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United Airlines said Wednesday it earned more than $1 billion in the second quarter despite canceling 3,800 flights in the past two weeks of June, when it struggled to recover from storms that crippled its key operation in New York.
United indicated that it sees no letup in strong demand for tickets: It raised its forecast of third-quarter and full-year profit.
The report underscores how airline revenue and profits are soaring as travel bounces back from the pandemic. Big carriers like United are benefiting from the strong recovery in international travel after the lifting of COVID-19-related restrictions. Last week Delta reported record quarterly revenue and profit.
From April through June, more than 2.4 million travelers per day on average went through U.S. airport security checkpoints, virtually identical with numbers from the same period of 2019 and a 10% jump from last year.
Airlines at times have struggled to handle those crowds, although they have hired enough new workers to replace ones they encouraged to quit during the pandemic. United has been hit the hardest this summer.
In late June, United canceled nearly four times as many flights as any other U.S. carrier, according to data from FlightAware. Many of those cancellations occurred at United’s hub in Newark, N.J.
CEO Scott Kirby blamed the Federal Aviation Administration for restricting flights at the airport, then apologized for taking a private flight out of the New York area while thousands of United passengers were stranded.
Since then, Kirby has said the airline must consider reducing its schedule in Newark to limit future disruptions.
