aoumd

Recently while helping my wife and two friends plan their upcoming girls' cruise, I looked at flights and was surprised to find absolutely nothing for sample dates in November or April from United's IAD hub to MIA or FLL. One member in the party has $350 in eCerts (or as I like to call them, "JeffieBucks") to use before February, the result of getting VDB'd earlier this year IAD-TPA.

All the options seem to take you through EWR. No nonstops from one of United's largest east coast hubs (and 7th largest metro area by population) to the nation's 8th largest metro area by population.

Is there a story behind this? Seems like a glaring omission in the route network.

JDS747

There use to be IAD-FLL but it was cancelled due to low revenue or something.

I agree that getting IAD-FLL/MIA back would be great but if it's not making money UA isn't doing it.

mahasamatman

It's a leisure no-profit (or low-profit) route. United's equipment is better utilized elsewhere.

aoumd

I had a feeling it had something to do with the disproportionate number of leisure travelers in the market, but that doesn't explain the huge amount of EWR-MIA/FLL flights, or the three IAD-TPA flights a day that United has (with reasonable fares from a leisure perspective), and yet no IAD-MIA/FLL. Why one but not the others which are likely similar nature?

mahasamatman

A lot more New York area people fly to Florida. Flying from both EWR and IAD would be overkill.

The fact that something used to exist and does not exist any longer should tell you quite a bit.

No airline can fly every possible route between all city pairs. It is what it is.

aoumd

I corrected my post, after doing a quick search and seeing the 3x IAD-TPA are still there. I'd understand a lot more if TPA weren't there but MIA was (TPA is a smaller market and local economy than MIA), or if neither were there.

3Cforme

Use of metro population is an unfortunate conceit. There are plenty of flights BWI/DCA/IAD non-stop to MIA/FLL/PBI. They just aren't operated by UA from IAD. American, Frontier, JetBlue, Southwest and Spirit will be happy to take the friends' money. That carrier list probably explains why UA stopped trying: the AA hub at MIA, Southwest, and two dirt-cheap ULCCs.

aoumd

Yes, they're looking at OAL for this trip. I was just really surprised to see a carrier with a fortress hub in the DC area has nothing to South Florida. Especially since one member of the travelling party has $350 in JeffieBucks to spend by February, which would have enticed them towards a UA option if there was one.

As an alternate measure, the DC Metro area is 5th in the nation for GDP, while MIA/FLL is 12th in the nation for GDP.

kevanyalowitz

Right, like EWR-SFO flights every 30 minutes.

To think of the number of times I've heard this as an excuse to cut service over the past several years from various people at UA.

UA_Flyer

Since the discontinuation of DC-South Florida flights, I have been connecting though EWR. The problem has been the unreliability of the DCA/IAD to EWR services.

I do understand the reasons for cutting the services, but I don't have to agree with them. UA has tried FLL several times by using Ted prior to the mergers, but there are just too many competitions. It is unfortunate, but UA does have multiple flights to South Florida (including PBI) from its hubs in IAH, ORD and EWR.

The lack of flights between DC and South Florida do impact me as I frequently travel between to two areas for personal reasons. I do hope UA can reassess the situations and hope at least a flight each day between IAD and one of PBI/FLL/MIA can be justified.

glx

OT, but I'm on this route bi-weekly and they rarely go out less than 90% full. So yeah, much better utilized on this extremely business-heavy route.

kevanyalowitz

Flights full of low yield fares are not necessarily profitable. The EWR/IAD-SFO 7 day advance purchase fare is about 1/2 the price of the same fare for IAD-SEA, last time I checked.

Point is, UA likes to say they cut flights where they aren't making money but they fly loss making routes all the time, often for longer term strategic reasons.

halls120

The U.S. Special Operations Command and McDill AFB are in Tampa.

Before US left *A, you could get to many Florida and Caribbean destinations through CLT on a codeshare flight. When they left, they took most of UAs access to those locations.

Besides, Jeff has made it clear how much he likes IAD.

zrs70

In the days of Ted, most Florida routes were flown by the low cost brother.

bocastephen

FLL is not a low profit route - there is a significant amount of business traffic there and the airport itself is growing leaps and bounds (to the chagrin of local residents).