Josh1780

Three airlines on SFO-CVG should make that route nice and competitive.

dickerso

Dang, this flight starts a whole year too late; I would love to see DTW now.

sincx

SFO-CLT seems overdue after this.

ClipperDelta

They may say that, but it's really a retaliatory shot for DL starting 2x daily BOS-SFO next June. That's why they're not timed for the majority of TPAC connections at SFO especially on the outbound. The start dates are even the same - June 8, 2017 for both the DL and UA services.

LASUA1K

I think UA has Asia covered by sending people in DTW and CVG to ORD. These flights get passengers in DTW and CVG to Australia, SIN and it allows people in the Bay area a non red eye flight to 2 midwest destinations.

fly18725

What's interesting is that only one will fly it daily the whole year.

emcampbe

So, a couple of things.

From someone in CVG with family on the west coast, this will be great. I was actually wondering, given other midwest nonstops to SFO announced over the last couple of years, if CVG would get one soon. Really, I usually am going to the east bay, so was really excited about the upcoming ORD-SJC, which is a better option then current, since typically there's only a morning westbound through IAH, and an evening via DEN, but that's a short connection often. Coming back, its only a short connection through IAH. The ORD options are good for me.

But now there's this, which is probably better then the connection to SJC. Timing is good, as we try to get an evening west, and an early afternoon east. This is a little earlier then optimal from SFO, however, not bad, and still the best timing by far.

Both DL and F9 only have redeyes east, and neither fly daily (I think DL doesn't run on Saturday, and F9 does 3/week, which is irrelevant to me since I would never fly them anyway). I'm a little surprised they didn't time westbound in the morning for the bigger Asia connection bank, but many can be done for ORD. Timed well for O/D (IME) and the late SFO flights (SYD/SIN/AKL), which makes more sense now, since none of those are served by ORD. If I'm going to TPE, etc., this even may work for me, allowing me to fly out the night before, spend a night in the Bay area, and then head out the next morning.

A little out there, but perhaps, as others were suggesting that SQ might start codesharing with UA in the future, this might even be a good option for onward flights from SIN to Asia...say, India (beyond BOM/DEL) or Indonesia. For example, one could fly UA CVG-SFO-SIN, spend the day in SIN, then get on the connection to BLR/MAA/HYD, etc.

Doubtful. Even if UA were to sell them, they would likely be priced at full fare, as BR/OS tend to have plating restrictions on their discount fares for TPAC flights.

username

BR is starting nonstop ORD-TPE in November 4x a week. It is a late departure which enables same day connection out of TPE to lots of destinations in SE Asia and Mainland China. TPE-ORD gets to ORD 19:40 in the winter and probably will get to ORD too late in the summer to connect anywhere. The plan is to go daily in May 2017.

emcampbe

Yes, they are starting, but post I was responding to was about the possibility of booking CVG-ORD-TPE(/ICN) on BR(/OZ) (and then potentially onward, I guess, as the new UA flights aren't morning to connect to UAs own TPACs to these destinations. Issue is still that it's doubtful UA will be able to book these with anything other than full fares, given the plating restrictions on BR/OZ. Perhaps those carriers themselves will allow you to book that though their call center (neither, IME, will allow booking from non-gateway cities on their website) with UA doing he CVG/DTW - ORD portion.

IamBartman

As one who flies SFO-ORD-GRR/TVC multiple times a year, I would love SFO-DTW to bail out UA when it inevitable cancels ORD feeder flights due to WX.

JHake10

Would of loved this last winter when flying SFO-DTW every week. The worst was after connecting in DEN I would on a CRJ-700 for a ~2 hr flight (at least the times I needed).

spin88

First, Props for adding SFO-DTW. Times are good, and are aimed at business traffic SFO-DTW. Well done on the times.

Second, It is LONG overdo. This is a route that Untied needed to add in 2012, not 2017. As cars have gone "high tech" there is a very large amount of traffic between SFO and DTW. Its a route that I fly 8-10 times a year. From 2005-2010 much of my flight ORD-DTW would be people who were on my SFO-ORD flight, all UA elites from SFO. That started to go away c2012-2013 as people gave up on UA, and now I find my SFO-DTW flights on DL (in F) are usually business travelers, many of which live in SFO, and nearly all of which are Jeff-uges.

In 2011 Delta ran 3 flights a day, usually a A320, then it was four, then five, and now Delta is running 2x763, 1x753, 2x739 on this route. There is more than enough traffic for United to run a flight given its very large FF base in SF.

This said, my "props" is tempered by not doing this now, but waiting until spring 2017 and timing it as a shot against DL, matching adds into UA hubs.

That does not signal that UA wants to compete, but rather that United does not want to, and will try to cause pain if forced to compete.

jeedk

Airline economics nearly always favor the midcon hub over the coastal cities. DL is no exception at the laws of gravity - see LAX-IAH or LGA-DEN.

You can install both Richard Anderson and Ed Bastian at UA and still won't make them overtake rivals on SFO - DFW DTW ATL etc.

Similarly, DL has a very large focus city at BOS, even calling it a "hub" in some literature, likely with a strong share of corporate contracts, yet cannot offer BOS-ORD or BOS-WAS against AA and UA.

PVDtoDEL

+1

And this seems to be a pattern - we saw it a few weeks back with SJC-EWR vs AS too.

spin88

You are correct in that any "coastal" city has less connecting traffic (SEA, and to some extent now LAX being the exception), but that has more to do with the fact that the coastal cities tend to be much bigger, and command direct flights to hubs of their own. What is left either has relatively close larger airports and little high value traffic (see stockton, Bakersfield, Modesto) or is too small for large amounts of connecting traffic to feed a hub (see Reno, Medford, etc). The midwest/South is jam packed with airports that serve 250-750K people, and as such have a lot of connecting traffic. The west tends to have one large city per state (CA having several), and the NE it is all big cities.

But I think the real issue is that most costal cities are highly competitive. BOS pulls from a region with about 4.5M people in it (Boston itself is only 650K people), but 24% of the traffic is B6, AA+US is 21%, and Delta is only 15.3%. There is just no way that an airline with 15.3% market share in a market of 4.5M people can/is going to run a flight into two other carriers hubs (AA/UA at ORD), and my guess is that WN also serves BOS from MDW. The economics and market sizes are very different.

San Francisco is the ONLY major US coastal city that any airline has an outsized market share in except MIA (UA had 44.4% of the SFO traffic in 2015, AA-US were at 9.6%, and both VX and DL were at 8.4%) and since the airport pulls from an catchment area of 7.15M people in the inner bay area (twice the market in BOS), 9.4M people if you add the outer ring of counties, and 10.8M if you add Sacramento Count, If ANY airline ought to be able to offer coastal to Midwest, it is UA ex-SFO. They have a large enough FF population to support flights that no other airline could do from a coastal city.

So the market conditions to/from BOS are very different than what UA can do ex-SFO. I would have expected a very large increase in UA flights ex-SFO with the merger, that they waited so long to do things like SFO-ATL, SFO-DTW is that they are not able to compete, even for the very large traffic at SFO against a better airline like Delta, or even AA.