Missing logic: United Airlines blames climate change for their terrible on time performance
Huh?
“Climate change is here. We are seeing worsening weather and much more intense and longer-duration weather events,” United’s vice president of network operations Jim DeYoung told the Wall Street Journal. “We have to get better at the operational impact of that.”
Well, that argument is total bull shit.
If climate change is the culprit, why did Delta[1] and Alaska do so much better in 2019?
And why was United the high scorer in on time performance in 2018? Bad climate to blame for that too?
Climate, which is weather over a period of decades, changes so much between 2018 and 2019 that it was able to uniquely target United Airlines but not Delta or Alaska. Wow.
This is a nonsense argument typical of public relations staff deflecting blame for poor management. Nonsense like this does not encourage people to select United for flight options. Indeed, United’s response is far off the mark and makes the airline look untrustworthy.
When reading news stories – or press releases – always keep your B.S. detector set on maximum sensitivity.
[1] Delta adds extra time to flight schedules to accommodate likely bad weather. On a recent winter flight, we were delayed while waiting for wing de-icing procedures. The crew assured us that Delta put extra time in their schedules for this route because of the likelihood of winter storm delays. In spite of the delay, we still arrived ahead of schedule. Thank you Delta!