American Airlines suggests things are three times worse than United

Have you been thinking about the future a lot lately?

Have you made plans, apart from decide to quit your jobThat’s it?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to fly somewhere with your loved ones, lie on a beach and forget what happened in the last few years?

However, there is a small obstacle: the airlines. You can’t be sure what they are going to do, if or when they will take you to your destination. Or if they ever will.

You can’t be sure if they will continue to have a shortage of staff that will cause a shortage of flights that will cause a shortage of their temperament.

So I carefully analyze the public statements of America’s top airline executives to discern how bad — or, bless them, how good — the future of airlines now looks.

Let’s go first to united airlines CEO Scott Kirby. Your airline is reducing the number of flights it offers. He says this is because United want to “do better for the customer”.

A lovely thought, this. One would think that United might have had the idea earlier.

But anyway, when will things get better?

Well, Kirby seemed pretty clear. The saying CNBC: “We’re not going back to normal utilization and normal staffing levels until next summer.”

That’s pretty straightforward. If you’re already planning next year’s summer break, United say things will be back to normal. Although my distant memory suggests that flying in the summer still offers a similar experience to eating gravel with chopsticks.

Now let’s take a look at the predictions. american airlines.

Its CEO, Robert Isom, stared into his first-class custom crystal ball and still saw plenty of dark clouds.

He agreed that it would be a year before the airline’s largest planes would fly normally again. However the additional: “I think it depends on the supply chains of the aircraft manufacturers and ultimately the supply of pilots to get everything back in sync.”

It’s hard when you have to depend on others, isn’t it? But then she inserted a little more darkness.

“From a regional perspective, it’s just going to take a little longer than that,” he said. “Maybe two or three years, to get the pilot supply chain back to where we need it.”

A little longer? Three times as many years as United say things will return to normal?

Airlines have been canceling flights and closing routes from America’s smallest cities. But the mere notion that it will take three years for American to properly serve customers again may lead them to make no plans.

Perhaps one should praise Isom for his realism, even as one laments how mismanaged his airline and others currently seem.

Perhaps United’s Kirby was also simply focusing on his airline’s core services. Or maybe he thinks United is simply in better shape than American. american pilots I would certainly agree with that.

It’s easy to suspect that none of the CEOs have much idea what’s going to happen. They are offering numbers that have no necessary relation to the fun to come.

Every US airline over the past year has shown woeful planning skills. They took government money. They took as much passenger revenue as they could when they knew they didn’t have the staff to operate the flights they had sold.

Yet here’s Kirby trying to instill fear to boost sales: “Unfortunately, there will still be fewer seats available system-wide because the infrastructure around aviation can’t support it. You should probably book early for Christmas.” we are going to fly less to be able to guarantee the reliability”.

Book now to avoid disappointment? How disappointing.

We can all blame the system. It always seems a little harder to blame ourselves.