Got some more schedule changes for January last night. Nothing major (compared to last time)

Are we losing SFO-PTY sometime this winter. I am planning a trip down to Panama in March or April next year and the nonstop is not showing on the schedule.

Yes it was just updated as cut in January 26.

Permanently cut or seasonally suspended? Either way, I wonder if CM brings back an additional frequency to compensate for the loss. A net frequency cut between UA and CM would be a bit surprising given Patrick Quayle's remarks about SFO being the fastest growing UA hub for Latin America flying.

UA can't compete with CM's pricing I guess? The only major loss is CM no longer being an integral part of MP - no more LT miles. If you get the 7M9 planes then UA has zero way of competing with CM ...

Anecdotally UA's pricing up front has been quite heavily discounted compared to CM, likely in acknowledgment of the inferior product.

Maybe out of SFO then. I have a non-stop BOS-PTY with great connection options and UA hasn't even once been cheaper than CM

It seems exceedingly unlikely that any airline ever prices its flights cheaper than another airline on the same route "in acknowledgment of" what it considers to be its own "inferior product". Airlines set the prices for tickets based on what their models predict they can sell them for. Do you think that UA incorporates into its revenue models an "our product is inferior" factor?

Maybe not explicitly in the form of cheaper fares for a given fare class/level, but if discerning travelers book away from UA due to the inferior product, RM will/should eventually open up discounted inventory, which yields the same effect to travelers.

On a related note, CM has increased its frequency on SFO-PTY to 10x weekly (up from 7x) starting 04/2026: https://www.aeroroutes.com/eng/251001-uacm1h26sfopty

Perhaps that's why they adopted the "good leads the way" slogan - mediocre is us apparently.

WRT scheduling, wonder what's driving CM's 10x weekly SFO-PTY flight demand.

David

Well yeah, exactly. But that's not even remotely what the phrase "in acknowledgment of inferior product" means...

Schedule Changes
 

Just got back from a week in Mexico to find 7 of the 8 segments I have booked for 2026 have schedule changes. And none were flight number changes...there have been a number (pun intended) of those already. But schedule changes...as little as one minute, to as long 3 hours. Major work this week!

I am getting killed with schedule changes tonight. Worst, after accepting them they don’t allow for free changes and now I need to call tomorrow while I would ordinarily not want to clog phone lines with future travel stuff. I mean there was a 5 p.m. through DEN that turned into an 8 p.m. via SFO and it is asking me for a $2k change to switch to an EWR flight :confused:

what months so far?

February through April