noah

Those of us who live in the PNW lamented the demise of multiple destinations from PDX on UX when the E120 began to be phased out last year. Well, looks like further changes at PDX are in store.

As I'm looking for some flights over the next two months, I've observed:

- PDX-EWR looks to be a red-eye only on many days over the spring and early summer (and some days is not served at all)
- PDX-SFO -- my commute -- the first flight is at 7am many days in the next few weeks. While I am no fan of flights in the 5am hour, it lets me sleep an extra night at home and still make it to the office for a full business day. Leaving at 7am, not so much.

One change I do like is that the E-175 is showing up on a number of flights. I greatly prefer this to the CRJ-200s and CRJ-700s of late. But I am not a fan of these in place of greater frequency.

Hoping this is just a seasonal, temporary change at PDX and not a sign that DL's investment at PDX has driven UA further away.

B787938

UA's operation in PDX has become frustrating for travelers because prior to the merger, the schedules were fairly set with some seasonal adjustments. Now you never know what it's going to look like.

Basically, the pre-merger schedule looked like this:

pmUA: x7-8 SFO, x3-4 DEN, x4-5 ORD, x1 IAD and all of the OO flying around the NW on the EMB-120s to SEA, EUG, RDM, OTH and LMT.

pmCO: x2-4 IAH and x1-2 EWR

Now, it's all over the map. We're down to 1.7 / week frequency on ORD. The red-eye only EWR flight is a new wrinkle. Not convenient at all to connect to the overnight TATL flights. I do see more DEN capacity and it seems like they are trying to flow connecting traffic there.

I think UA is just waving the white flag in the NW. The DL intrusion definitely disrupts things; but the brand loyalty that the old UA had here has been frittered away. One may even be able to argue that UA's willingness to let the SEA and PDX markets go to heck has allowed DL to make more inroads.

Since the new UA is really going after the leisure traveler who will pay for bags and TOD upgrades, I guess crazy undependable schedules is what that market segment is willing to put up with.

jewels421

I also noticed that the 1:30/2 pm PDX-ORD flight has disappeared in the past month or so. I figured seasonal change, but, who knows.

Being in EUG, the elimination of EUG-PDX was really not good for me. I can still connect through SFO or drive to PDX, but was really nice to have the connection available (especially on my returns, since I usually get in late at night).

I have noticed that they are adding E-175s on EUG-SFO as well. I was excited about this, but... I had a flight on one of them cancelled a couple of weeks ago due to foggy conditions (inbound aircraft could not land). The GA and I were chatting about it and she said that the plane was rated to land but the crew had not yet had enough experience on it flying in to this airport (something about how they needed 6 months experience into the airport on this plane before they could land in foggy conditions). Not sure how accurate that was, but it definitely put a damper on my excitement. If true, it's a weird time for them to make that change since, you know, fog is pretty common in Eugene in the winter.

ryman554

Yeah, sad isn't it?

They recently got rid of the "reverse commute" flights -> 6am SFO-PDX and >7pm PDX-SFO in what appears to me to be designed for PDX to be "connecting traffic" aligned to the various hubs.

Sad, really, as I recall full 757s out of there multiple times daily.

no longer, as they shunt me to AS instead for my domestic travel.

belynch

The PDX schedule changes and reduced frequencies have been driving me nuts too. I live in Upstate NY and work in PDX and go there every second or third week.

The reduced frequency to and from ORD, IAD, and EWR means either horrifically long layovers (I spent 8 hours in ORD the other week when my EWR feeder canceled), double connects (which I'll never voluntarily do) or inconvenient times.

This is the downside to the trimming down of Express operations. Everyone loves to complain about Express (and I'm one of them) but bigger planes mean less frequencies. When you're just trying to get to/from places the schedule really trumps everything and I'm finding, with increased frequency, UA just can't offer the schedule I need.

PV_Premier

with AS and VX as possible options for your commute, why on earth would you choose UA?

you can bet that if UA gets the opportunity to run from DL competition, they'll do it. they love modeling their policies, but hate competing against them head to head.

noah

Because I also go places like IAD, CDG, BOM, PVG etc that just aren't so feasible on AS or VX. VX also until recently didn't have a very commuter friendly schedule from PDX to SFO but that has changed.

I'm 110K shy of MM on UA so once I hit that, I'm planning to jump ship. Just hope that United's continued cuts at PDX aren't so drastic that it makes those final 110K BIS miles even more painful.

Hartmann

Most of the problem revolves around a lack of a set in stone schedule. It fluctuates way too much. This winter the morning PDX-EWR flight went from 05:50am (painful departure time but great for getting in a little work in NY) to 06:15am to 07:50am

There were also days where PDX-SFO went to 3x per day... crazy.

With this year's schedule out of PDX, it's nearly impossible to connect to the European bank out of EWR without double connecting.

In other news, PDX is also in the process of planning to switch where the UA and AS gates are. They want to even the airport back out as far as traffic in each wing and ever since UA's reduction in service, the E gate area has been rather quiet. I don't know the full details but it's definitely in the works.

PTahCha

Interesting.. does this mean the clubs are going to swap as well? Will AS move the pancake machine or leave it as parting gift?

noah

I guess I can see this from the airport vendor perspective, but no way can AS fit all their operations in the E gates.

Hartmann

There will be some consolidation at the D gates as well, the south side of D is very lightly used during the day.

With Southwest and Alaska having such large operations at B and C, gate space over there is really tight.

I'm interested to see how they handle the Q400s at that crappy E6/E7 gate.

noah

Found some greater detail on this: http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/...s-98m-pdx.html

B787938

No, the pancake machine will follow the Board Room, which most likely will end up in what is now the UC in the E concourse. Jeff would surely not like the idea of providing pancakes in the AM and soup in the early PM hours.

ryman554

No kidding. WHen the 6am SFO-PDX disappeared, I went to the UA timetable. At first, I saw 2+ pages of PDX-SFO flights over the two week period. Wow, I thought, I must just be unlucky, but upon further investigation, the thing is absolutely filled with "daily" flights that move around +/-10 minutes depending on the day. Or the same departure time with different flight numbers depending on the day. For a total of something like 4-5 "unique" flights per day.

What are these guys doing? What should be a simple 5 line timetable that everybody could understand and plan for becomes an absolute mess. I can't imagine the complexity built into the overall UA schedule if they are micromanaging departures to the 5 minute level for every airport in the system. And to what end?

It would be one thing if this were Swiss or Japanese trains and I could trust that the plane would depart then +/- 30 seconds. But this is UA where the departure (particularly in the evening) is more like a suggestion.

noah

Or, even more likely use the move and the further reduction in flights to justify having no United Club whatsoever at PDX. That seems like a move in line with current UA "strategy".