United Air restores most of its systems after outage, while American says fully recovered
United Airlines is reconsidering its fleet plans due to ongoing delays in the entry into service of the Boeing 737 MAX 10, as stated by the airline’s CEO. Additionally, the incident involving Alaska’s MAX 9 and the subsequent grounding of the model are testing the airline’s patience.Scott Kirby, United’s CEO, did not hide his frustration with the manufacturer. For Kirby, the plane is delayed by five years “at best.” The MAX 10, the largest model of the aircraft, has not yet received certification from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).Kirby, in an interview with CNBC, pointed to “the MAX 9 grounding as the last straw. We will build a fleet plan that does not include the MAX 10, at least as a hypothetical alternative.” United has been awaiting its MAX 10s since at least August 2018. At that time, Kirby, then president of United, outlined cabin plans for the approximately 100 planes the company had ordered. The airline expected to fly them in 2020, intending to use them to replace older aircraft.
However, Stan Deal, CEO of Commercial Aircraft for the company, stated in a release that they are “taking comprehensive measures to safely return the 737 MAX 9s to service and enhance our quality. We will support our customers every step of the way and comply with all FAA mandates.” The company provided no updates on the MAX 10 situation.
United Air restores most of its systems after outage, while American says fully recoveredU.S. carrier United Airlines (NASDAQ:UAL) on Saturday said most of its technology systems had been restored a day after a worldwide IT outage, while peer American Airlines (NASDAQ:AAL) said its operation had fully recovered.
A faulty update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (CRWD) affected millions of Microsoft (MSFT) Windows devices on Friday, hitting several industries including airlines globally and leading many to call the event the world’s biggest technology disruption.
In an emailed statement to Seeking Alpha, United (UAL) said it will still continue to see cancelations and delays over the weekend, without specifying an exact number. Meanwhile, American (AAL) in its own emailed statement said as of Saturday noon, it had canceled 43 total flights, or less than 1% of its total operation.
Top U.S. carrier Delta Air Lines (DAL) separately said another 600 of its flights had been canceled on Saturday, after more than 1.2K on Friday. Delta (DAL) also said a travel waiver was still in effect for customers, a move that was echoed by United (UAL) which extended its travel waiver through Sunday.
“Our top priority today is getting our customers to their destinations as we continue to restore our schedule,” United (UAL) said, adding that its customer service call centers had been fully restored.
“We know this has been a difficult event for airline customers and we appreciate their patience as we work to safely restore our on-time operation,” United (UAL) added.
American (AAL) said it had completed more than 99% of its scheduled departures so far on Saturday, while adding that without the CrowdStrike (CRWD) outage, it would have had only 10 cancelations versus 43.
“Our customer is at the center of everything we do, and we thank them for their patience as our team worked together around the clock to return to normal operations just one day after the global outage,” American (AAL) told Seeking Alpha.
In another notable development, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said he had been hearing reports of “some airlines offering flight credits to passengers for canceled flights.”
“Let me be clear – you are entitled to get your money back promptly if your flight is canceled and you don’t take a rebooking,” Buttigieg said on X (formerly Twitter).
