CALMSP

I like how you think!

channa

It's sad when an employee doesn't understand how frustrating it can be to regular customers when they see their routes cut or downgraded while a frame is wasted on a route like this.

sbm12

A waste to you might be valuable to someone else. What a shame that only your needs matter rather than looking at the bigger picture.

This is infinitely more useful to me than any service to dozens of destinations UA serves (including SMF ). But I guess your needs are more important than mine, right?

lhrsfo

It's sad when people just want to make cheap jibes which are incapable of substantiation.

I have to say that I have my doubts about this route. From the point of view of pax originating in the NE of England, If 4U can't make DUS work I don't see how UA can make Newark work, lumbered by the reputations of both Newark and UA itself. For inbound traffic, maybe, and I'm sure they have the numbers but it's not as though BA is overwhelmed with connecting traffic up from LHR.

JVPhoto

Once this post came up I looked on the *A site route map thinking it could be of some use and seems like there is an SK flight to OSL...that's it.

sgfood

Knowing this part of UK well you need to understand that flying to the US involves either a flight to LHR or a train journey, about 3 to 6 hrs with connection times. Even if you choose to use MAN it's still 3 to 4 hrs. It's a big time saver for locals, and locals it will be mainly. As you say 'For inbound traffic, maybe' , well this is also the outbound traffic,

The route is only operating for less than three months, the UK school holiday period, and so it will be an attractive alternative for the almost 3 million people that live within 45 mins driving of NCL

3Cforme

Hey, asset utilization is important. Aircraft are expensive, long-lived assets. Retraining pilots for other types can be expensive. This may yield more profit than fill-in utilization like 752s on EWR-DEN or EWR-IAH.

EmailKid

Surprisingly, quite a few airlines. May not be *A, but it's a short hop to the continent

entropy

So can subsidies, and the word is that NCL was offering a significant subsidy for the route.

And that's fine, perhaps its valuable for some people, we'll see if it sticks around.

channa

Ahh, now it's starting to come together.

So even UA doesn't think this route makes sense, but for the right discount, they'll give it a shot.

ShadowCaptain

It's less than an hour to fly to either AMS on KLM or LHR on BA. Although saying that, the hold times around LHR can be unpredictable and often long, and KLM usually land on the Polderbaan so it takes forever to actually taxi to a gate.

Both LHR and AMS are both massive hubs though. Unless EWR is actually your final destination, I'd rather change at either of these hubs and fly a decent wide body across the Atlantic to somewhere much closer to my final destination. I wouldn't want to fly transatlantic to EWR on a 757 then change onto another narrow body to my final destination - at which point the benefit of a direct flight from NCL is somewhat lost.

There's up to 7 BA flights to LHR every day, and up to 4 a day to AMS with KLM. There's also a daily 777 service to Dubai on Emirates, but that shouldn't compete with any traffic heading west.

So IMO the only people who would really benefit are those in the NCL catchment area whose final destination is New York and the surrounding area. The population north of NCL is sparse before you get towards Edinburgh, which has its own United 757 to EWR. If anything this new route would take traffic from that route as those who might have got the train up to EDI wouldn't need to. Then you don't need to go that far south of Newcastle before Manchester becomes a more attractive choice. So the catchment area for this route is probably limited to Newcastle and Teeside residents who want to go to New York and no further. Not a large population, not a population with a large amount of disposable income, and not a great deal of business users (compared against other areas of the country).

I'd really like to think a service like this could have a long term future, and I'm not at all surprised to hear it may have been subsidised by Newcastle Airport itself. However, I'm not convinced. The catchment area is limited and more often than not the alternative is better. Plus, as I mentioned in an earlier post, most serious frequent flyers in the region are married to OW or SkyTeam already.

I mean, I don't even know what lounge United would use at NCL?

CALMSP

this is a 752, options are limited. what would you suggest this frame be used on?

MatthewLAX

Boo to the naysayers.

Good job UA! ^

transportprof

Any thoughts on whether some of those service development subsidies from NCL to UA will be passed along to us in the form of MP bonuses when the flights launch?

I could work this into summer travel plans that would otherwise go via LHR, but I'd hate to miss some incentive which could come along with this start-up.

EmailKid

At the risk of starting another narrow / wide body on TATL, I flew EWR-DUB a couple of times, once in coach once in Biz and it was just fine.

One time a lady Kayaker from England commented upon boarding an EWR-IAH 777 that "this is a proper plane, not like what we flew from MAN," but hey we all have opinions

UA often throws bonus miles on new routes, whether there is subsidy or not.