has yet canceled any. The number of United's cancel numbers have been increasing rapidly.
Delta has canceled 41 flights today and 50 tomorrow so far, and United is doing poorly.
The lack of pilots is the main reason for United's cancellations. JonNYC reports that United is short over 300 pilots because of the vaccine requirement, and that they have kept their pilots ready to fly, so wouldn't have a shortage.
There are 52 segment cancellation in the equipment for tomorrow. The completion factor for the fleet is 95 percent with OAG having 1,047 B737 frequencies tomorrow.
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December 23, 2021.
United is canceling flights for Saturday and things may get worse.
They have more open trips without crew assigned, but they won't be successful with all of them.
If a flight is canceled for lack of crew, they are likely to cancel additional flights that the crew would have operated.
Planes are not in position to fly their schedules the next day. It can take time to recover from out of position crew and planes.
The airline's CEO said it wouldn't happen during the holidays. He has been doing victory laps on TV for finishing up the carrier's vaccine mandate and talking about how the carrier has not had operational nightmares like competitors have. This was inevitable after marketing.
Many of you have asked if you can book with confidence on United. The answer is yes, you can.
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We have taken a unique approach to rebuilding an airline in the midst of a Pandemic.
Hopefully the unique approach will allow them to stop at customers who are already having their holiday plans disrupted.
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