Unless you flew private, if you've flown from or within the U.S. recently, chances are you didn't have the best time.
For many travelers, flying is nothing more than a way to get from point A to point B as quickly and cheaply as possible.
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Especially as air travel has gotten crowded, pushier, ruder, and less predictable, most people want to spend as little time in an airplane as possible. That desire is more often than not a pipe dream, with a record number either delayed or cancelled in 2022.
We're still not even halfway through 2023 but this year isn't shaping up any better; the FAA is predicting a 45% increase in flight delays this summer due to staffing issues, ongoing construction at some of the busiest U.S. airports, and increased demand for travel.
Former United Airlines (UAL) executive chairman Oscar Munoz blames something other than increased travel and construction for the shambolic state of the industry, though.
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"I think if you think about the broader context of this, you as the flying public, what you see is you see us, and you see the delays, and you don't understand them," Munoz told Fox Business's "Varney & Co."
"If you dig beneath the surface a little bit more, probably from my opinion, the biggest issue that we have in America is broader infrastructure, but specifically in air travel, air traffic control systems," he said.
"We have the most outdated and I would say obsolete system in almost the entire world," he added. "There are 60 countries at last count that have better and newer, you know, updated systems to control air traffic."
Munoz explained that, in air travel, one delay doesn't happen in a vacuum. It typically bumps all the subsequent and peripheral flights, too, since they all operate on a highly-sensitive schedule.
"In essence, what it does, we're always safe regardless, but in order to stay even safer, we just don't let planes up in the air. So if there's any kind of disruption whatsoever, travel or otherwise, everything just gets slowed down and pushed back."
