an airplane flying over a city

United Airlines reports it ended June leading major carriers in on-time performance and broke many single-day travel records. Will smooth overall operations now continue in July?

June 2024 Was Strong For United Airlines

United shared highlights of its June 2024 operations, boasting that it bested its competitors in terms of on-time performance.

Highlights include:

  • Finishing #1 in on-time departures for June among the eight largest US carriers
  • United touts it has finished 1st or 2nd for on-time departures for 11 months in a row – its longest such streak
  • United achieved the top spot for on-time departures at six of its seven hubs, while 39 domestic United line stations had their best-ever month of June for on-time departures
  • This was despite “severe weather impacting 30% of the days in June”
  • United carried nearly 16 million passengers in June, the most ever for that month
  • United recorded its busiest single day ever on June 24, 2024 with 565,000 passengers
  • Four of United’s six busiest days ever in company history were last month

For the Independence Day holiday, United expects to fly nearly 5.7 million people (between June 28-July 8), up more than 7% compared to last year. Every day during this period United will fly an average of over 500,000 people and operate over 4,400 flights, breaking down to three takeoffs every minute for 11 consecutive days.

That all may be puffery, but now comes the test: can United run a smooth operation this summer, not just compared to its competitors, but outright? I’ve had my fair share of re-booking Award Expert clients due to last-minute flight cancellations and severe delays last month…is there enough slack in the schedule and backup aircraft and crew to avoid a domino effect of delays when one aircraft inevitably suffers a mechanical incident?

CONCLUSION

I typically try to avoid travel during the summer, especially to Europe, but I’ll get the chance to fly on United this month and we will see how things go…

This is indeed the test for United: with its growing fleet and route network, can the carrier keep up this summer? Because if it ever expects Delta, it will need to run a tight operation.


image: United Airlines

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