Originally Posted by
jsloan
I do not, although I wish that they would.
This news is very difficult to take at face value. I suspect it is more about UA trying to protect its market position on MNL-GUM than anything else. (Guam has a large Filipino population). After all, UA cancelled the morning GUM-MNL flight in the wake of the tension with North Korea. They likely could have used those slots (I think it was 3x weekly) for MNL-SFO (I’m not 100% sure that the arrival time at MNL would have worked, but maybe they could have swapped with somebody).
The primary reason that no US carriers operate from the US mainland to Manila is that Philippine Airlines is happy to sell seats at rock-bottom prices on the likely target routes already (SFO-MNL, LAX-MNL, NYC-MNL).
GUM is a UA hub.
It's not a hub in the relevant sense. It's a hub for flights to some Pacific Island destinations. Which is fine, but that's basically almost a separate airline from the rest of UA. If Guam were a real hub, they'd have flights from there to their US hubs, plus perhaps even some flights to non-hub major cities like Seattle.
GUM-MNL is basically an almost useless flight for a typical UA flyer.