The following is the transcript of the full interview with United CEO Scott Kirby, a portion of which aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on May 11, 2025.
ED O’KEEFE: We’re joined now by Scott Kirby, the CEO of United Airlines. Mr. Kirby, thank you for joining us twice in two weeks now–
SCOTT KIRBY: Thanks for having me.
ED O’KEEFE: Twice in two weeks now, air traffic controllers at Newark International lost radar, and were unable to see, hear, or even talk to some planes, and there are air traffic controllers right now on leave because of the stress of these experiences. Is it safe to be flying in and out of Newark International right now?
: It absolutely is safe at Newark and in the entire country. And the reason is, when these kinds of outages happen, we train for them. We have backup procedures. We have backups to backups to backups to keep the sky safe, which is always the number one priority, and in situations like this, when the radar outage happened at Newark. What happens is the pilots look for alternative frequencies. They go to alternative centers with alternative radars, and they also have a system in the airplane where they can see its equivalent of radar, they can see their position in the air, in the sky, and all the other aircraft around them. But, what we do is slow the whole system down, which is disruptive to customers, but it’s entirely safe. And so in this case, 82 aircraft went into holding patterns, much like you would go into a holding pattern when there is weather and because we’re slowing the whole system down, even though the radar came back within 90 seconds, we diverted 42 aircraft to other cities around the Northeast, and what that did is cut the arrival rate in half at the airport, maintain an even higher margin of safety until the whole system can come back up to normal. So it’s absolutely 100 percent safe, but it is disruptive to customers, and that’s why I’m so glad of the actions that the FAA has taken to both in the short-term reduce the strains on customers, but in the long-term, really give us the world class air traffic control system that this country deserves.
ED O’KEEFE: And I want to get into the FAA in a moment, but let’s keep focused on United for a second, because Newark is your biggest global gateway on the east coast. Given the problems there and the need, as you’ve described them, to slow things down, what other adjustments are you making to operations, and especially with the travel season picking up into the summer, how is that potentially affecting the schedule?
: Well, at United, our number one priority is safety, but number two is our customers, and in this case, what we’ve done is we’ve proactively reduced flights out of the schedule. The FAA is working with other airlines to do the same so that we can have the number of flights scheduled at the airport that the airport can accommodate. And because we’ve done that, actually the on time arrival, you know, the first day after we did that, the on time arrivals for the remaining flights were 83 percent with only a single cancellation. And so pruning the number of flights just creates more space at the airport, allows the airport to operate effectively. There’s also runway construction going on that will be over June 15. That’s going to double the capacity of the airport when that happens, but in the short-term, we’ve already taken more steps at United to prune the schedule. We don’t like to have to pull flights out of the schedule, but we’ve done that because it’s the right thing to do for customers.
ED O’KEEFE : Well, if you’re pruning the schedule, then that means less supply with increasing demand going into the summer. Doesn’t that potentially mean the cost of a ticket is going to go up?
: My guess is, if you look at the ticket prices flying out of Newark right now, that, in fact, is not what is happening. There’s less demand because there’s concerns about safety and- and so what we’ve also done is put bigger airplanes on the route. So put a larger airplane, have fewer flights, but with bigger airplanes to maintain the number of seats that we have flying in and out of Newark and air travel remains a pretty strong bargain across the country and around the globe. And demand is- is strong and and and we look forward to carrying, you know, several 100,000 customers a day, every day this summer.
ED O’KEEFE: There’s the cost potentially to the customer. How about the financial impact on United?
: Well, there will be a financial impact on United, but our number one priority is safety. We aren’t even thinking or talking about that. It’s making sure that we do everything, that all those backup procedures work correctly, and that we take the hit of pulling some flights out of the system and readjusting our schedule so that it is not disruptive to customers. We’re also working with the FAA to get to the world class system that we deserve. But you know, the financial issues are not even on the priority list for us, it’s about safety and customers.
ED O’KEEFE: Well, and there is the broader issue of the bigger picture of air travel, and you just acknowledge that demand is down in part because people are concerned about safety, with all the issues that have happened so far this year. But you’ve also got economic turmoil, prompted by tariffs. There’s lingering concerns about inflation, and you’ve said you can’t predict how customers are going to be spending their money going forward. So I mean, what is the potential negative impact on the travel industry through the rest of the year?
