Xyzzy

I've flown them ADD-LHR on the 787. The J seats were basically the same as the older LH ones. They do nt lie flat.

Always Flyin

I didn't say I had arrogant and indifferent service on BA.

I comparing and contrasting BA and UA. Apparently I need to explain that to you.

UA is more indifferent than BA. BA is more arrogant that UA.

You haven't experienced an arrogant attitude from BA? I'm very happy for you.

Perhaps my tolerance level for arrogance is different than yours. [Unnecessary text deleted by Moderator.] You probably disagree.


United is now a carrier for those locked into captive hubs, those on corporate contracts (and those contracts are diminishing in number), Kayakers, and those who just don't know any better.


Note the reference to captive hubs. UA's idea of avoiding competition is to focus on routes out of those pmCO captive hubs at EWR and IAH. Secondarily, it uses SFO as a pmUA hub, but pretty much just to Asia and for domestic flights.

Two flights out of LAX to Asia? [One to Europe] What happened to LAX-HKG? Gone. UA can't compete.

CX manages 4 a day out of LAX. Oh, that's right. LAX is not a captive hub so UA ran away from it.

What happened to BKK? What happened to the intra-Asia flights? What about the downsizing of aircraft within Asia (e.g., HKG-SGN used to be a 744, now its a 737)?

Best route map to Asia? Not by much. DL flies to 7 cities in Asia vs. UA's 8.

And who would want to fly UA when the competition is so much better? I fly NH, OZ, JL, CX or SQ to Asia--all of which make UA look like a joke. No reason to be locked into one airline.

You prefer the hard product on UA over DL. Uh, ok. I guess that makes you a member of a small club.

ATL isn't convenient? The single busiest airport in the country?

Since almost everyone is going to have to connect somewhere to travel to South Africa, I fail to see how ATL is not convenient.

But they haven't and there is no indication UA will.

A bias is an unfair or insupportable view of a subject. I am an almost 2MM 1K. I have plenty of experience with UA and I have yet to see a particular view properly categorized as unfair or insupportable.

Wow! One quarter. How did UA do the last 20-quarters?

[Personalized text edited by Moderator.] Easy allegation to throw around. Harder to support factually.

You earlier claimed in another thread that CX is state owned and it was pointed out that you were wrong.

You claim that EK receives state subsidies, but multiple investigations have shown they don't.

UA PRASM compared to DL and AA show it is falling far behind. The product is as poor as UA is able to make it.

I'll be on CX from HKG to JNB. I suspect I'll have a better flight.

bhrubin

You seem to have missed all the flights to Asia from SFO, ORD, EWR, and IAD. Using SFO for the bulk of UA's flights to Asia is the same strategy employed by every airline; UA uses both SFO and to a much lesser extent LAX. Your preference for CX mentioned is a perfect example. as CX has but a single hub of HKG...with NO other departure options at all. You're arguing apples and oranges now.

Fantastic. UA manages service to HKG from SFO, ORD, and EWR. UA manages service to other Asian cities FAR more than any other US carrier. Comparing CX with UA is ridiculous in this regard--as CX as mentioned above operates from a single airport of HKG and that's it, whereas UA has hubs and served customers from SFO, LAX, DEN, ORD, IAH, EWR, and IAD. There's a significant difference.

I'm sure the CX HKG-JNB flight will be better than anything offered by UA (or AA or DL for that matter). If I lived in HKG, I'd be trying to use that, too. Living in the USA, that isn't as much help for me. Even from the West Coast, the flights LAX-HKG-JNB are longer than if there were a LAX-IAD/IAH-JNB option...and obviously for the Eastern half of the USA, the nonstop option from the East Coast is far less timely.

[Unduly personalized text deleted by Moderator per FT Rules.]

