Originally Posted by
ual744777sta
LAX is a hub for United. It's more of a O/D hub than a connecting hub. UA will have AKL, BNE, CUN, CZM, GUA, LHR, LIR, PVR, SJO, SJD, SAL, SYD, HND, NRT, YVR, BZE, and LIR as their international destinations from LAX. Los Angeles is large enough to sustain an O/D hub.
No MEL?
Joking aside, it is good to see UA grow again at LAX.
Originally Posted by
HNLbasedFlyer
I would normally agree SFO-MNL makes no sense - and until UA announced it - it didn't make sense.
Now that they have - UA certainly has info we don't. It takes months of planning to get a new international route green lit - and I'm certain Kirby was the final person to approve this. In this new era of record profits Kirby isn't going to risk a complete failure on this route. Someone presented him a business case with a lot of crunched numbers that shows this as a profitable route in some timeframe in the future - the underlying assumptions in the business case may end up being faulty but this route is definitely projected to make money.
UA has been pretty good picking new routes recently. I think the only new route from last year that did not return this was BGO.
Originally Posted by
jsloan
Sure, someone has put together a business case, and they expect it to be a net positive for the business, either via profit or some sort of politics. I would love to be wrong, and I’d love for UA to thrive on this route. Without seeing the business case, I should probably be more circumspect, but it’s a simple fact that PAL has run off competition in long-haul markets by operating at an extremely low price point. Finding 120 J travelers a day (60 in each direction) willing to pay more to fly UA seems like a tough sell.
I have the same concern but we don't have UA's data. And maybe there is some freight contract as well but air freight rates have finally come back down to earth this year.
Years ago I spoke with someone at UA when they dropped wide body service to SGN which we had a contract freight rate on. The route first went to 737s from GUM (but you can't put a container on a 737) and was then dropped entirely. This person said that when LAX-HKG was operating there were more than 30 people a day changing planes in HKG and going on to SGN and the number of people traveling from Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia to the US was higher than most people would think. The problem is how can a US airline profitably tap into that. Long haul flying is part of the DNA of UA. I expect they will figure it out before the other two. Let's see.