: You know, the travel industry and United Airlines in particular, demand has been resilient. You know, we saw a hit to demand, beginning in February, demand declined from what we were expecting it to be. But it stabilized into March and- and April and and actually has gotten a little bit better in May and so, you know, everything I can see- we’re a pretty good real time indicator of the economy at United Airlines. And everything I can see is the consumer is cautious, but still in pretty good shape.
ED O’KEEFE: You know, you talk about this world class air traffic control system we have. You can control the aircraft. You can control the quality of the pilot you put on that aircraft to fly it. You can control the schedule, but you do not control who’s in the tower and how many people are in the tower, and how many people are showing up for work in the tower right now. So you say it’s a world class air traffic control system. How can you assure passengers of that, given all the issues we’ve seen, especially this year, with the FAA?
: Well, we need to upgrade the system to actually make it world class. But air traffic controllers are the best in the world, incredible professionals, and they keep this guy safe. And what happens when they’re short staffed or there’s a technology issue, they slow the airspace down. Essentially, what they do is put more miles between airplanes. That gives them the ability to manage and handle it. It leads to customer impacts. We have to delay or cancel flights because there are more flights scheduled than can arrive, but it keeps the system safe, and that’s absolutely what they should do. And so the whole system is designed. Everything for aviation, whether it’s the FAA, United Airlines or any of our competitor airlines, is all based on safety number one, without ever compromising or taking any margin away from that safety. All the backup procedures are built and trained extensively. Our pilots go to simulators every nine months, no matter how senior they are, no matter how much experience, to practice these kinds of situations in a real simulator, so that when they- if they experience it in the skies, they’ve seen it before, the training just kicks in, just like it did here at Newark. We go straight into the holding patterns. We go through all the backup procedures. It does slow the airline down. It slows the customers down, but it’s always safe.
ED O’KEEFE: You know, you’ve done a very good job of laying out how concerned and how focused you guys are on safety, but you know, there are still people out there who are genuinely just afraid to fly, especially given the incident here in Washington, the plane that flipped over on a runway up in Toronto, all the near misses or the clipped wings. What do you say to that person who thinks, okay, you say things are safe, but I see all these other issues going on. Why should I get on an airplane?
: Yeah. You know, I understand where they’re coming from. Read the same headlines that they do. But it is- it’s the safest industry by far in the world. It’s the safest way to travel, by far. The United States is the leader in safety of everyone around the globe. And I know that, I’m in it, and I know it. I understand how people feel and empathize with that, but I know that it’s safe because I’ve spent my whole career. I know all the people in aviation, whether they work at United Airlines, other airlines, at the FAA. Safety is number one, and it is in the core DNA of everyone. And I fly all the time. My family flies all the time, and I know that we are safe and- and we do that. And I’ll be flying into Newark later this week.
ED O’KEEFE: We have seen reports in recent days, speaking of the FAA that they’re going to get together with you and other airlines that fly into Newark to talk about voluntarily having you reduce the number of flights that go into that airport as this gets sorted out. Is that indeed the plan, and do you expect your competitor airlines to go along with it?
: That is the plan. We’ve already started that process at United, it is the largest airline there. I do think everyone will do it. The Secretary of Transportation deserves immense credit, and the FAA for doing it. It’s not an easy step to take, but it is the right step for customers. And again, if they didn’t do that, there’d be delays and cancellations, the margin of safety would be the same, but the- the airport would just have more delays and cancellations and issues for customers. But because they’re doing that, we’re already back to operating a reliable airline for all airlines at Newark, and this will just ensure that we do it and get through the summer and have time to make sure that that we get back to full- that we get back to full capacity, we have everything done to make sure that the FAA can run effectively before we schedule all those flights.
ED O’KEEFE: And how long do you expect this voluntary reduction to go on? Or how long would be too long?
