jasondc

sounds like you made a decision that worked for you. Which is good. united doesn't expect to be able to win everybody. But they do win a lot with what they have.
And, they'er flexible. They've added Chicago and Newark services to SJC which enable greater east coast connectivity and access to large local markets. good for them. Maybe they'll add more like a LAX flight. maybe they won't. Different strokes for different folks, which is what I maintained.

prestonh

Serving the number 2 and the number 10 US air markets with 2X RJ's....yes that is a core market.

sbm12

Or the ANA SJC-NRT or the LH SJC-FRA, with the appropriate onward connection if needed. Both of which are covered by Joint Venture/ATI deals.

As alliances/JVs go UA/*A is the strongest out of SJC for long-haul by a LONG measure.

ETA: Some T100 data from March 2017 (picked at random) to help inform the conversation about passengers flying on various routes.

PASSENGERS CARRIER ORIGIN DEST MONTH
54 OO OAK BFI 3
20 0WQ OAK BUR 3
43 DL OAK LAX 3
1794 DL OAK LAX 3
5656 CP OAK LAX 3
10725 NK OAK LAX 3
126 AS OAK PDX 3
5507 QX OAK PDX 3
16 AS OAK PSP 3
8190 WN OAK RNO 3
42 XP OAK SAN 3
236 09Q OAK SAN 3
4567 OO SFO ACV 3
973 OO SFO BFL 3
5 0WQ SFO BUR 3
2490 UA SFO BUR 3
6532 OO SFO BUR 3
8609 WN SFO BUR 3
6 27Q SFO LAX 3
5978 OO SFO MFR 3
1126 OO SFO MMH 3
1760 OO SFO MRY 3
10919 OO SFO ONT 3
23 WN SFO PDX 3
51 DL SFO PDX 3
1489 OO SFO PDX 3
9826 VX SFO PDX 3
1325 OO SFO PSC 3
4032 UA SFO PSP 3
4215 VX SFO PSP 3
6764 AS SFO PSP 3
6874 OO SFO PSP 3
4135 OO SFO RDM 3
6 WN SFO RNO 3
2501 OO SFO RNO 3
8288 UA SFO RNO 3
570 OO SFO SAN 3
3809 OO SFO SBP 3
3910 OO SFO SNA 3
13 2JQ SJC BUR 3
1590 OO SJC BUR 3
46 AC SJC LAX 3
142 DL SJC LAX 3
7573 DL SJC LAX 3
38 OO SJC ONT 3
3360 OO SJC PDX 3
10877 WN SJC PDX 3
11560 AS SJC PDX 3
2840 QX SJC RNO 3
5499 OO SJC SAN 3
4322 OO SJC SNA 3
111 DL SMF LAX 3
2419 DL SMF LAX 3
8765 CP SMF LAX 3
8819 OO SMF LAX 3
47 DL SMF PDX 3
6651 QX SMF PDX 3
2376 OO SMF SAN 3

jasondc

Never really was for United. who knows, maybe they'll come back. Maybe they won't. They'll be fine.

fly18725

Huh? I said there’s a correlation between aircraft size and how people fly, e.g. more people fly out of SFO than OAK and SJC.

How many points must an airline connect within the West Coast to have a winning strategy?

channa

They would first need a strategy. And for that, they could start by not having voids where millions of people live.

For SJC-West Coast, UA has 0
For OAK-West Coast, UA has 0

That's about 5 million people whose closest airport has no UA West Coast connectivity whatsoever. Not a single flight. Not a single destination.

jasondc

They have a strategy. They have a commanding presence at SFO, the most important airport in the region.
They do not serve OAK. Oh well.
From SJC they serve DEN, EWR, IAH, ORD. They also serve FRA and NRT through their star alliance JV partners LH and NH. That's not a bad offering.
Do they do everything? No. but again, they NEVER SAID they wanted to "win" the west coast. They've chosen to be big in SFO and have a presence in LAX. Not the worst thing. And, with new management who in their previous life committed to LAX they may have even more in store there.
I don't see you or anybody else complaining that AA is so awful and destined to fail/ lacking a strategy for just focusing on building up their LAX hub, to the detriment of all else. some people will never be happy.

fly18725

Is the answer 1?

chrisl137

And is it all that different from what they've done on the east coast with Fortress Newark, abandoning JFK?

For travel up and down the west coast they're essentially competing with bus service. Flights are short, especially out of the Bay Area, where even the PNW is only an hour, so there's little or no need to have the trappings of a legacy carrier with things like IFE, a real F section (or even E+), meals, BOB, or much of anything besides schedule. Other carriers serve the regional market very well, and no/low frills but frequent flights isn't UA's thing. Given the type of service they advertise and try to deliver (regardless of whether they succeed) it would be tough to compete head-to-head for west coast traffic at the regional airports.

As far as flights between the Bay Area and SoCal, it's primarily O/D. LAX is the second busiest airport in the country (and busiest O/D), and SFO is 10th. United is big at both, so if you're flying UA (or really any airline) from one, why would you change flights at the other? In 20 years in LA, I think I've changed planes in the Bay Area all of once. There are so many flight options from either region that routing from one through the other probably doesn't get a lot of takers except for SoCal<->Bay Area<->Pacific Northwest.

