Originally Posted by
spartacusmcfly
For the past several weeks I've been stunned that UA continued to run nearly all transcon flights, even though they were at operating, on average, at 10% capacity. They were running 12 SFO-EWR non stops and 6 SFO-BOS non-stops every single day!
I assumed it related to US mail, cargo, or something to do with the congressional aid to airlines, etc.
Well, whatever it was, it's gone. SFO-BOS down to zero non stops later this week. SFO-EWR down to one non stop later this week. I'm flying SFO-BOS via ORD on Saturday. On Fri & Sat, the last BOS-SFO flight (a connection) leaves BOS at 10am! Amazing how the UA transcon landscape has changed.
I looked yesterday, there were two flights BOS-SFO operated (one UA and one B6). The UA flight had 19 pax on board (9 in F, 10 in Y, I wonder if they are just upgradng any premiers to F given the loads). SFO serves mostly direct markets, especially for tech/business interests which have dried up, and connections to TPACs which are gone. Additionally, both SF and Boston are on pretty tight lockdowns (as is NYC) so there's not a lot of demand between them. With those loads, there's little wonder they are axing the schedule completely next week in favor of connections. I think they are trying to keep a skeleton service in place to most domestically-served airports, but I wonder when they just start closing up shops at smaller locations (i.e. DLH-ORD is still running a mainline, 2182 flew today with 2/12 in F and 0/138 in Y (!!)).
I flew out to SAN a couple of weeks ago and there were 35 pax on EWR-SAN and several flights per day. They're down to 0 or 1 per day on that route now, too. For the flight back to BOS on a random day in April there are basically seven options: one each via SFO and IAD, two via DEN, three via ORD. So UA is basically becoming an airline with a couple of mid-continental hubs, which, frankly, makes sense given that there are very minimal international connections at this time.
Still, wow.