: Well, the- at Newark, there’s a runway- there’s- one of the two parallel runways is out until June 15. And so, there’s a- there’s a section that’s going to go through June 15. I think there’s another one that probably goes through the rest of the summer. It’ll go back up- flights will go back up, because the- you know, the second runway will come back, but the reductions will probably go through the summer. I think we’ll all take time to evaluate how the- the move of the- of the controller workforce to Philadelphia, and how the technology is working. And I think we’ll- all the airlines will work with the FAA and look to the FAA for leadership about what they think they can support effectively. And really, this is about the FAA telling airlines: here’s how many operations per hour we think we can support. And then use- the FAA, using their legal authority, to kind of push airlines to operate no more than that number of operations per hour. But always done with safety at the top, regardless of the number of flights that get scheduled.
ED O’KEEFE: You’re the biggest deal in Newark. You also have big hubs, of course, in Houston, Denver, San Francisco. You run regional jets across the country. Are you concerned that what you’re seeing in Newark could end up happening at any of those other major airports, or even smaller ones that feed regions of the country?
: Well, I’m concerned that we have delays for customers because of the technology and short staffing at the FAA, and that puts immense strain on the controllers, they have- they work overtime. They do an amazing job. They’re very professional about it. So I am concerned about that. I’m not concerned about safety at Newark or anywhere else, because, again, what happens when these issues occur, they do occur sometimes at other places, is that we have those fallback procedures. We fall back on those procedures. We slow the airspace down. We have fewer flights, but we keep everything safe, and we get the airplane safely on the ground, and safety is number one, and so I’m not worried about safety. I am worried about customer delays and impacts.
ED O’KEEFE: You know, we- we’ve seen the transportation secretary in recent days call for tens of billions of dollars to be spent at least over the next three to four years to begin that equipment upgrade and retraining of air traffic controllers. He can’t put a number on it. The House, at least, has put about 12.5 billion to start. But everyone seems to acknowledge it’s going to be a lot more than that. Is that sufficient? And don’t you need help now, as opposed to three to four years from now?
: Well, I think this is the most optimistic I’ve been in my entire career about finally getting the FAA fixed. I mean, I and others in the aviation industry have been working on this for decades, and I think we’re finally- we’ve turned the corner, and we have the commitment. It’s bipartisan. It’s bicameral. It’s, you know, Senate, House, administration, Secretary Duffy, across the board, a commitment to getting this fixed. We know how to do it. We just need the will to actually follow through and get it done. And so, I do think that we’re going to get it done this time. I think it’s going to be way better for the traveling public. It’s gonna- it’s safe today. It’s going to stay safe, but it will be much more efficient. There will be fewer delays. The airspace will be better managed than it is today when we get them on modern technology and we get the air traffic control system back to full staffing. That’s a huge issue, even with this technology, is to give the controllers full staffing that they deserve.
ED O’KEEFE: What makes you more optimistic that it’s going to get done now? This has been something they’ve been talking about since the Bush administration at the beginning of the century, and they haven’t been able to get it done. And every few years, someone comes up with a plan, and you guys and everyone in Congress go, oh, it’s great, it’s bipartisan, it’s got everything we need, and it goes nowhere. So why on earth is it more likely to happen this time?
: There’s two things that make it different today than in the past. One, they’ve asked for all of the funding up front. In the past, it’s always been a year at a time. And when you do things a year at a time, especially in government, like- it just stops and starts and stops and starts. You can’t do these big projects. Like, no company would try to do big projects a year at a time. So this time, they’re going to ask for all the money up front, which lets you plan the entire project and get the entire project done. And the second thing is people. You know, we have a secretary who’s action oriented, who’s committed to getting this done, and an FAA administrator that hopefully will get approved soon, that’s almost through the process, in Brian Bedford, who’s running one of the largest airlines in the world based on number of airplanes, and built that airline mostly from scratch. So we have people at the FAA who know how to build and implement, and that’s a difference. And so the funding and the people is what gives me confidence that this time, it’s real, and we’re going to get it done.
ED O’KEEFE: Now they say they’re going to give the money up front for this project, but at the same time, they’re talking about cuts to the Transportation Department and other cuts to the FAA as part of the DOGE project. Do you have any insights into how those potential cuts could affect operations of the FAA?