I suspect most people flying between the Bay Area and SoCal are more interested in trip duration and cost rather than any particular airline. Fly from anything other than your local airport (with 5 in LA and 3 in the Bay Area) and it's likely that ground transport time will be longer than your flight. From the Pasadena area, the time involved in getting to LAX makes *driving* to the Bay Area (especially around SJC) competitive in terms of time and hassle.

SJC ORD LDR

When I did most of that flying UA only had DEN and IAH out of SJC. Some of DEN was on a CR2. I've done a CR2 from SAV - DFW years ago and there is no way you could get me on that torture tube for a flight that is over an hour. I'll take multiple connections to avoid it.

I don't think SJC - LAX is that important. There isn't much that LAX has that SFO doesn't as opposed to ORD and EWR.

LH has become seasonal. OTOH, CA also flies SJC - PVG, so *A does rule SJC long haul since OW only has BA to LHR and ST has nothing.

spin88

I think it is always best to look at changes in CASM/PRASM over time compaired to similar carriers, the raw numbers are highly impacted by stage length and well as the different business models of each airline.

A better reflection is these numbers over time, which tends to smooth out macro factors and I think better reflects the ability of an airline to attract the core valuable business traffic.

To give an example, in 3Q 2010 CO+UA had a PRASM of 13.57 c/mi, DL's was 13.54 c/mi; this past quarter UA's was 12.17 c/mi, DL's was 13.40 c/mi. United's PRASM fell by 10.4%, Delta's 1%, and if United had matched the PRASM performance, it would have had another $860M last quarter. United is simply not providing the service and product, nor flying to the places that would allow it to match other airlines in profitablity.

Since my stock slightly more than doubled, and VX was able to build out a very successful brand in the face of (a) a major recession hitting right when they got started, and (b) United's willingness to cut prices dramatically to try to drive them out of SFO, IMHO VX did very well in the end. United basically competed against VX on price, not anything else. Then they got bought out for a huge premium, which was 100% due to their having a valuable franchise ex-SFO that both AS and B6 wanted (as did DL, but DL could not buy them) and now with AS are further expanding ex-SFO.

Actually I did note AA's failures on the West Coast. That said, unlike UA they never had a leading position, they have just always sucked going N-S on the west coast. So many chances, so may pull backs by AA. I have always though they did not understand the importance of a west coast network.

hoshattack

Gate to gate it's much closer to 2 hours to the PNW from SFO (little under for PDX, little over for SEA). More importantly though, the real question is if I want to route through unpredictable SFO. UA's overdependence on SFO is its biggest drackback, IMO. Adding in some other routes non ex-SFO is about more than appeasing O/D travel -- it helps immensely for flexibility and margin to deal with IRROPs.

DELee

Well, as much as I might have wanted to purchase on UA, I've now got flights on both AA and WN for LAX-ABQ (AA leg) and ABQ-LAX (WN leg) for early December because AA and WN actually have flights (plural) between the two cities and their airports.

Whether it is West Coast or the Western US, UA is doing lousy in terms of options out of LAX.

Again, UA is dying by its SFO (and to some extent, DEN) sword. Oooh, oooh - or even pricier options to try and connect through IAH. Good luck with that.

David

channa

You probably need 3-4 flights in a day to have some semblance of frequency. But 1 would be a start.


The big difference is they acknowledged that leaving JFK was a mistake.

They did somewhat at SJC by scrambling and re-adding SJC-EWR the same day AS announced their SJC-EWR. So they seem concerned about losing market share at SJC.


And that's the problem that was mentioned previously. Yes, UA is big at both, but frequency in some markets is weak. There are many flights ex-SFO that are 1x a day, more that are just 2x a day.

If they work, great. If they don't, then you're connecting. If now you're connecting and live near one of the other airports, why trek to SFO? That means UA is out for the East Bay, and UA may be out for the South Bay. If you're staying within the West Coast (e.g., the TUS example above), then UA is out from from SJC as well. LAX has a ton of connectors...it's some like 40% of their 40 million passengers. Just not that many from UA.

Wow, seems like I'm often connecting in LAX. If UA doesn't have the time I need ex-SFO, a common connection is via LAX on another carrier.

jasondc

are you really saying that people in the East Bay or the South Bay just dont fly United? I know tons who do. Stop being so absolutist. Will it work for everybody? No.

Again, why are people getting so crazy about this? This post is an ENTIRELY MADE UP nothing, harking back to a mythical time when United supposedly owned the West Coast. Newsflash - Shuttle by United was 20 years ago, and it didnt work.

And before that, United never had some mythical dominance along the west coast. At most, they might have had 30-40 flights a day maximum at Seattle. And SEA-LAX never was more than 3-4 day at the peak.

Why are people so focused on United being such a horrible carrier, and hell-bent on saying it's so bad that they are going to lose everything since they dont offer connectivity through LAX? Sorry, just because DL and AA do doesnt mean that UA should or will. get over it. UA is big at SFO. They've gotten bigger and will get bigger. Will that appeal to everybody? No, but they dont expect it to either. Deal with it and move on.