Winning the West Coast
 

From the days of Shuttle by United, the company has always had — at least a vision — to be the predominant carrier on the West Coast.

Over the last decade, we’ve seen a dwindling of service out of the outstations and UA opted to focus on the San Francisco hub. LA is beginning to come back. But what’s stopping United from launching more point to point service out of CA cities to other west coast business markets. Continental brought EWR SNA, and I know people that swear by that flight. Why not offer more ex-SNA service, for example. I’m flying more to SJC for work presently out of LAX and United doesn’t even offer an option on that route, which seems bizarre.

Virgin/Alaska is gearing up, why not United?

Too much competition, DL are strong @ LAX as well as AA, it's impossible to win LAX. The same applies to California in general, impossible to dominate with the strength and variety of the competition. UA's strategy is to dominate at SFO and use LAX as a complement, I don't think theres logically a better strategy.

A desire to create profits for shareholders rather than get involved in a massively expensive fight for incremental traffic that already has a strong commitment to a carrier (WN) delivering far more intra-California connectivity than UA could even consider trying to build out without bankrupting the airline.

Will it ever be a fortress hub like IAH or EWR? No. But I'm continually flabbergasted by the fact that UA only has one or two flights SEA-LAX (and only seasonally mainline at that). It's that kind of pitiful service that really says "we don't care"

For SNA, all airline operators are limited to a predetermined number of daily departures as well as annual seat capacity. UA is capped at 19 daily flights, and about 2,000,000 seats during the calendar year. WN is the largest carrier by far, for no other reason than having the most slots as well as capacity allocation.

Or they can not be everything to everyone

As can no ariline

United was the #1 carrier at LAX, #1 at SFO, #1 (or #2 to DL for a while) at PDX, and #2 at SEA. They also had a major presence in secondary markets. the BKR period (2004-2010) and growth by WN lead to an erosion of UA's possition, but when CO's lift was added, UA was c2011 in a position to dominate the West.... instead they went with "changes you will like"

At this point, the opportunity is long gone. DL has spent a lot of $$$ and has a much stronger brand, and has overtaken UA at LAX, while adding a major presence at SEA. they have also added a lot of extra shuttle flights up and down the west coast, as well as substantially expanded SFO service. AS/VX is also going to make a major play - including at SFO. At this point, DL is the main west coast network carrier, WN has a lot of service, as does AS/VX. Outside of SFO, United is not a go to carrier, and given its poor reputation for service and its generally third rate product, adding more flights would just further depress load factor and PRASM.

LAX-SEA is a major market, and running one or two RJs (for a while CRJ-200s) was a great way to lose corporate accounts as well as FFers on the west coast. Not running routes like this (or LAX-YVR or LAX-PDX) was a good part of the reason UA is now firmly back in third place ex-LAX.

As is Hawaii, as is many others domestic markets (ORD, NYC, IAD, BOS, DEN, ...), as is Europe, as is Asia, as are other markets, ....but no airline (including UA) is doing it all

West Coast is hyper-competitive. No airline has been able to sustain much momentum in gaining an edge over the others. We here on the FT UA board are well aware of UA's recent cutbacks, but:

AA is #1 at LAX, but it has reduced LAX-SFO to all Eagle, and the frequency is down from hourly to one flight every 1:30. AA has also down-gauged LAX-SYD, LAX-NRT, LAX-JFK...

DL has stopped marketing Delta Shuttle on the West Coast, after about a year. LAX-SFO will go all-DL Connection again this winter. SEA-SFO frequencies have been reduced (by 1, so far). DL has also cut LAX-NRT and LAX-LHR.

There was a period a few years ago when SJC-LAX was the most contested route in the world, with more airlines flying it than any other route (including UA). Clearly it was enough that UA couldn't justify it and pulled out, especially with it being a non-hub to mini-hub route, when one of their main hubs is only 30 miles away...

However we have at least seen an increase in flights to SJC recently, with flights to ORD (2 per day) and EWR being added to the existing DEN and IAH flights. I'd love to see SJC-LAX come back, and with it back to only 4 airlines flying it now I'd say it's certainly possible...

IMO the big hole in California for UA is OAK. DL, AA, AS, B6, BA, and of course WN with a huge operation, are all there.

Well here at PDX we've got the daytime non-stop to EWR back. That's progress after the Smisek cuts (thanks Scott).

Now how about bringing PDX-LAX back? We don't need the full Shuttle by United, or the UX Brasilia's to Seattle, Eugene or Medford. But a connecting service to get other UA options to Asia would be good. LAX-MEL would mean nothing to me as it's currently a 2-stop from PDX vs 1-stop on DL/VA and AA/QF.

That vision is still there. They're the #1 legacy carrier in the West coast. And they have the most international service by far. WN has a stranglehold on intra-CA service. Trying to go up against that would be foolish. Every airline is picking and choosing their battles. One battle UA isn't interested much in is the intra-CA market out of the LA basin.

LAX-SEA is one of the biggest bloodbaths in the country. UA doesn't care much about LAX-SEA because there's little to care about from their perspective.

UA hasn't been the #2 carrier at SEA in at least 10 years, and that #2 was way behind AS and grouped up with WN, with a small gap to the rest of the pack.

UA hasn't been higher than #3 at PDX at any point in the last 10+ years. DL has never been higher than #3 either in that time frame. They've been trading #3 and #4 for years.

DL mainline is only about 20% larger at SFO now than immediately after the NW acquisition, and that's with large expansions at SEA and SFO. In other words, their "growth" at SFO is small and not for the SFO customer.

DL is well behind UA in West Coast size. Clearly they are still the main West Coast network carrier and the go-to for SFO. Only AS and WN can also say about a West Coast airport.

So is not flying LAX-ORD/IAH. Or LAX-MSP. Or LAX-ATL/PDX. (UA has a LAX-YVR flight)

I wouldn't be surprised to see OAK-DEN/ORD/IAH someday, in the same vein as the return to SJC.

Agreed! Being #1 and loosing your a$$ doing it, because only a few want to fly that route doesn't make money, and after all that's the name of the game. I think that they have it pretty much figured out which routes make them the most money, and should there be one that they really want they'll go after it.

Being # 1 on the west coast isn't the objective, making a lot of money where people want to fly is where it's at. Just because some guy wants to fly from his home in ONT to work in SEA doesn't mean that UA is gonna fly that route so a pax doesn't need to connect.