rch4u

I would book away from that in a heartbeat. Route SFO-DEN-YYC instead, on real planes.

timfountain

+1 Count me as obvious then. PDX=LAX used to be mainline, then Barbie jets then poof, gone. After 60 years. Was very useful to me.

physioprof

I flew a Dash prop plane ITH-EWR less than two months ago. I wonder if that was one of the few last flights?

And does it really make sense for United to fly between EWR and both ITH and ELM???

JVPhoto

That would mean 7h45m of travel time vs 3, two planes = double risk of mx/delays, getting to YYC 3 hours later in the day. It's 6 of us, one being a 3 year old, and we are not large so all sitting next to each other for 3 hours will be fine. I was almost going to book the F cabin but it was missing 1 available seat for us so I'm glad I didn't and then have have to deal with trying to get $ back for the downgrade.

IAHtraveler

Also announced today:
ILM-ORD: 1135am-104pm & 630-759pm (Trans States)
ILM-IAD: 1015-1130am & 745-9pm (Commutair)

AA has a stranglehold on ILM and I was initially excited to have someone other than DL for a few reasons:
-Someone to jump to when AA has an MX issue (since AA<->DL don't have an interline agreement)
-Someone that might reduce elite loads at AA/ILM and give EXPs higher upgrade chances
-Just more options overall

However, I don't see UA lasting long-term at ILM. Main reasons being:
-Flight times. You can't connect in ORD/IAD and get anywhere before lunch since there's not an early morning flight out. Also no late night flights in so you can work somewhere for the majority of the day and still get back. They need a late flight into ILM (landing by ~10-1130pm), overnighting, then out by 7am at the latest. This current schedule doesn't yield itself to regular business travelers who need options.
-No F seats. AA has F on all of the CLT flights, one of the PHL flights and DL has 1 with F to ATL daily
So folks in the midwest might use UA to get to ILM, but I don't see any locals here using UA as their airline of choice unless they commute ILM-ORD regularly. Also worth noting that AA previously tried to make ILM-DCA work, but couldn't and pulled out of that route.

gradsflyer

PDX is the most obvious hole from LAX but actually EUG is a pretty big gap as well. Why are they adding tiny cities in Oregon while leaving out the state's two largest metro areas? I get that both routes are serviced by other carriers but ever since PDX went away I really lament not being able to fly from the Willamette Valley directly to SoCal with a *A carrier since that's where all my flying and miles typically go. In general the PNW is not good for a UA flier unless you connect through SFO, and since many flights are on RJs the risk of cancellation into and out of SFO is always high as well.

DELee

Probably AS/VX competition. Again, UA will lose more and more PDX and EUG customers and reverse out of LAX because it keeps forcing them through SFO.

David

exerda

Or FLG-anywhere. I'd settle for LAX or ORD, though DEN makes a lot more sense.

TomMM

Living in JAX, I am hopeful that JAX-DEN will work out.

cerealmarketer

CEO's family lives there - hopefully they like skiing in Colorado!

JayhawkCO

Just checked out some flights to visit my parents in April. United and Frontier are both starting service one day apart on the non-stop DEN-JAX (that WN has been flying for a while). A quick look at prices shows about $200 for Frontier and $584 for UA non-stop. Why start the route if you're not going to be remotely competitive?

Chris

chrisl137

That's where I am - I generally use UA for east-west and AS for north-south (with the bay area being whoever has the best schedule out of BUR for the trip in question). UA is a preferred carrier at work, so it's harder to get AS/VX for the east/west runs, but AS is much better, especially in the back of the bus, for north south. The north-south is mostly personal, and I made it almost halfway to MVP on just a few months of flying, so I suspect it won't be a problem making it in 2018.

QLA-PDX is a route where ground transport time is a factor for me - going from LAX vs BUR adds driving time close to the non-stop flight time, and throwing in the connect time and misconnect chance at SFO makes it even less appealing. I'm definitely not interested in LAX-BUR taking 7 hours of air travel plus my ground transport time. AS offers nonstops BUR-PDX on the E175s, and if I have to connect, I'd rather connect in SEA than SFO because of the chance of delay or cancellation due to weather in SFO. It makes it a bit of a pain to split my flying between the two - I'm just barely making silver this year, partly thanks to a BUR-SFO-PDX flight that I'd have booked on AS if I didn't need the miles.

JVPhoto

Frequency? Looks like Frontier doesn't fly daily. Timing? Southwest & Frontier seem to be afternoon flights DEN-JAX and UA is in the morning. JAX-DEN the 3 seem to be closer to each other in times depending on the day of the week.

jsloan

Also, it’s way, way too early to be purchasing UA flights for domestic travel in April. UA rarely opens discount fares for domestic travel until within 90 days of departure, and often less. (There is no hard-and-fast rule; the airlines work hard to make sure that you can’t guess when the best prices will occur). UA is offering $584 because somebody might book it, and there’s plenty of time to discount it later. F9 has a completely different pricing strategy than UA does. They are much more likely to align from T-90 to T-21 than they are at T-150.

PsiFighter37

ORD-FAT on the Devil's Chariot sounds awful. They couldn't find an E170 to put on that route, at the very least?