spartacusmcfly

As long as there are no protest driven airport closures in the next 2 months, I predict 2nd flight will be fine.

amtrakusa

UA basically pulled a singapore trick on Hong Kong. nothing else here.

spin88

I used similar words, but have reconsidered the overall situation. My guess is that the ORD flight was hit by falling us manufacturing experts to China (where ORD was a gateway for UA to the midwest) + falling demand due to instability in HK. Its a long, expensive flight to operate, and if premium demand falls, it would be the first to go into the red of UA's HKG flights.

However, as a competitive measure, in face of CX running three flights a day and SQ + HK Airlines flights, UA really needed a night departure ex SFO and ex-HKG. There is an additional benefit in doing so in that you get higher aircraft utilization rate by not having to hold the A/C overnight.

Obviously, someone going to/from Chicago can change planes without any real issues (while the old outbound departure would have required a really early ORD depature, and a miserable experience) with a night departure. And the risk of loosing traffic to other American flag carriers is lessened by DL and AA's pull back.

My current thought is that the ORD flight was the best one to cut, and that UA might have wished to cut ORD-HKG for a 2nd SFO-HKG to have a better competitive line up ex-SFO anyway.

If the economy were not tanking ORD might not have been cut, but my guess is that if demand falls further, you will see downsizing of the flight before you see them go back to a single morning flight. There are additional benefits in having a second SFO-HKG even if demand is softer than UA would like.

hirohito888

HX HKG-SFO flight is ending 4OCT19. Not that they were a serious competitor doing 3-4x weekly.

But with ORD-HKG gone, and if 2nd daily SFO-HKG happens, overall US-HKG capacity does fall a bit, from 976 to 902. And if market is still bad, they can always downgauge EWR-HKG equipment.

EWR764

nomad420

Spoke with small boutique hotel promoter last PM and was told occupancy in Hong Kong was at 4%! Now admittedly those hotels typically cater to tourist travelers but still pretty pathetic. FWIW my wife has just canceled a business trip to Hong Kong as well. Having said that I don't see UA jumping to change anything at this point. It kind of reminds me when they added direct flights from SFO to KOA during the volcano eruption and some of the flights looked like ghost towns. Well now the flights seem to be almost running at full capacity.

Kacee

And CX has been randomly cutting its second late-night departure, CX851 (I know b/c I got cancelled and rebooked for an October departure).

amtrakusa

the writing is on the wall for ORD-HKG for a long time. United employees should be happy because their profit sharing is about to rise due to this action, along with the ending of EWR-EZE and of course the demise of GUM-HKG. Some of these stuff should have been done a long time ago.

sinoflyer

marshall200

I am very happy about the schedule for the additional flights.
I travel to Chiang Mai (CNX) frequently and I used to book my United ticket to Singapore and then buy a SIN-BKK-CNX ticket (to earn more miles). However since the launch of Premium Plus (and being able to upgrade on any fare with a GPU) I have started flying via HKG and booking my United ticket all the way to BKK as they offer a through fare connecting on either HX or CX - and the fare is generally lower than flying to HKG.
The new schedule means that I can arrive in BKK around 9AM and have a separate ticket from BKK to CNX the same day. And on the return depart BKK as late as 4:30pm to connect to the late evening United flight back to SFO.
I am booked on the Oct 26th SFO-HKG new flight- do you think this will be considered an Inaugural flight ?

spartacusmcfly

Wonder if SQ will exit SFO-HKG. They've got to be feeling pain. 2nd UA SFO-HKG flight will siphon passengers, SFO-DEL becoming permanent will siphon more passengers, 2nd SFO-SIN flight was a solid kick to the groin. Chinese carriers are pricing ultra-aggressively to West coast...

I think UA sees SQ blood in the water and is going for the kill. It may take one more UA non-stop to Southern India to land the final blow by drawing away the BLR crowd that is willing to reverse connect through Singapore. Imagine the celebration in Chicago if SQ's HKG J seats exited SFO...

hirohito888

If anything, I think the first to go would be the 3x weekly SIN-SFO nonstop on A350ULR. That flight is just adding too much J capacity. SIN-HKG-SFO is 1 of 3 flights SQ flies to the US with F. While unsure if F is profitable or not, I would think that SQ would still want to maintain at least some flights with F to the US to satisfy whatever PPS/high spending customers they have.

Kacee

Sheer unfounded speculation. You ever try booking SQ in J ex-SFO? They regularly sell out.

spartacusmcfly

​​​​​​
When UA drops nearly 200 J seats into SQ's home country, and markets from which SQ draws, it's justified speculation...

MBS MillionMiler

...And it could be over (or at least suspended) before it even starts. A lot of rumors here, and no facts, but “sources” say the second SFO daily might fall the way of ORD-HKG for the time being...

https://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/...ced-plans.html

Not really surprising.