Originally Posted by
david_oz
Not to hijack the thread, but I've wondered why UA hasn't switched the timing of the SFO flight to a redeye westbound, or even go double daily. The current flight timings seem extremely inefficient with 3 widebody aircraft sitting overnight in HKG. It might be more difficult to make the flight times work from ORD/EWR, but CX seems to manage it to/from SFO.
For example, CX873 leaves SFO at 00:25 arriving at HKG 06:10+1. If UA switched to a similar flight time, this would be way better for travelers originating anywhere in North America since you're not losing a whole day on the way over. That flight could also connect all traffic originating east of SFO and return at the same time from HKG with only 4-5 hours on the ground instead of 15+.
UA did have double daily to SFO in the 90s, even 3X daily at one point. The third flight was a late night flight which left fairly close in time to the DEL flight. I remember it because I was on UA HKG-DEL-LHR and DEL flight was looking like it would cancel. So they asked me if I could switch and fly the other way via SFO.
I too am curious why SFO has not gone up to 10-11 X per week like ICN, but UA knows better than us what the demand is.