JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
There will be fewer planes in the air tomorrow as a consequence of the ongoing government shutdown. The Federal Aviation Administration has announced that it will eventually reduce air traffic by 10% at 40 of the nation's busiest airports starting Friday. The rationale is safety. Air traffic controllers are federal employees who are required to work without pay during the shutdown, and that has made a staffing shortage worse. And the FAA has already been delaying flights because of it. But there are still a lot of questions about how all of this will work. So for some answers, we've reached United Airlines chief customer officer and senior vice president of airport operations, David Kinzelman. Welcome to the program.
DAVID KINZELMAN: Thank you. Glad to be here.
SUMMERS: I know that this news, David, is fresh to you, but as best as you know, what exactly might this look like for United? Do you plan to cancel flights, delay them? What measures are you taking?
KINZELMAN: We do plan to cancel flights. So over the next few days, we are canceling about 4% of our domestic flying, but it'll be a spread across the airports, and we will put those cancellations in today for the weekend because we know customers will want to know before they depart whether the return flight will be impacted. So you'll see those cancellations going in today.
SUMMERS: As United has been making those decisions, how involved has the FAA been in sort of guiding and shaping them?
KINZELMAN: They've given us a list of airports where they feel like airlines could help them relieve pressure. Each of the airlines are making reductions in those airports to help to provide relief for the air traffic controllers to ensure safety and reliable transportation for customers.
SUMMERS: How much advance notice did you get to need to make these changes from the FAA and the Department of Transportation?
KINZELMAN: It came pretty quickly, to be honest, but this is what we do. We have service disruptions frequently in the airline business. It could be storms. It could be staffing triggers. It could be any external variable. We do this fairly frequently. So we've got a good playbook. Just to put it in perspective, the impact here is about what we would expect from a medium-sized storm. The difference is it's spread across the entire domestic network. And so that's a little bit easier for us to manage...
SUMMERS: OK.
KINZELMAN: ...Given our schedule.
SUMMERS: Now the air traffic controller staffing shortage that we've been discussing, that really predates the government shutdown. Has United already been making flight decisions due to capacity concerns at certain busy airports?
KINZELMAN: There are a few airports where we have had to make those decisions. But generally speaking, we're flying the schedule that we publish, and we're working very closely with the FAA and whatever resource constraints they may have in a certain location to accommodate customers as best we can. You've seen some increase in delays in certain markets where that's happened, but generally, we've been able to keep up with it and provide reliable transportation.
SUMMERS: You know, I think, for a lot of us, we have unanswered questions about the safety when we fly. I wonder from your vantage point, do you believe this 10% reduction in air traffic will make air travel appreciably safer for United customers?
KINZELMAN: We are complying with the request from FAA, and we believe that the air traffic control system is extremely safe. We do everything we can every day to ensure that we deliver safe and reliable transportation to customers, and we work with the federal agencies to ensure that. So this is an important point for us to get ahead of the capacity constraints here that we're putting into place and try to minimize the impact to customers on their travel.
SUMMERS: I just want to ask then, though, the 10% reduction, will it make air travel safer for passengers?
KINZELMAN: Right now, we're focused on what we know, which is about a 4% reduction over the next few days and making sure we communicate with customers in advance, provide them travel options so that we can minimize their disruption.
SUMMERS: You and other airlines have announced that international flights are not being affected by this move at this point. Why not?
KINZELMAN: Well, that's right. Our long haul international flights and the flights that we have between our seven hubs are not impacted by this. And the reason is really important. The first is, those are heavy volume for customers. They carry a lot of connections, and they carry a lot of crews, where we transport crews from one flights to another. So in order to minimize the disruption for United's network for days to come, we want to be sure we preserve the integrity of those routes.
SUMMERS: I mean, as you well know, Thanksgiving is a few weeks away, and that's traditionally one of the busiest travel times of the year. Christmas comes very soon after that. If this government shutdown continues, how are you preparing for that?
KINZELMAN: Well, we're focused now on what we know, and that is what the schedule reductions look like in the next few days. The good point, if there is a silver lining here, is that we are not in peak travel period now. We're not in the middle of the holidays. We're not in the middle of the summer. And so we're pretty confident. United's got a large network, and we're confident that we'll have the seats available to accommodate customers on their journeys.
SUMMERS: David, I do have to ask you to put on your chief customer hat for a second here. What's your advice for travelers who are planning to fly in the coming days?
KINZELMAN: The primary advice I would have is to download the United App. That's our primary channel for communicating everything about the customer's journey, whether it's disruptions of flights or whether it's options for amenities along the way. Every update that we have, we will be as transparent as we can about those changes through the app. So travel can be stressful, but prior to travel, if they download the app, that's the best source of providing a good way for us to communicate the disposition of their travel journey.
SUMMERS: We've been speaking with David Kinzelman, United Airlines chief customer officer and senior vice president of airport operations. Thanks so much.
KINZELMAN: You're welcome, Juana. Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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