Originally Posted by
uanj
GUM and SPN aside, UA's NRT and HND services are fairly equal. UA flies from NRT to LAX, SFO, DEN, EWR and IAH. UA flies from HND to LAX, SFO, ORD, EWR and IAD. Kirby was quite clear after joining UA that UA was no longer necessarily going to flow passengers and freight on partner airlines from UA hubs. He, Quayle and Nocella have said that they look at HND as O&D within Japan and NRT for onward connections beyond Japan.
Not trying to split hairs or anything but I don't believe they have stated that they are happy for NH to take all passengers flying to/through NRT. HNL-NRT is the only market they completely ceded to NH in recent years. But we should stay tuned, things can always change.
UA was awarded four HND routes in 2019 and used three of them (ORD, SFO, LAX) to move flights from NRT (UA abandoned ORD-NRT). Only EWR was additive. UA also requested IAH-HND and GUM-HND but didn't get them. As you noted, they chose to give up Honolulu - Tokyo altogether and it sure looks like they would have let NH handle all IAH-NRT traffic (just like ORD-NRT) except NH got the IAH-HND route instead of UA. Additionally, UA didn't apply for DEN-HND and I'm guessing that's because NH doesn't serve DEN at all so can't handle the onward connections from NRT.
So, yes, you're right that UA still flies to NRT from five US airports but would they if they had greater access to HND?