United's 2022 Plan to Return to Pre-Pandemic Levels Tripped Up by Omicron
Photo Caption: United Airlines expects to fly less this year than in 2019 — reversing forecasts of growth — due to cancellations during the Omicron surge.
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United Airlines had expected to fly more this year than it did in 2019, but the spread of the Omicron variant caused a huge slump in first-quarter demand, a hole United doesn't expect to climb out of no matter how strong the rest of the year is.
United Airlines' ambitious plans to fly more this year than it did in 2019, before the pandemic, ran into an obstacle named Omicron. Due to the spread of the coronavirus variant, the airline now expects to fly less than it did in 2019, with most of the hit coming in the first quarter.
During the first quarter, United expects capacity — an airline industry term that measures the total number of seats flown in available seat miles (ASMs) — to be down 16-18 percent from 2019, a reduction it did not see coming when it updated investors in October. The Omicron variant has hit United in two ways. First, passenger bookings began to drop in December and continued falling into January and February. Cancellations similarly spiked.
Second, the airline reported staff shortages during the holiday period, especially before the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) shortened its quarantine guidance from 10 days to five, a change actively sought by the airline industry. Despite this, CEO Scott Kirby noted that not one United employee has died during the Omicron surge — compared with roughly one employee death per week before vaccines became available — and none of its vaccinated employees have been hospitalized during this wave of the pandemic.
United, which has the strictest vaccine mandate in the U.S. airline industry, took flak last year for its policy requiring vac
