Year-to-date, 5,016,756 passengers have traveled through Hopkins from January through June 2024, up more than 8% over the same period in 2023 and nearly 3% more than 2019.
If the pace continues, the airport will easily exceed the 10.04 million passengers of 2019, and tally the most since 2008, when Hopkins was still a hub for Continental Airlines.In a statement to PEOPLE on Monday, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said he’s “most proud of the culture we’ve built around the safety of our employees and our customers.”
“Safety is our highest priority and is at the center of everything we do,” he added, before addressing a string of recent concerns. Unfortunately, in the past few weeks, our airline has experienced a number of incidents that are reminders of the importance of safety. While they are all unrelated, I want you to know that these incidents have our attention and have sharpened our focus,” Kirby’s statement read.
In March 2024 alone, there were five incidents in one week — with some resulting in passengers and crew members having to undergo emergency evacuations. Kirby said that while taking recent events into consideration, United Airlines had already been working to implement new precautions that would take effect in the coming months. Our team is reviewing the details of each case to understand what happened and using those insights to inform our safety training and procedures across all employee groups. This is in addition to some changes that were already planned, including an extra day of in-person training for all pilots starting in May and a centralized training curriculum for our new-hire maintenance technicians. We’re also dedicating more resources to supplier network management.”
The CEO also said that customers can be confident that once their fleet of planes pulls away from a gate, all employees and crew members are already working together to help passengers arrive safely to their destination.
“In the past few years, we’ve done a lot at United to build a new culture, improve our business and earn your trust,” Kirby’s statement continued. “I’m confident that we’ll learn the right lessons from these recent incidents and continue to run an operation that puts safety first and makes our employees and customers proud.”On Friday, United Flight 433 from San Francisco International Airport landed in Medford, Oregon, with a portion of its external paneling missing.
The Boeing 737-800 arrived without incident, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will researching the matter.
The “aircraft did not declare an emergency into [Rogue Valley International Medford Airport], as there was no indication of the damage during flight,” the airline said in a statement to PEOPLE. Friday’s news followed the five previously mentioned United Airlines incidents in one week.
In one instance, an international United Airlines Flight 830 was headed to San Francisco from Sydney when “a maintenance issue” caused the aircraft to be diverted back to Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport.
There was also a tire that fell off while en route to Osaka, Japan on March 7, and one of United Airlines Flight 1118’s engines caught on fire on March 4.