Ironic the title of this thread considering AA/DL are way in the rear in the Pacific region. As stated in an earlier post, Delta has removed LAX-PVG from its schedule. Somehow, it is a little ironic in a way that UA will be the sole US carrier operating LAX-PVG going forward as AA's LAX-PVG flight is also gone for good. Delta and American have no plans to resume flying to Beijing either, even though with Delta removing LAX-PVG, there are eight weekly slots open as of end of October 2024. Only competition for UA is China Eastern as they are going to have one daily LAX-PVG flight.

If UA was doing so lousy then why are they adding a second LAX-HKG flight? Not for ulitisation purposes as that aircraft is part of a three aircraft turn. Later this year, United will be flying more seats between LAX and HKG than they ever have as I believe we are certain that United has never flown a second daily LAX-HKG flight in the past. And they only resumed LAX-HKG last October! Also, an indictment of how things are going at CX as they are flying LAX-HKG thirteen times a week instead of thrice daily as they did in the past.

Sure UA has a ton of capacity in the Transpacific, especially to the South Pacific, but there is right-sizing underway and they will be just fine. One future adjustment is LAX-BNE not coming back until December and will only run until mid-February. Unlike Delta, UA will not be getting any Queensland subsidy for that route as that is with year-round SFO-BNE instead. Reminder that if the 737-9 MAX was NOT grounded, UA would have joined DL in being the only US airline to record a profit in Q1, the weakest quarter for the airlines and only Delta has consistently been able to make a profit due to the more north-south route network they have rather than the more east-west structure United has.

Also, for US-Japan flying, reminder of the UA/ANA JV of revenue sharing. While some of those load factors are a bit on the low side, given the revenue sharing and price setting between US and Japan, UA is probably doing just fine. There is also a ton of extra capacity into TYO right now given the HND slot allocation and that is without AA starting up JFK-HND, which resumes at the end of June. The real sign of US-Japan flying of being down is check out the LF on SFO-KIX. (It is lower than every other Trans-Pacific destination except PPT.) Reminder that UA is the only airline to fly daily to KIX from the US mainland. JAL flies LAX-KIX five times weekly.