As Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) continues to struggle with air traffic controller shortages and runway construction, United Airlines claims that it has turned a corner and is assuring Newark customers that they can expect safe and reliable travel this summer on United.

United Assures Newark Flyers: We’re Back on Track

A letter from Jon Gooda, the Vice President of Airport Operations at EWR, went out to MileagePlus members in the New York/New Jersey area yesterday, which I’ll include in full below. Gooda is a rockstar at United and used to be chief at Denver (DEN). This is a man who was in the concourse setting up cots and helping delayed passengers personally during Denver operational meltdowns and I’m positive he has been hands-on at Newark over the last few weeks.

I’m Jon Gooda, and I’ve been with United Airlines for more than two decades, including most of the past year leading our team at Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR). Since you’re a MileagePlus member who frequently travels through EWR, I wanted to keep you updated about what’s happening here.

Earlier this week, the FAA reduced the overall number of flights in and out of EWR by about 30%. This is good news for our customers.

A few weeks ago, we proactively cut about 35 United flights from our schedule. That helped ease congestion caused by both the ongoing runway construction at EWR and Air Traffic Control staffing shortages, and it also got our operation back on the right path.

In the first three months of this year, United canceled flights to and from EWR at a lower rate than any other airline, and EWR had a lower cancellation rate than John F. Kennedy International (JFK) and New York LaGuardia (LGA) combined. And since we trimmed our schedule in early May, EWR is back to beating LGA in on-time arrivals and quickly closing the gap with JFK.

On 8 of the past 11 days, we canceled less than 1% of our flights out of EWR, beating the year-to-date average of the three major tri-state area airports. In fact, United is number one nationwide in the month of May for on-time departures.

We expect EWR’s runway construction to be completed in mid-June. Our plan is to slowly and safely build our schedule over the summer. However, because of the recent FAA decision, every airline’s schedule at EWR will be smaller than planned and smaller than last year, including ours. We’ll operate fewer daily flights this summer compared to last year, which gives us even more confidence that our EWR operation will continue to run reliably.

We appreciate your patience as we take steps to keep our airline running on time and get you where you need to go safely, and I hope to see you at EWR soon.

Sincerely,

Jon Gooda,
Vice President of Airport Operations
Newark Liberty International Airport

There’s no new news in this letter, but it underscores United’s confidence that with the schedule reductions and completion of the runway work next month, operations will return to normal, which United has repeatedly pointed out was stronger at Newark than at LGA or JFK in terms of cancellations during the first quarter of 2025.

At the height of the delays and cancellations 7-10 days ago, I had many folks reaching out to me asking if they should cancel their upcoming flights to Newark. My answer then was no and that remains the correct answer. Might you run into congestion delays? Of course…just like at JFK and LGA.

But the delays themselves were a sign that safety came first…takeoffs and landings were slowed down to account for ATC personnel shortages, construction, and other issues that compounded to create an operational nightmare…but a safe operational nightmare.

CONCLUSION

All else equal, I’d avoid Newark if you are just connecting during the summer and you have other options…I’d avoid New York City altogether. But it appears that United (operating over 70% of flights from Newark) has got operations back under control after a choppy two weeks of extreme delays and cancellations. That’s important progress.

image: PANYNJ