United cancels over 1,000 flights in under 2 weeks
03 January 2008Passengers with United Airlines (UAL) may have found themselves relying on their travel insurance over the past two weeks as the carrier has cancelled thousands of flights.
United called off dozens of services on January 3rd, adding to the more than 1,100 flights that have been cancelled since December 23rd, Reuters reports.
The operator, which is the second largest in the USA, said the disruptions were a result of bad weather but pilots have reportedly claimed that insufficient staffing is behind the problems.
UAL's hub in Chicago was hit by a storm on December 23rd and since that time the carrier has cancelled more than four times as many flights as American Airlines, its closest competitor.
Speaking on January 3rd, UAL representative Megan McCarthy said that the weather for December was the worst in the airline's history and United was "uniquely impacted" by this.
Ms McCarthy also claimed that the majority of the cancellations on January 3rd were a result of continued recovery from the previous day's conditions.