Sep 9, 2020, 10:00 am
Last edit by: WineCountryUA
United Airlines Strengthens Global Network, Adding New Nonstops to Africa, India and Hawaii
United to operate first-ever nonstop service between the United States and Bangalore, India and new service between Chicago and New Delhi, India
Announces new nonstop service between U.S. East Coast and Accra, Ghana; Lagos, Nigeria; and Johannesburg, South Africa
First-ever nonstop service between Chicago and Kona and between Newark/New York and Maui
CHICAGO, Sept. 9, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- United Airlines today announced plans to expand its global route network with new nonstop service to Africa, India and Hawaii. With these new routes, United will offer more nonstop service to India and South Africa than any other U.S. carrier and remains the largest carrier between the U.S. mainland and Hawaii.
Starting this December, United will fly daily between Chicago and New Delhi and, starting in spring 2021, United will become the only airline to operate between San Francisco and Bangalore, India and between Newark/New York and Johannesburg. United will also introduce new service between Washington, D.C., and Accra, Ghana and Lagos, Nigeria in late spring of 2021. In the summer of 2021, United will fly nonstops four times weekly between Chicago and Kona and between Newark/New York and Maui. And starting this week, United, the airline offering more nonstop service to Israel than any other U.S. carrier, begins new nonstop service between Chicago and Tel Aviv, the only carrier to offer this service.
United's newly announced international routes are subject to government approval and tickets will be available for purchase on united.com and the United app in the coming weeks.
"Now is the right time to take a bold step in evolving our global network to help our customers reconnect with friends, family and colleagues around the world," said Patrick Quayle, United's vice president of International Network and Alliances. "These new nonstop routes provide shorter travel times and convenient one-stop connections from across the United States, demonstrating United's continued innovative and forward-looking approach to rebuilding our network to meet the travel needs of our customers."
Offering nonstop service to three new destinations in Africa
United will become the only U.S. carrier serving Accra nonstop from Washington, D.C. and the only airline to serve Lagos nonstop from Washington, D.C., with three weekly flights to each destination beginning in late spring 2021. The Washington metropolitan area has the second-largest population of Ghanaians in the United States, and Lagos is the largest Western African destination from the United States. Now, with 65 different U.S. cities connecting through Washington Dulles, United will offer convenient one-stop connections to Western Africa.
United already provides seasonal, three-times-weekly service between Newark/New York and Cape Town. By adding new daily nonstop flights between Newark/New York and Johannesburg in spring 2021, the airline will operate more flights to South Africa than any other U.S. carrier, and will offer the only roundtrip, nonstop service from the United States to Johannesburg by a U.S carrier. These routes also offer easy connections for customers traveling to South Africa from more than 50 U.S. cities.
New nonstops to India from two U.S. cities
United has served India with nonstop service for 15 years and now builds on its existing service to New Delhi and Mumbai with two new routes. Beginning December 2020, United will introduce new nonstop service between Chicago and New Delhi and, for the first time ever, United customers will be able to travel nonstop between San Francisco and Bangalore starting spring 2021. Chicago has the second highest population of Indian-Americans in the United States, and customers from more than 130 U.S. cities can connect on United through O'Hare International Airport. Service from San Francisco to Bangalore connects two international technology hubs, broadening United's west coast service to India, which also includes San Francisco to New Delhi.
New nonstop service between Chicago and Tel Aviv
Beginning, Thursday, Sept. 10, United will start brand-new three-times-weekly nonstop service between Chicago and Tel Aviv. In addition to Chicago, United currently operates nonstop service between Tel Aviv and its hubs in Newark/New York and San Francisco and will resume service between Washington and Tel Aviv in October. The airline operates more nonstop service between the United States and Israel than any U.S. airline.
United expanding Hawaii service to the Midwest and East Coast
As customers look to resume leisure travel options, United will make it easier than ever to travel nonstop to Maui and Kona for the 2021 summer season. With the addition of new flights between both Newark/New York and Maui and Chicago and Kona, United will provide customers in the Midwest and U.S. East Coast with even faster and more convenient service to the Hawaiian Islands than any other airline.
