United Airlines CEO Finds Unusual Scapegoat for Delaying 150,000 Passengers

Don’t look for United Airlines  (UAL) - Get Free Report CEO Scott Kirby and Federal Aviation Administration officials to share a hot dog and a beer over the July 4 holiday – not after a blistering email from Kirby to staffers blaming the FAA for recent air travel delays.

The letter came after United battled flight delays in the Northeast last week that grounded over 150,000 airline passengers. Delayed or canceled flights have carried over into mid-week flights with over 1,300 flights canceled on June 28 and over 18,000 delays, according to Tracker FlightAware.

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“The FAA frankly failed us this weekend,” Kirby wrote in a June 26 email to company employees. "We estimate that over 150,000 customers on United alone were impacted this weekend because of FAA staffing issues and their ability to manage traffic."

The FAA didn’t argue with Kirby’s points, noting it had recently warned Congress and the public that the agency wouldn’t hit its air traffic controller hiring goals in the New York City region. In fact, the agency said it had only met 54% of its ATC staffing goals.

“The staffing shortfalls at [New York] limit the FAA’s ability to provide expeditious services to aircraft operators and their passengers that traverse this airspace,” the FAA noted in a statement, according to Travel Market Report.

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Yet a federal government watchdog analysis isn’t buying what the FAA is selling on ATC hiring trends.

“(The) FAA has made limited efforts to ensure adequate controller staffing at critical air traffic control facilities,” stated the U.S. Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General in a June 21 report.

“The Agency also has yet to implement a standardized scheduling tool to optimize controller scheduling practices at these facilities, and FAA officials disagree on how to account for trainees when determining staffing numbers,” the DOT added. “As a result, FAA continues to face staffing challenges and lacks a plan to address them, which in turn poses a risk to the continuity of air traffic operations.”

Both United and the FAA cited bad weather for many of the New York City and Newark, N.J. delays and cancelations over the past several days, although it looks like Kirby has lost patience with any delays at all.

“The biggest issue with us is Air Traffic Control,” Kirby told CNBC in a recent interview. “Every day, we wake up with Air Travel Control delays.