I'm not sure I buy it. Los Angeles is the second largest MSA in the country and AA can't make long haul flights work there except to partner hubs, even when they were the largest carrier in LAX. DL has AKL, CDG, HND, LHR, SYD, and seasonally PPT out of LAX, but UA manages to fly from LAX to secondary markets in Australia, even before their VA partnership. They are also going to be the only US carrier that resumes LAX-PVG.
If you look at a list of CSAs ordered by population and note which airlines have hubs there, you get:
NYC: AA (ish), B6, DL, UA
LAX: AA, DL, UA
WAS: AA (domestic), UA
CHI: AA (ish), UA
SFO: UA, AS
BOS: B6, DL
DFW: AA
HOU: UA
PHL: AA
ATL: DL
MIA/FLL: AA
DET: DL
PHX: AA
SEA: DL, AS
MCO:
MSP: DL
DEN: UA
CLE:
PDX:
STL:
CLT: AA
SLC: DL
SMF:
PIT:
SAT:
I'll give you that UA has strong hubs in the top 5 markets, but that doesn't really explain why they are able to make things like EWR-OPO, EWR-PMI, SFO-AMS, SFO-FCO, IAD-AMM, ORD-SNN, or LAX-BNE work when AA/DL can't. That also doesn't account for UA's significant return to PVG from ORD/LAX/EWR/SFO, with plans to return to PEK from SFO and ORD in the fall.
Few points:
- large MSA/CSA don’t necessarily equate to large international travel markets; for example, Miami is a far bigger international market than Dallas even if the latter has a bigger population etc
- LAX is a heavily fragmented market where no US carrier is lopsidedly dominant, and is filled with more foreign flags than say SFO, which usually tends to lower fares and yields due to their lower cost structures
- UA can trace it’s presence in Oceania back to 1986 when it acquired Pan Am’s operation there. That’s a huge headstart compared to the others.
- All those UA China schedules for the fall are placeholders at best. Unless the US and China agree to allow more flights between the two countries, UA will be cancelling those in the next few months. UA has had all those flights to PVG/PEK/HKG for sale for a while now but to this day has barely resumed many of them.
- as for things like OPO or PMI or AMM on UA, I can counter with “but why is DL the only US carrier to CPH or PRG or DUS or STR or DSS?”
- For NYC, UA has an advantage in that they can serve both connecting and local traffic under one roof at EWR whereas DL has a split operation between LGA and JFK; many interior US destinations don’t have flights to JFK which limits the amount of connecting traffic DL can funnel through JFK vs UA at EWR…