A shakeup to United Airlines regional service resulting from a shortage of pilots will bring some changes to flights at University Park Airport in 2022.
Starting March 4, United will suspend service between Washington Dulles International Airport and State College. The airline will replace that service two flights a day to and from its primary transatlantic hub at Newark Liberty International in New Jersey.
University Park is one of 14 regional airports that will see what United characterized as temporary suspensions of routes to and from Dulles and one of five seeing that service shift to Newark.
Airport Director Bryan Rodgers said United has indicated its current intention is to restore the Dulles service in 2023.
“Whether service to Newark Liberty… will remain if service to [Dulles] is restored is unknown,” Rodgers wrote in an email. “If the service to [Newark] performs well and there is a strong demand from our market for these flights, I think that will be a factor in United’s decision making.”
The airline’s daily flights between Chicago O’Hare and State College will remain, Rodgers said.
United said the move to suspends some service to Dulles and shift some to Newark is an effort to “closely match supply with demand,” as it experiences a shortage of pilots, particularly at the regional level.
United CEO Scott Kirby said at a U.S. Senate committee hearing earlier this month that the airline has grounded about 100 regional aircraft “because there’s not enough pilots to fly them, which means we can’t at the moment fly to all the small communities that we would like to.”
“There has been a looming pilot shortage for the last decade in the United States, and going through COVID it became an actual pilot shortage,” Kirby said. “So all of us, particularly our regional partners, simply don’t have enough airplanes to fly.”