United to operate first-ever nonstop service between the United States and Bangalore, India and new service between Chicago and New Delhi, India
Announces new nonstop service between U.S. East Coast and Accra, Ghana; Lagos, Nigeria; and Johannesburg, South Africa
First-ever nonstop service between Chicago and Kona and between Newark/New York and Maui
CHICAGO, Sept. 9, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- United Airlines today announced plans to expand its global route network with new nonstop service to Africa, India and Hawaii. With these new routes, United will offer more nonstop service to India and South Africa than any other U.S. carrier and remains the largest carrier between the U.S. mainland and Hawaii.
Starting this December, United will fly daily between Chicago and New Delhi and, starting in spring 2021, United will become the only airline to operate between San Francisco and Bangalore, India and between Newark/New York and Johannesburg. United will also introduce new service between Washington, D.C., and Accra, Ghana and Lagos, Nigeria in late spring of 2021. In the summer of 2021, United will fly nonstops four times weekly between Chicago and Kona and between Newark/New York and Maui. And starting this week, United, the airline offering more nonstop service to Israel than any other U.S. carrier, begins new nonstop service between Chicago and Tel Aviv, the only carrier to offer this service.
United's newly announced international routes are subject to government approval and tickets will be available for purchase on united.com and the United app in the coming weeks.
"Now is the right time to take a bold step in evolving our global network to help our customers reconnect with friends, family and colleagues around the world," said Patrick Quayle, United's vice president of International Network and Alliances. "These new nonstop routes provide shorter travel times and convenient one-stop connections from across the United States, demonstrating United's continued innovative and forward-looking approach to rebuilding our network to meet the travel needs of our customers."
Offering nonstop service to three new destinations in Africa
United will become the only U.S. carrier serving Accra nonstop from Washington, D.C. and the only airline to serve Lagos nonstop from Washington, D.C., with three weekly flights to each destination beginning in late spring 2021. The Washington metropolitan area has the second-largest population of Ghanaians in the United States, and Lagos is the largest Western African destination from the United States. Now, with 65 different U.S. cities connecting through Washington Dulles, United will offer convenient one-stop connections to Western Africa.
United already provides seasonal, three-times-weekly service between Newark/New York and Cape Town. By adding new daily nonstop flights between Newark/New York and Johannesburg in spring 2021, the airline will operate more flights to South Africa than any other U.S. carrier, and will offer the only roundtrip, nonstop service from the United States to Johannesburg by a U.S carrier. These routes also offer easy connections for customers traveling to South Africa from more than 50 U.S. cities.
New nonstops to India from two U.S. cities
United has served India with nonstop service for 15 years and now builds on its existing service to New Delhi and Mumbai with two new routes. Beginning December 2020, United will introduce new nonstop service between Chicago and New Delhi and, for the first time ever, United customers will be able to travel nonstop between San Francisco and Bangalore starting spring 2021. Chicago has the second highest population of Indian-Americans in the United States, and customers from more than 130 U.S. cities can connect on United through O'Hare International Airport. Service from San Francisco to Bangalore connects two international technology hubs, broadening United's west coast service to India, which also includes San Francisco to New Delhi.
New nonstop service between Chicago and Tel Aviv
Beginning, Thursday, Sept. 10, United will start brand-new three-times-weekly nonstop service between Chicago and Tel Aviv. In addition to Chicago, United currently operates nonstop service between Tel Aviv and its hubs in Newark/New York and San Francisco and will resume service between Washington and Tel Aviv in October. The airline operates more nonstop service between the United States and Israel than any U.S. airline.
United expanding Hawaii service to the Midwest and East Coast
As customers look to resume leisure travel options, United will make it easier than ever to travel nonstop to Maui and Kona for the 2021 summer season. With the addition of new flights between both Newark/New York and Maui and Chicago and Kona, United will provide customers in the Midwest and U.S. East Coast with even faster and more convenient service to the Hawaiian Islands than any other airline.
New UA Routes SEP 2020 • EWR ↔ OGG/JNB • ORD ↔ KOA/DEL/TLV • IAD ↔ LOS/ACC • SFO↔BLR
Sep 8, 2020, 8:49 pm
#61
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Elsewhere, IAH-GYE was mentioned, but I believe UA gave up that authority several years ago, which was picked up by JetBlue. Ecuador-USA do not yet have Open Skies.