Always Flyin

Not flying on DL a lot, I went to its web site and looked-up it route structure to Asia. DL flies to:

PEK
PVG
HKG
ICN
MNL
BKK
SIN
TPE
NRT
HND
KIX
Nagoya
Fukuoka

UA flies to:

NRT
PEK
ICN
SIN
HKG
MNL (on a 737 Island Jumper)
SGN (on a 737)
PVG
TPE
KIX
Chengdu

Looks like DL beats UA 13 to 11, even if you include UA island jumper 737s.

Care to revisit the claim that UA has the best route map to Asia?

sbm12

Seems you're excluding a few of the GUM-Japan routes.

UA serves many of the destinations in Asia with greater frequencies and from more US hubs than DL does. UA serves HKG from three mainland hubs plus GUM, for example. DL serves it from SEA. And UA has onward service to SGN and SIN there if you want.

Both PVG and PEK are each served from 4 US hubs by UA. DL has only two for each.

bhrubin

We have gotten off topic, so I'll leave you with this from April 24, 2014. Some of your examples are not nonstop DL flights from the USA but are continuations/codeshares on foreign carrier metal, listed as DL flights.

http://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/n....html?page=all

And this from http://www.forbes.com/sites/thestree...tart-in-china/

This still has nothing to with with whether or not UA should offer a nonstop flight to South Africa. Thanks.

milesmuncher

I flew SAA J a couple years ago, and I remember reading at that the time that there are a smaller number of planes where the seat is ever-so-slightly worse than the rest of the A340 fleet (it's an ex-Iberia plane). I unfortunately, had one of these planes on my IAD-DKR-JNB outbound, and it was noticeably different from the JNB-JFK return.

Check out the details here:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/other...es-matter.html

kevanyalowitz - maybe you were on one of these as well?

mduell

UA doesn't fly HKG-US from most of the airports you listed.

UA does a single daily on each of HKG-SFO/ORD/EWR.
CX does 1-4 daily flights on each of HKG-LAX/SFO/ORD/EWR/JFK and soon BOS.

So CX provides better coverage on the US end than even UA with all their US hubs.

787fan

and yet DL and AA *combined* has less US-HKG nonstop than UA alone, and both of them have more hubs than UA

787fan

Ones like KIX and FUK on DL is served only from HNL

If you start counting those then might as well include all the flights to GUM hub as well

Plane-is-home

And the CX planes rarely get cancelled.

bhrubin

Fantastic. So HKG-based CX, with its single hub of HKG, has nonstop flights to the 5, soon 6, USA cities. Of course, when considering Asia, I know all life as we know it does NOT start and/or end in HKG.

You seem to be so focused demonstrating CX being superior to UA (which I don't dispute) that you are missing the point (since CX is superior to AA and DL, as well, and since CX doesn't fly to South Africa nonstop from the USA).

You are so focused on HKG that you seem to miss that UA has far more nonstops to so many OTHER Asian cities, far more than any other US based carrier. CX has 5, soon 6, nonstops to HKG from the USA. UA has 3 nonstops to HKG, as well as numerous nonstops to PEK, ICN, PVG, NRT, TPE, KIX, and CTU.

Not everyone in the USA wanting to go to Asia wants to go to HKG. In fact, UA has more nonstops to Asia from SFO than any other US based carriers from all other hubs in the USA. UA isn't such a bad airline for giving Americans options to Asia, after all.

But getting back to the point, I'd like to see UA give the US another nonstop option for South Africa. CX isn't going to get the job done, so we need to have either UA or AA get it done. AA is most likely to do it from MIA-JNB after its merger is complete--but it is losing the transpacific battle badly to UA (SFO) and DL (with the new hub in SEA), not to mention the many Asian airlines, so it likely needs to bolster its presence at LAX (or maybe PHX). So maybe UA can get a JNB route up before AA does.

drewguy

There was some plan to fly IAH-AKL with a 787, although apparently that's been back-burnered. As noted there already is service to SYD and MEL.

Hadrian35

That's not what "bias" means.

bhrubin

Thanks for sharing that little nugget of truth. I figured it wasn't worth any response from me, as nothing I say gets through.