On the Friday before Christmas, United Air Flight 1080 from Newark to San Jose, Costa Rica, returns to the gate with a mechanical issue. The only available replacement sits across the airport. Moving passengers would mean telling vacationers to switch terminals. Baggage-loaders would need to transport luggage across the airport, potentially making them late to service other flights. The crew would need to move, too. United operations staff, which includes customer service, ramp services and the aircraft move team— decide to tow the new plane to the travelers. Passengers wait an hour longer than they might have if the plane stayed put, but don’t have to drag their belongings across the airport.
“This is the center of a spider web,” says United’s station operations center director. If you touch one part of the web—maintenance, baggage, catering—you affect all parts.
For years, Newark has been a source of delays due to a shortage of air-traffic controllers, crowded skies and bad weather, writes The Wall Street Journal (Dec. 30, 2024). When the controllers are understaffed, fewer flights operate each hour. The shortages are particularly difficult for United, which makes up about 75% of Newark’s air traffic. When travelers have a bad experience with a delay or long wait on the tarmac, they often blame United.
Getting operations right is mission-critical, especially during a record-setting time for holiday travel. Throughout the day, staffers monitor what they call quick turns, or shortened times before a plane needs to take off again. Cleaning staff, baggage workers, ramp agents and others associated with prepping a plane use one app that gives specific time requirements for meeting performance metrics. Within 6 minutes of arrival for some planes, the cleaning crew should be on the plane.
The careful choreography of moving planes around a space-constrained airport doesn’t always work when catering is late or bags load slowly. The average taxi time at Newark is about 25 minutes, but can stretch above 40 minutes during irregular operations. The FAA can issue ground stops or delays due to weather.
In Chapter 15, Short-Term Scheduling, we open with a Global Company Profile on how Alaska Air deals with its frequent weather delays. United, as we see at Newark, also faces a slew of operations decisions.
Classroom discussion questions:
- What operations issues must airlines face every day?
- How does Newark differ from Seattle (home of Alaska air) and how are they similar?