Originally Posted by
cmhua777
I have no knowledge if this is or is not related to the MAX grounding. However, I am surprised about this cancellation. The 5pm bank of flights at IAD is essentially the only bank left. It’s the bank that connects to all the transatlantic flights, which are very popular in the summer. I would guess this flight has a 90%+ LF during the July.
Assuming UA had to cut flights due to aircraft availability, this is not one I would have thought would be on the chopping block.
Load factor is far less important than PRASM for the flight. To give a simple e.g. would you rather run a full flight at 6 c/mi or a 80% full flight at 9 c/mi. United will right size a flight not for demand for for a combo of demand + PRASM. I doubt that PDX-IAD gets a lot of high value (last minute and non-discount F) fares. So when UA needs to address the lack of 14 MAX9s, plus with delivery of 20 MAX9s in the fleet plan for 2019, they were probably planning on having another 6-7 by the summer. So UA is having to find a way to remove enough flights to make up for 20 or so A/C that they are missing.
So this flight gets the ax.