Exclusive look at how United Airlines is coping with issues at Newark airport
NEWARK, New Jersey (WABC) -- Eyewitness News got an exclusive look at how United Airlines is coping, in the wake of Newark airport's meltdown last month, that led to hundreds of canceled flights, and thousands of frustrated flyers.
High above Newark Liberty International Airport, there's an unseen hand trying to smooth the ride when things get bumpy.
"Working at Newark is irregular every day," Arty Martins said.
Martins has worked for United Airlines for 32 years. Now, he's a manager at the airline's station operation center at Newark airport.
The mission is to solve problems large or small, before passengers even know about them.
"Little issues you don't expect. Passenger drops a cell phone, and it happens to slide perfectly in the aircraft where we can't get to it right away," Martins said. "Maintenance has to be called. Panels have to be taken out. These are delays no one would expect."
The issues they face are as mundane as a cargo door on a plane that won't close. Eyewitness News got a look at the plane, which is supposed to go to Edinburgh, Scotland. A worker named Roger was in charge of getting it off on time, and had to get maintenance on the scene to fix it before the flight is delayed.
But the big problems are truly massive.
As the dominant airline at Newark, United bore the brunt of the airport's meltdown last month, when failures at an antiquated air traffic control center grounded flights, diverted others and delayed people for hours.
Since then, the FAA says it has installed better backup systems, but still, with persistent staffing shortages, it has sharply limited the number of flights allowed to land at Newark.
For United, it means 100 fewer flights per day, a 25% drop, during the busiest time of the year.
"Once we had the airline sized schedule wise to what we could manage with the FAA, our cancellation rate came right back down," said United Airlines Newark Airport Managing Director Capt. Allan Twigg.
Twigg runs United's Newark hub, and says the impact on customers actually has, in the end, been positive. With a quarter fewer flights, it means less crowded concourses, and on-time rates are actually better than before the outage.
Even if analysts predict the company's taking a major financial hit from all the lost business, up in United's operation center, all they really care about is whether the people get where they are going safely, with the schedule expected to ramp back up over the summer.
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