Sep 8, 2020, 9:26 pm
#62
Join Date: Dec 2013
Posts: 43
Photo #13 is a curious one. If you scroll down the phone alphabetically on the list of cities, the thumb of the scroller is on the city directly below Bandar Seri. At first it seemed the next city alphabetically would be Bangalore but if you look closely at the letter after the letter "g" on the next city, it appears to be a partial letter "k", which means BKK. Not sure what FAA restrictions there are on UA flying to BKK as mentioned by "Nexus7556" (recall TG got into trouble with the FAA on mechanical issues & assume UA has the mechanical side of things covered) but the hint in photo #13 clearly seems to be a UA teaser about resuming service to BKK. SFO-BKK would be good but any other UA hub to BKK would be welcome too.
Last edited by tj96821; Sep 9, 2020 at 12:09 am
Sep 8, 2020, 9:47 pm
#63
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Greer,SC,USA
Posts: 884
Supposedly, it's 7 routes, so here are my guesses
1. EWR-OGG (the 4903 next to the lei is a giveaway)
2. EWR/IAD-ABJ-ACC (the bracelets on the guys hands are Ghana and Ivory Coast)
3. EWR-JNB (South African passport stamp, plus South African is basically dead at this point-it's logical UA'd want to beat DL to the punch on it)
4. ORD-DEL (ORD and DEL are on the map, and I think it's a stronger business case than IAH-DEL)
5. SFO-BKK (the phone says Bangkok)
6. IAH-AKL (there's a map of Australia/NZ at the bottom, but the focus seems to be NZ; this could also maybe be LAX/SFO-CHC)
7. IAD-VIE (the focus on Vienna in the map of DC is strange, so that's my guess Austrian's also getting out of the 767 game too, so UA picking it up fits)
1. EWR-OGG (the 4903 next to the lei is a giveaway)
2. EWR/IAD-ABJ-ACC (the bracelets on the guys hands are Ghana and Ivory Coast)
3. EWR-JNB (South African passport stamp, plus South African is basically dead at this point-it's logical UA'd want to beat DL to the punch on it)
4. ORD-DEL (ORD and DEL are on the map, and I think it's a stronger business case than IAH-DEL)
5. SFO-BKK (the phone says Bangkok)
6. IAH-AKL (there's a map of Australia/NZ at the bottom, but the focus seems to be NZ; this could also maybe be LAX/SFO-CHC)
7. IAD-VIE (the focus on Vienna in the map of DC is strange, so that's my guess Austrian's also getting out of the 767 game too, so UA picking it up fits)
Sep 8, 2020, 9:58 pm
#65
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Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 21,386
Photo #13 is a curious one. If you scroll down alphabetically on the list of cities, the thumb of the scroller is on the city directly below Bandar Seri. At first it seemed the next city alphabetically would be Bangalore but if you look closely at the letter after the letter "g" on the next city, it appears to be a partial letter "k", which means BKK.
"B" could just as easily be "Berlin," and since they appear, finally, to be opening Berlin Brandenburg, it wouldn't be much of a shock to get UA service there.
FWIW, Thailand's FAA Category 2 rating (aka: not in compliance with ICAO standards; aka: bad) is still in place. That would prohibit Thai from starting service to the US, and it also prohibits UA from codesharing with a Thai airline. However, it would not prohibit UA from starting service there, and the US/Thailand open-skies treaty is still in force. I'm not sure how thrilled the Thai government would be about this service, though...
Note that Ghana is also FAA Category 2, for those of you looking at Accra. However, Costa Rica is also Category 2, and that hasn't stopped UA from operating to LIR and SJO.
Sep 9, 2020, 12:48 am
#70
Join Date: Sep 2005
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Last edited by iandm; Sep 9, 2020 at 4:07 am
Sep 9, 2020, 1:08 am
#71
Join Date: May 2001
Location: RNO, NV, USA.
Programs: UA 2MM
Posts: 5,061
FWIW, Thailand's FAA Category 2 rating (aka: not in compliance with ICAO standards; aka: bad) is still in place. That would prohibit Thai from starting service to the US, and it also prohibits UA from codesharing with a Thai airline. However, it would not prohibit UA from starting service there, and the US/Thailand open-skies treaty is still in force. I'm not sure how thrilled the Thai government would be about this service, though...
Sep 9, 2020, 1:11 am
#72
Join Date: Dec 2013
Posts: 43
While the Royal Thai Government would prefer TG service to the U.S., it would be elated to have a direct pipeline of passengers from the U.S.
Middle class and wealthy Thais will also be happy in the event UA resumes service to BKK.
Nice thing about this tease is we'll have the answer in just a few hours.
