United Airlines CEO Issues Letter Addressing Safety Concerns

After a spate of high-profile airline industry incidents, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby has issued a memo addressing safety concerns.

In the memo Kirby said safety is the airline’s top priority, according to a report from The Points Guy.

The airline CEO also discussed United’s own safety incidents, including acknowledging the airline has had “a number” of such incidents.

"While they are all unrelated, I want you to know that these incidents have our attention and have sharpened our focus," Kirby wrote, per The Points Guy. "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.”

The memo from the CEO also indicates that United is working on rolling out a variety of new safety measures. Though Kirby also explained that the new safety upgrades were in the works before United’s recent spate of safety episodes. Some of the new measures the airline will be implementing include an extra day of training for pilots and new curriculum for maintenance technicians.

"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," Kirby added.

Kirby’s memo comes on the heels of a rocky few months for the airline industry as a whole. The most significant of which was the January 5 incident involving a Alaska Airlines’ Boeing 737 Max flight during which a door plug blew off after take-off and the plane was required to make an emergency landing.

A handful of passengers who were on that Alaska Airlines flight have since filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Boeing, alleging negligence on the part of the plane manufacturer.

As for United Airlines, one of its flights involving a 737 Max rolled off the runway at George W. Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston recently. Part of the plane’s landing gear collapsed as a result. That United incident followed a tire falling from a Boeing 777-200 plane (also flown by United) one day earlier.

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