: You know, I think Secretary Duffy probably is the- the leading, gold star for how to manage through the DOGE process, which is, they put- they called it caution tape, around all the safety, controller, all the critical functions. And- and DOGE went and looked, and- and I think they took 400- about 400 jobs out of over 100,000 jobs. Back office kinds of jobs, the kind of things that at any company that anybody works at are routine, I think, and so at least at the Department of Transportation, I think they’ve done a very effective job of protecting that core safety operational workforce and putting the caution tape around them and really focusing how do we make the back office more efficient, as opposed to taking resources out of the front line. In fact, they’re doing the opposite. You’re doubling down on the controller workforce. That’s one of the big challenges, is the controller workforce is about 30% short, and getting back to full staffing in the controller workforce is something that Secretary Duffy and the entire FAA are committed to doing.
ED O’KEEFE: But– okay, so you’re telling us, then, the secretary has assured you there will be DOGE cuts, of course, but none of them will affect safety at the FAA or anything safety related at DOT?
: He has absolutely assured me of that, and it’s not just the secretary. The people at the working level at the FAA have told our teams that as well. It’s really across the board. And this goes to the whole safety point for aviation. It’s so in the DNA of everyone that’s affiliated with it that nobody would ever even think to compromise on safety. And that’s- that’s not happening on a day to day basis at Newark. It’s not happening anywhere in the airspace, and it’s not going to happen with any kind of cuts that happen at the DOT or the FAA.
ED O’KEEFE: I want to ask you a sort of simple question that probably has a very long technical answer, but I think you’ll appreciate it, because– it’s indisputable, yes, this is the most- the safest aviation system in the world. But one of the big challenges facing your industry right now is that it takes so long to recruit and train air traffic controllers. I imagine there are people watching right now, thinking, ‘Okay, I get that. They have a very important job. People’s lives hang in the balance.’ But why does it take so long to train them? Is there any way to speed that up so that these controllers get in the seats faster?
: You know, I don’t think it’s as much about speeding it up as it is opening more avenues for them to train. And so, right now, all the controllers have to go through a single facility in Oklahoma City, where they can only induct 1,800 controllers per year at the start. And the washout rate is pretty high, because, appropriately, the standards are so high. There’s a mandatory retirement age at age 56 for controllers. And so last year we had, net-new, we’ve brought 1800 in through that- that front door, but we only had 30 net-new controllers, after retirements and washouts of people. And we’re 3,000 controllers short. So it would take a century to fix it if we keep on that path. But we shouldn’t cut the- try to speed it up or cut the training. It’s highly technical. It’s the kind of job- it’s high stress. You need to have a lot of practice to do it and do it well. In fact, what happens is, not only do you go through that training academy, when you go out on the job, you spend the first, depending on the facility and how complicated it is, up to several years with essentially on the job training, where you have somebody standing behind you full time watching what you’re doing until you have the experience. And that’s the way it should be. We need more avenues to get people in the front door, but we should not at all, and we won’t ever at all, compromise those standards and all the hours they have to put in before they are fully certified and allowed on the scopes on their own.
ED O’KEEFE: Yeah. Well, we’ve walked through a lot of the challenges facing your industry, and I am grateful for it. I’m just curious, given the safety issues and what it could do to summer demand, given the economic volatility we talked about, given the reported partnership you’re working on with JetBlue, do you anticipate a year from now that we may have at least one fewer American airline?
: I have no idea, you know, but- but I think the industry is actually doing- managing through, you know, tough times pretty well. You know, at United Airlines in particular, we- you know, look at this year with all the challenges that have happened. And you know, think we have a reasonable chance at actually growing our earnings year over year, you know, and being financially similar to where we were last year, even with all those challenges. And I really think it speaks to how- certainly here at United Airlines, we have restructured the airline with a focus on customers and brand loyal customers, and even the challenges that happen here in Newark when our north star is safety followed by what’s the right thing to do for customers, even if it costs you money in the short term, that north star puts us on a very solid financial footing for the long term at United because our customers know they can count on us to be safe and to do everything that’s possible to keep them running a reliable on a reliable airline.
ED O’KEEFE: Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines, thank you for taking the questions. We’ll talk to you soon.
: Thanks, Ed.
Face The Nation Transcripts
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