Sep 9, 2020, 6:35 am
#73
Join Date: May 2000
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Sep 9, 2020, 7:26 am
#74
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...
FWIW, Thailand's FAA Category 2 rating (aka: not in compliance with ICAO standards; aka: bad) is still in place. That would prohibit Thai from starting service to the US, and it also prohibits UA from codesharing with a Thai airline. However, it would not prohibit UA from starting service there, and the US/Thailand open-skies treaty is still in force. I'm not sure how thrilled the Thai government would be about this service, though...
...
FWIW, Thailand's FAA Category 2 rating (aka: not in compliance with ICAO standards; aka: bad) is still in place. That would prohibit Thai from starting service to the US, and it also prohibits UA from codesharing with a Thai airline. However, it would not prohibit UA from starting service there, and the US/Thailand open-skies treaty is still in force. I'm not sure how thrilled the Thai government would be about this service, though...
...
...
While the Royal Thai Government would prefer TG service to the U.S., it would be elated to have a direct pipeline of passengers from the U.S.
Middle class and wealthy Thais will also be happy in the event UA resumes service to BKK.
Nice thing about this tease is we'll have the answer in just a few hours.
While the Royal Thai Government would prefer TG service to the U.S., it would be elated to have a direct pipeline of passengers from the U.S.
Middle class and wealthy Thais will also be happy in the event UA resumes service to BKK.
Nice thing about this tease is we'll have the answer in just a few hours.
Fingers crossed.
Sep 9, 2020, 7:55 am
#75
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Those rascals.
Setting aside the destination question, what's the group's take on where the new service is going to be launched from?
For example, in recent months IAH / DEN / ORD seem to be carrying a larger part of the domestic network load vs the same time in 2019 where EWR / SFO (and IAD was ramping up) had a massive domestic connection operation to support their international service. That's not to say SFO / EWR did not have domestic O/D + connecting traffic but rather the Pacific bank for SFO and Atlantic bank for EWR served to amplify the domestic demand (i.e. support domestic connections to/from the international service) which in turn allowed the international focused hubs to punch above their weight in terms of their domestic offerings.
Hence my original question: assuming UA's bringing back long-haul (or even mid-haul) operations to [whatever] destinations, where do you see the new routes as being launched from? The coastal hubs to capture O/D or the heartland ones to leverage the domestic connections?
Setting aside the destination question, what's the group's take on where the new service is going to be launched from?
For example, in recent months IAH / DEN / ORD seem to be carrying a larger part of the domestic network load vs the same time in 2019 where EWR / SFO (and IAD was ramping up) had a massive domestic connection operation to support their international service. That's not to say SFO / EWR did not have domestic O/D + connecting traffic but rather the Pacific bank for SFO and Atlantic bank for EWR served to amplify the domestic demand (i.e. support domestic connections to/from the international service) which in turn allowed the international focused hubs to punch above their weight in terms of their domestic offerings.
Hence my original question: assuming UA's bringing back long-haul (or even mid-haul) operations to [whatever] destinations, where do you see the new routes as being launched from? The coastal hubs to capture O/D or the heartland ones to leverage the domestic connections?
A nonstop EWR-OGG on a high-J 767 (or, now that I think of it, probably a 788/789) on Saturdays, and daily during seasonal peaks, would probably be a winner, shuttling upper/middle class NY/NJ/PA'ers to their Maui timeshares, avoiding HNL or West Coast connections. This is especially true given the glut of WB capacity UA will likely have this winter, since LHR slot use requirements won't be enforced and most other EU flights probably won't even operate. Plenty of frames will go to ROW in the next few months, but with cheap fuel and no business case to serve many conventional markets, UA has a unique opportunity to try some experimental routes in a "what do you have to lose" scenario.
Somewhat unrelated, but friends in New York high finance report a bit of a sea change of late, with several well-known firms accelerating their return-to-the-office protocols to October and November of this year (from previous plans of early- to mid-2021). This is good news for the airline industry, if for no other reason than business travel was always going to follow the widespread reopening of offices. Whether employees are happy about it is another story entirely, but in a monkey-see, monkey-do world, all it takes is one player to start sending people back on the road for the competition to follow suit, and this brings us one step closer to it.
Eventually, the quarantine "recommendations" and orders will be lifted (there's a good-faith argument, supportable by facts, that they've been totally ineffective, anyway) and people will come back.