United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby announced on Saturday that the U.S. airline is working to make changes to its flight operations in an effort to avoid weather-related disruptions ahead of the Fourth of July spike in air travel.
This comes after United Airlines canceled 19% of its scheduled flights after thunderstorms and equipment failures rocked operations at a U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) facility in Washington. The issue led to major delays for air passengers across the east coast of the U.S.
“While we work to control the things that are within our control, we must also do a better job of planning against the things that are outside our control so that we can be in a position to recover more quickly,” Kirby said, acknowledging the importance of contingency planning as U.S. air traffic looks bound to exceed pre-COVID levels.
In an effort to manage the boom in air travel demand, United Airlines is working with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to get more gates. This change would require some schedule changes on the part of the U.S. airline.