ezefllying

For years, United has operated its DCA-EWR flights into Newark's A gates. As anyone who's flown into the A gates is aware, this is not good. Especially when, like most DCA-EWR passengers, you are connecting to a mainline flight out of the C gates.

Two years ago, just before the pandemic, United announced nearly hourly DCA-EWR service, marketing an almost shuttle-like experience. Of course, the pandemic undermined those plans, but the airline has now ramped up its frequencies on the route, especially in the evening.

For a while last year, United moved those flights to the EWR C gates, which made connections vastly faster and less painful. Now, though, it looks like the planes are regularly or entirely back at the A gates.

This is unfortunate. United's goal in building up to near-hourly service was to win over DC business travelers who would otherwise fly the vastly better nonstop and connecting options out of DCA on DL or AA. For me, one thing that brought me over to DL, at least for a while, was the dearth of quantity and quality of UA connections in EWR. Waiting for the Golden Chariot bus at the A gates to fill up so you could slow-roll to C, often while trying to make a connection far tighter than scheduled, was an experience that led me to send my own parents to Europe on DL in J.

I was hoping United had resolved to fix this. But now DCA is back with PQI and GSO at the A gates. (I was going to include CHS, but they appear to have frequent service from C).

This strikes me as a very strange decision for a route that is overwhelmingly connecting traffic and, even now, has a lot of premium travelers heading transcontinentally and long-haul.

Admittedly, I'm smarting a bit because I missed a connection this week by a few minutes that I would have made if my DCA-EWR inbound had gone to Terminal C. But I also felt bad for the apparently large contingents on my flight connecting to Lisbon, Delhi, and Madrid, who had tight connections and we're scrambling off the plane, down the cinder block stairwell, and to the bus to get to C.

I hope UA considers bringing these flights (back) into Terminal C. It will have a big effect on my travel, and I think it will influence the success of the expansion of the route.

Pingtung

The hourly service is intended to support O&D traffic from DC to NY and compete with AA shuttle. I can't imagine them marketing this for connecting business traffic out of DC, folks would choose Dulles if they wanted UA for that.

EWR764

UA made Terminal A GoJet-exclusive. If your DCA-EWR flight is on a CRJ-550, then it will use Terminal A, since GoJet is the CR5 operator. E75 and E70 flights (or in the odd chance, mainline) still can use Terminal C.

DELee

I'd say "brill-yunt" but it misses the OP's point - if UA wants to build up their passenger base for the DCA-EWR shuttles, it needs to do something about getting those planes in and out of Terminal C. Period.

David

trk1

This will change in the spring with the new terminal opening

DELee

If UA wants to compete, DCA-EWR flights need to begin/end somewhere in Terminal C.

David

ezefllying

I understand that may have been the intent, but, speaking anecdotally, the evening flights are heavy with international traffic to cities United doesn't serve from IAD. Half of J on our 6 PM CRJ-550 was heading to Portugal, Spain, India or Israel. Others were connecting short-haul. (I got a good sense of the connections hearing the FA reassure everyone they could make theirs, with the exception of me and someone else, despite an ATC delay.)

EWR is not the Marine Air Terminal, and I don't believe United can sustain anything like a bona fide shuttle service there with O/D traffic alone. That's especially so now, when (a) Penn Station (or the Moynihan annex) is vastly more tolerable for waiting around and, more to the point, (b) NYC-WAS day trips are probably down more than most business travel in the country, and may stay that way.

United needs to make these flights work for connections. Which, I suspect, is why they put them into C for a while.

JimInOhio

While I can understand the desire for connectivity with DCA-EWR flights, the percentage of passengers connecting has to be comparatively low. What route would be lower? UA needs Terminal A for some flights now that business is rebounding and it makes sense that these would be the ones chosen.

DELee

Disagree that this is currently business traffic. There's so many non-business/leisure travelers right now on UA it amazes me - mid-week simply going to and fro. And right now many of them are taking advantage of the change in access from Europe to the US and vice versa.

UA is forcing this traffic paradigm by having no/little redundancy for TATL flights across its hubs and forcing much of this traffic to go through EWR but not facilitating the connections by sending DC/NVa traffic through Terminal A and then forcing them to run/bus/misconnect in trying to get over to Terminal C.

David

halls120

I avoid EWR precisely for this reason. UA offers many TATL destinations out of EWR that aren’t offered out of IAD. Every single one of the BA and KL flights I’ve taken out of IAD has been prompted by the lack of UA flights out of IAD to a given destination, and my refusal to connect to a UA flight out of EWR.

I have 400K BIS miles on other carriers that would have been on UA because of this.

tarheelnj

Years ago, Terminal A primarily had the mainline flights to other carriers' hubs (ATL, DFW, etc.) where you wouldn't expect as much connecting traffic.

Anyone tried walking between A & C? I wonder if it might be faster, particularly if you have CLEAR, to exit A and walk to C, rather than wait for the bus or AirTrain. Might not work so well the other direction giving the uncertainty of PreCheck at Terminal A.

RobOnLI

I guess I'm a unicorn. I'm actually flying DCA-EWR-xxx today and thankfully came across this thread. I never even bothered to look at the arrival gate for my EWR flight. But man am I glad I decided to take the 30 minute earlier 'shuttle' flight to EWR. I would normally book the 35 minute connection but EWR just winds up with too many delays so I booked the 1hr05min connection instead. I could have easily misconnected on a 35 minute connection from A->C since they wait for the bus to fill up.

-RM

dinoscool3

Which one are you on today? I’m also flying DCA-EWR-PIT today, all CRJ 550s so I’m arriving and departing from A. Looking at the flight history it seems DCA-EWR has been pretty consistently on time, and I did spot a few flights last week that appeared to land at C.

JimInOhio

That’s fine to disagree over whether DCA-EWR has a high percentage of O/D traffic (which, IMHO, is the real parameter, not “business” traffic). But the question remains, what regional jet route into EWR has a higher percentage of strictly O/D traffic? I’m struggling to think of one and, by all accounts, UA can’t fit all current operations into Terminal C.

ezefllying

Is there public data to support that DCA-EWR is mostly O/D? Regardless of United's intent, I've always seen it as a feeder for longer connections (and for some of the short-haul flights that UA previously had only out of EWR, like ACK or BGR).

And I'm not sure why regional aircraft to CHS or BNA ought to consistently fly from C (other than that United has concentrated GoJet at A) while DCA consistently flies into A. I love Charleston and Nashville, but I strongly suspect that DCA traffic is more heavily business, J, and international traffic. Shouldn't that take precedent over a more leisure, domestic-travel market?