United Airlines announced Wednesday plans to return 25,000 flights systemwide during the month of August in hopes that more people will resume traveling.
Despite the massive number of flights being added to the schedule, United said that it will only run 40% of the number of flights it ran in 2019 in August.
Domestically, United plans on adding 600 flights, meaning it will run 48% of its US flights in August. United projects that only 30% of US flights will fly in July compared to 2019.
"We're taking the same data-driven, realistic approach to growing our schedule as we did in drawing it down at the start of the pandemic," said Ankit Gupta, United's vice president of Domestic Network Planning. "Demand is coming back slowly and we're building in enough capacity to stay ahead of the number of people traveling. And we're adding in flights to places we know customers want to travel to, like outdoor recreation destinations where social distancing is easier but doing so in a way that's flexible and allows us to adjust should that demand change."
On Tuesday, Delta announced the addition of 1,000 flights systemwide in July. Delta said it reduced the number of flights in the US by 65% in July.
