United CEO Kirby ‘Committed To Bringing Us Back Into JFK’

NEW YORK—United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby says he is “committed to bringing us back into JFK, one way or another,” but is not prepared to say “yet what is happening” with regards to a possible alliance or merger with JetBlue.

“JFK is important to us. One way or another, we need to be back in JFK. I wish United had not pulled out of JFK back in the day,” Kirby said May 13 on the sidelines of an event in Brooklyn where the airline presented an upgraded Polaris international business class product.

United pulled out of New York JFK International Airport after its 2010 merger with Continental Airlines, which already operated a hub at nearby Newark Liberty International Airport.

JetBlue’s largest base is at JFK. After the break-up of JetBlue’s Northeastern alliance with American, the two sides have been rumored to be discussing some form of cooperation that would give United access to New York’s other big international airport.

“I have a lot of respect for JetBlue, because they have the same core customer DNA that we have,” Kirby said. “We want lifelong customers who believe in United, who love the brand. JetBlue comes from a similar culture and DNA.” 

Early on, Kirby thought of air travel as a commodity product. Then, JetBlue’s introduction of live TV was a “turning point” in his career. “I originally thought that’s a gimmick. And then I went and flew it, and I watched people—that was a transformational moment for me. They got it right. I was wrong. They got it right. Part of my journey to being the airline CEO really started with watching how successful JetBlue was for customers.“

Kirby added that he was “not just optimistic” for the first time in his career about air traffic control modernization, saying, “I believe we are going to get it fixed.” 

“[Transportation Secretary Sean] Duffy and the FAA are committed now to giving the U.S. the world class aviation system that it deserves. It is decades old, controllers are understaffed—this has been decades in the making,” Kirby said. He added that now “there’s a commitment that people want to do it” with support from “both sides of the aisle [so] I think we are going to be able to get this across the finish line.”

For Newark airport, heavily disrupted because of communications and radar outages as well as a runway resurfacing project for several weeks, Kirby sounded an optimistic note: “There’s only one set of parallel runways. One of them is down. So, the FAA asked airlines to cut back capacity. We did that,” he said. “The FAA didn’t ask for enough so there were too many flights scheduled.”

But Kirby is convinced that on June 15, that’s all fixed. “From the beginning of the year through mid-April, it was the number one on-time airport here in New York. It was better than LaGuardia, and it was better than JFK. On June 15, it’ll go back to that,” he said.

To deal with the ATC outages, United is working on back-up procedures ”to keep the airline safe. We go to different control centers. We go to different frequencies.” 

Kirby also pointed to the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) as an additional safety tool to keep aircraft separation even in case of an ATC failure. “When something like this happens, what you do is you go into these automated racetrack holding patterns,” Kirby said.