United expects flight schedule will return to normal

— -- After a holiday week of mass cancellations and delays, United Airlines now expects to run normally as the air travel rush winds down Monday and Tuesday.

"We're in good shape," United COO Pete McDonald said in an interview Sunday. "We expect to fly a very reliable schedule."

The airline, the USA's second largest, insists that bad weather at two of its hubs — Chicago O'Hare and Denver — explains its ragged performance. But the union for its pilots says management bears the blame.

United canceled more than 1,000 flights, or 10% of its schedule, over eight days ended at midday Sunday, according to data from performance tracker FlightStats. During the period, just 45% of United's flights landed within 15 minutes of schedule. By contrast, United's biggest rival, American Airlines, canceled 2% of flights during the same period and operated 61% on time.

But McDonald says United, with more northern destinations, is more likely to be affected by bad weather. Plus, last week's bad weather affected both O'Hare and Denver, where two-thirds of United's flights land or take off, he said.

Meanwhile, the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents United pilots, took out a full-page advertisement in the Sunday edition of the Chicago Tribune saying that "the real culprit was United's lack of manpower" and accusing management of doing too much with too few employees. Better performance by United competitors showed that weather alone wasn't to blame, the ad said.

McDonald said the problems were entirely weather-related, and that United staffed adequately given its experience with severe weather in past Decembers. He said United this month has 2% more pilots working than in December 2006, and that the airline is flying fewer hours overall.

"We provide staffing to account for (bad weather)," he said, "but this was the worst (December) in history."

United operations ran relatively smoothly on Sunday. Arriving flights throughout United's system were 70% on time as of 4 p.m. ET, according to FlightStats. Only 20 flights had been canceled out of more than 800 flights FlightStats tracked. O'Hare also showed improvement with 77% of arriving flights on time. In Denver, 62% of arrivals were on time.