This seems to be the current guidance now, which has changed with this latest extension of the suspension. If travel has commenced UA will rebook, but if travel has not yet commenced, they are trying to push full refunds rather than rebook, because I imagine they are hemmhoraging cash on LH/LX/ANA rebooking. I ran into resistance, took the full refund and booked a new itinerary on EK. Cost quite a bit more, but I didn’t want to fight it, I understand the UA position on this and wasn’t sure what rights one has for situations like this to insist on a Star Alliance rebooking.

Big if true. Looks like airspace might be open again.

Just a guess, but recently Pakistan extended the closure until July 26. It might mean that United feels they need a minimum of 3 months to restart operations. So I wouldn’t expect it before Oct 15. But who knows.

Also guesses on my end - they’d certainly need some lead time to get the flights back - scheduling crew, re-scheduling aircraft, etc. I’d think 3 months is way more time than needed - Id be surprised if they'd need longer than a month for that. Given this all just happened, maybe they’ll roll back the re-start dates to sometime in late Aug/early Sept.

the things that I could see that might be a factor in not doing that is getting the sales they need - given they’ve offered everyone refunds - many who probably have already taken advantage. If they can’t fill the planes again, they may not want to send them. Maybe they could allow those that we’re booked and refunded to get those seats back at the existing price if they re-instated some of the flights - I don’t know.

Other thing that could affect it is perhaps they have re-allocated aircraft schedules based on this and they may not want to go back on that. I was thinking maybe some of the aircraft are backfilling for some of the MAX cancels, though it’s rare to see the ex-CO 777s running domestically - I don’t think I ever have. However, maybe they’ve now scheduled earlier maintenance / Polaris mods with the extra frames.

UA’s India services are two of its most profitable routes. The J fares are very high and my GPU success rate has been about 10% (with all but one ex-EWR flying on 4th July or Thanksgiving). They’ll be wanting to get them restored as soon as economically viable, which of course means accumulating bookings, so three months out seems about right.