Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
CHICAGO -- United Airlines is canceling nearly 2,000 flights next month, the latest blow as the world's largest airline struggles to improve relations with its pilots.
Travelers: Delays expand as
some face a third day
of cancellationsHawaii: Frequency is targeted,
but 18 daily runs to the isles
may be sparedFrom staff and wire reports
United said it will take 1,980 flights off its September schedule. The airline had already canceled 4,800 flights from May through the end of August after pilots announced they would no longer work overtime.
Hawaii is unlikely to be affected by the changes, said Joe Hopkins, a United spokesman in Chicago. "We only have a certain number of flights to Hawaii. We're thinning out frequency in some of the domestic markets," he said today.
United canceled 240 flights systemwide yesterday, including a Los Angeles-Maui flight, while it struggled to deal with pilot sick calls and disruptions caused by mainland storms.
The company's online information site, www.ual.com, said that all of the mainland-Hawaii flights scheduled for today were running and most Hawaii flights were listed as on-time or slightly late this morning.
However, a San Francisco-Honolulu flight was running more than 4 hours late, and a Los Angeles-Honolulu flight was nearly two hours late.
United has 18 mainland-Hawaii flights a day: to Honolulu, one direct from Chicago, four from Los Angeles and four from San Francisco; to Maui, three from Los Angeles and two from San Francisco; to Kona, two from Los Angeles and one from San Francisco; and one to Kauai from Los Angeles.
United had the worst on-time arrival rate of major carriers in May, the latest month for which such figures are available.
The airline has blamed poor weather for some of its woes. But it says its pilots are refusing to work overtime since their contract expired in April and have increasingly been calling in sick.
The pilots say there is no organized work slowdown and problems are more the result of United's failure to hire enough pilots.
Rono Dutta, United's president, issued a statement yesterday apologizing for the inconvenience the delays and cancellations have caused passengers.
"We are anguished by the pain and suffering these operational difficulties are causing to our customers and our front-line employees," Dutta said.
Travelers can almost bet on more hassles.
"Every time I go to check the board, the time gets later and later," said Paul Sson, who was delayed more than three hours yesterday as he waited at O'Hare Airport in Chicago for a connecting flight to Syracuse, N.Y.
Debra Spinney has been trying to get from O'Hare to Lexington, Ky., since Friday but saw her flight canceled three straight days. She said she won't fly United again.
"I just want to get home and get back to work," Spinney said as she stood in a ticket line yesterday.
One local radio station called Chicago's busiest airport "Camp O'Hare" because of the scores of passengers sleeping on cots scattered throughout United's modern terminal.
Analysts said United and the rest of the airline industry this summer are facing record highs in percentage of seats occupied.
"I think that both the pilots and the company probably bear some responsibility, and the timing could not be worse," said Ron Kuhlmann of Roberts, Roach & Associates in Hayward, Calif.
The Federal Aviation Administration said delays at O'Hare, a United hub, increased 23 percent last month compared with July 1999, and delays nationwide were up 16.5 percent in June from the same month last year.
United pilot Herb Hunter, a spokesman for the pilots' union, said some have refused to work overtime but there is no organized effort by the union.
"If we settled this contract today, we're still short of pilots," he said. "They didn't hire enough people, and we told them over a year ago that we're going to be short this summer."
Hopkins said the airline is in the process of hiring 1,300 pilots.
