United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told CNN Thursday air travel remains safe, even at Newark Liberty International Airport, where delays have played out for more than a week as air traffic controllers took trauma leave after a critical technology outage.
“It was inevitable at some point that this would happen if you didn’t modernize the system,” Kirby said in an interview with CNN Aviation Correspondent Pete Muntean. “The biggest thing that we can do for the air traffic controllers is get them technology that works and get them fully staffed.”
A telecommunication system used by controllers handling flights approaching the New Jersey airport failed on April 28, causing radios to silence and screens to go blank.
He praised Transportation Seretary Sean Duffy and the Department’s plans, scheduled to be announced this afternoon, to upgrade air traffic control.
“Today is actually a historic day, I think, for the FAA and the United States air traffic control system,” Kirby said. “The bill that Secretary Duffy is going to introduce later today… really leaves me the most optimistic I’ve been in my entire career, that we’re finally going to get air traffic control modernized and fixed.”
On Wednesday, the FAA also said it would add three new, high-bandwidth, telecommunications connections and replace copper wire with fiberoptic technology to bring data to the controllers handling flights approaching Newark, which served as a hub for United. The facility, located in Philadelphia, will also get a temporary backup system and staffing will be increased.
Asked about comments by President Donald Trump blasting the prior administration for the FAA problems, Kirby said while there was blame to go around, and he was focused on making things better.
“This is decades in the making, so there’s plenty of people take the blame. I don’t care who takes the blame,” he said. “All I care about is getting it fixed and moving forward, and getting us and getting our customers the world class air traffic control system that the people of the United States deserve.”
To address the immediate delays at Newark, United Airlines canceled about 35 round trips every day, but they want the government to do more.
“We just need to keep the number of flights equal to the capacity of the airport. There’s 77 (takeoff or landing) operations per hour, theoretically. When you get scheduled at 86 or more, it falls apart,” he said.
Wednesday with the preemptive cancelations the airline was 83% on time because of the lower capacity.
Kirby said the airline has asked the federal government to put level three slot controls in place at Newark as a short-term fix. This would limit the number of flights any airline could schedule to take off or land at the airport.
“If the FAA is short staffed, and we have to have fewer flights when the FAA is back to full staffing, we can ramp it back up,” he said.
Kirby said he’s encouraged by Duffy’s plans and the nominee for Federal Aviation Administration administrator, Bryan Bedford. He added that air traffic control is a bipartisan issue, noting that he’s spoke with both sides of the aisle on the matter from both the House and Senate.
“The people are different,” Kirby said. “Secretary Duffy is action oriented. When I texted him over the weekend, I immediately got a call back and got a response, and he’s working on the issue.”
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