United Airlines News

Airlines face a myriad of challenges in 2021. But above them all is the question: when will travelers return in significant numbers? Once flyers do, the industry can exit crisis mode and look forward again.

Airlines promised that more payroll assistance would allow them to avoid dramatic staffing reductions. That relief is now here to the tune of $15 billion but it looks like the furloughs, while temporarily rolled back, are still coming.

Ordinarily, an airline might refuse to transport a passenger with Covid-19. But airlines know they need to repatriate crew members who develop Covid-19 abroad. If they do not, crew members might refuse to fly the trips, and airlines would lose revenue.

Developing an effective vaccine in such a relatively short time is nothing less than a miracle. Delivering those vaccines to the world is the next enormous challenge. The airlines took on that task earlier this week. So far, they are giving a thumbs up.

Unprecedented losses forced airlines to focus on cash burn as the metric to watch early on during the coronavirus pandemic. The recent surge in new infections has delayed breakeven goals but, with billions of dollars on hand, most are looking ahead and getting ready for when travelers return in droves.

Airlines shed jobs at the fastest rate since 1990 this fall as they slashed costs to weather the coronavirus pandemic. With prospect of additional federal relief still mired in politics, very real questions remain about the industry's ability to ramp up flights once travelers — and the economy — return.

United Airlines plans to stay ahead of the pack with a new effort to go "100 percent green." But it's unclear whether the decision to invest in something called direct carbon sequestration plants is any better than the industry norm of buying offsets for the nearly billion tons of greenhouse gases planes pump into the atmosphere every year.

Covid-free flights have officially landed, but businesses on the whole aren’t quite convinced.

United is optimistic that even the most-struggling sectors like corporate travel will eventually return. But the airline will continue to play it safe with capacity cuts until the positive impact of a vaccine fully resonates throughout the broader economy.

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