United Airlines Disaster and Business Continuity Planning and Response: An Analysis of Three Incidents

Effective governance and IT/IS resource use anchors disaster recovery and planning efforts.

From a disaster and business continuity perspective, the airline industry is unique in its exposure to many types of disasters. Accidents, poor weather, natural disasters, terrorism, government instability, and loss of multiple aircraft due to mechanical or safety issues creates chaos and staggering financial losses. For example, the global airline industry has lost $4.1 billion due to the grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX airplane (Reed, 2019). In 2016, Delta Airlines suffered widespread loss of IT services which disrupted air travel (Stancu, 2016). The resultant impact on an airline business with just six hours downtime is significant—between $5-$10 million (Stancu, 2016). In August 2019, protestors shut down Hong Kong’s international airport. Although none of these events represent widespread ‘disaster’ to a company in the traditional sense, airlines must plan for and respond to a variety of incidents and scenarios which are likely to occur. In fact, Serrano and Kanza (2017) more accurately describe airline disaster management as disruption management. This is an accurate statement. 

United Airlines (United) is the third largest airline in the world with 87,000 employees providing air travel services in both domestic and international markets. William Boeing created United through a series of consolidations and mergers in the late 1920s. Like most other airlines, United has survived numerous disasters and setbacks including, strikes, terrorist attacks, IT failures, bankruptcy, and recently, high profile incidents involving passengers that went viral on social media platforms (Goldstein, 2017; Horowitz, 2018). 

Effective disaster management and planning has proven United’s time-tested resiliency. An examination of three key disasters and United’s response provides insight into effective business continuity planning and disaster recovery. Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, a major hub for United, in 2017. In 2019, all Boeing 737 Max planes were ordered out of service due to two tragic accidents, and United’s fleet of fourteen 737 Max planes was grounded. Lastly, in 2015, United suffered an IT failure resulting in the temporary grounding of its entire fleet worldwide. 

2017: Hurricane Harvey

The frequency and scale of natural disasters has increased dramatically over the last two decades (Polater, 2018). Airports, passenger travel, and all air traffic is affected when natural disasters lead to both temporary and extended loss of airport access (Polater, 2018). The loss of a major hub airport for an airline is very disruptive for any airline. United’s major hubs in the US include Chicago O’Hare, Houston Bush Intercontinental and Newark Liberty (Mutzabaugh, 2017). Of the three airports, the most likely natural disaster scenario is Houston suffering from a hurricane. In fact, this occurred with Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The airport was closed for more than five days.

The economic impact on United was substantial, and losses were estimated to be $265 million (Zhang, 2017). United accounts for 17% of total capacity for Houston Bush Intercontinental, and the economic losses were never recovered. Unfortunately, Hurricane Harvey occurred right after United’s public relations disaster with a passenger who was forcibly removed from a flight. United’s response to Hurricane Harvey included removing airplanes and employees from the Houston area to minimize potential damage and injury. Additional actions included offering passengers’ waivers and options to rebook travel itineraries with no additional charges (United, 2017). 

 Natural disasters such as hurricanes affect all airlines using the facility, the airport, and the surrounding community. Depending on the severity and length of the disaster, a return to prior function is dependent on the airport’s response to the disaster (Polater, 2018). In conclusion, it is difficult to predict natural disasters, and in the airline industry, it is not a matter of if, but when, a natural disaster will profoundly impact normal business operations. The airlines and airports must work collaboratively to restore service, and in times of disaster, airports are often used as staging areas for either passenger evacuations or as a base for supplies for extended lengths of time (Polater, 2018). This was the situation with Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Mutual cooperation agreements between airlines and airports prior to a natural disaster is helpful to minimize loss of life, injury, and economic impact.

2019: Two Tragic Accidents and the Unexpected Grounding of the Boeing 737 Max

 After two tragic accidents involving the Boeing 737 Max, the plane was ordered out of service by the FAA in March 2019. Since this time, service capacity for all airlines has been impacted, including United. Unfortunately, United’s only choice to address the sudden loss of use of these aircraft was cancelling or reducing service routes due to loss of capacity (Vallinsky, 2019). The first task for United after the grounding was determining the economic impact of the grounding and creating a temporary solution including altering service capacity and routes that would minimize immediate economic impact and loss of service. 

 Another short-term solution included United’s purchase, in July 2019, of 19 used Boeing 737-700 aircraft; however, these older planes are less fuel efficient and have less capacity (Vallinsky, 2019). Currently, there is no estimation on when the Max may return to service, and there is continued economic loss. Furthermore, some passengers may choose not to fly on the Max even if the FAA determines it is safe to fly. Public trust in Boeing has eroded significantly, and pilots and passengers will seek reassurance the planes are safe prior to a return to service.

If United determines they are safe to fly, a strategy to mitigate fears will include the steps United took to ensure the safety of the plane. Despite continued economic damage, passenger safety is the first concern, and this needs to be made clear not only by Boeing but the airlines using the plane, including United. 

2015: Unexpected IT/IS Downtime

 In July 2015, United grounded all flights globally for two hours due to a computer glitch. United called the incident a “computer networking problem” (Dastin, 2015). The problem impacted automated software programs, the reservation system, and even though planes were physically capable of flying, the FAA imposed a ground stop for safety reasons. As a result, no planes were allowed to take off. The problem was quickly resolved and found to be a router switch issue. 

 Airlines can ill afford any IT/IS downtime. The economic and operational impacts are widespread—affecting business customers, reputation, and revenue (Gill, 2017). United and other airlines needed to upgrade their IT services and incorporating a disaster recovery solution was necessary. In 2016, United chose Microsoft’s cloud-based platform Azure to significantly improve United’s IT/IS infrastructure, and in 2019, United partnered with Zerto for disaster recovery planning.

Zerto is a unique company believing there should be a one-hundred percent guarantee of zero downtime. This is a big promise in the world of IT (Yu, 2019). Zerto created a unique software platform on top of Microsoft’s Azure cloud. Zerto speeds up cloud adoption by removing hypervisor and storage vendor lock-in from VMware or Hyper-V environments to Azure with minimal impact (Zerto, 2019). Using this platform and exploring hybrid and software designed data centers, United is positioning itself well to achieve the capability of zero downtime (Haji, 2015; Weiss, 2019).

Conclusion

Over the last four decades, United has faced numerous disasters and crippling economic circumstances from the labor strike in the 1980s to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and most recently, IT failures, weather events and an unexpected grounding of fourteen planes. This analysis demonstrates the fact there is no one-size-fits-all approach to business continuity and disaster planning for the airline industry. 

Regardless of the disaster type, accurate, available IT/IS service is necessary to respond and manage the event. United’s recent partnership with Microsoft and Zerto is a step toward creating a more reliable IT/IS infrastructure that can quickly serve the airline, passengers and community-at-large when a disaster strikes. Due to the number and frequency of events, resilient is a term best describing an airline like United. Despite these setbacks, United adapts and learns from each incident and has long-term plans for continued growth and expanded service routes.

All opinions are expressly my own.

Matthew Mazurek, MD

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