Yeah, I got your meaning! I don't have anywhere near the same confidence that you have but in my heart I hope you are right!

And now back to regularly scheduled programming, for UA HKG will be 1-2 X daily when things settle down, SFO and then maybe EWR or ORD. The world has changed and moved on.

Anyone noticed how much India flying UA has been picking up? During the peak of pandemic 5X daily to India? And that's passenger flights, not cargo. I think India may end up with a lot of UA's former China/HKG capacity.

It has to be EWR before ORD, right?

But for the Russian airspace issue UA would have SFO-DEL and perhaps BLR up and running too. Still want HKG back ASAP though too!

HK will support 1 UA flight a day at most going forward. Guam isn't getting a N/S from the continental USA. UA will continue to serve China thru PVG only for the foreseeable future.

With all that doom and gloom I posited above, I do think there are some rays of hope and UA will offer a N/S flight from SFO to SGN or BKK sometime in the next year or two.

AC will operate a seasonal YVR-BKK route.

I think the Russian airspace issue will make the return of EWR challenging

CX has made JFK-HKG work with a mix of 77Ws, A359s, and A351s. UA should be able to make EWR-HKG work with 77Ws or 789s, if they want to fly it.

Assuming they get 7 new slots at a time, my money is on (in order of priority)
-make 857/858 daily (only 3 days short now)
-EWR-PVG
-SFO-PEK
-ORD-PEK
-ORD-PVG
-EWR-PEK
-maybe CTU, HGK, or XIY (apparently these cities don't fall under the bilateral)
(I'm not sure they have enough airplanes to do all of that, but even half would be a vast improvement.)

HKG is a completely separate issue. TMK, they could restart SFO-HKG any time. I just can't imagine many people would fly it if there was a crew change. Remember, unlike SFO-PVG, there are nonstop options.

I don't know about 2XORD-HKG were running over several years. IIRC, the second flight was added as a response to CX starting the HKG-ORD flight hoping to drive CX our of the HKG-ORD market.

Perhaps our resident expert ORDnHKGhas more accurate information than I have,

the A359, A351 has longer range than 77W or 789s. 77W would have to have very favorable flight conditions to make a over 17 hour flight that CX is operating and you still have the crew quarantine issue

Recent post have made comments on China's leadership and COVID policy. While they obviously impact the ability of carriers to fly to China, let's not tread in OMNI/ PR land with non-UA related speculation or comments that are better elsewhere. Inappropriate discussion for this forum has been removed.

WIneCountryUA
UA coModerator

An EWR-HKG route that avoids Russian airspace is about 8700 mi (vs. 8065 nonstop). That's about the same length as LAX-SIN, so the 789 has the legs for it, but it may require blocking some seats or a fuel stop in Anchorage when the winds are strong.

I wonder if CX is simply transiting Russian airspace.

Pretty sure US based airlines are avoiding use of Russian airspace (v say AI which does run SFO-DEL).

That would suggest SFO-HKG as the first and perhaps only option for some time, if and when UA resumes to HKG.

With so many China routes limited or simply canceled, where are those aircraft flying? Should UA press harder on alternative endpoint additions to the network? I’d welcome it.

Recent UA1 SFO-SIN are well under 16:30, most under 16:00

Recent CX841 EWR-HKG are 17 hours plus, some over 17:30 -- at least an extra hour of flight time on most days. Even in June there were 17 hour trips

Outside the range of reliability year round UA aircraft operation


does not appear so, but close

Yes they are. Both my NRT flights in the last month remained at least 200 miles off the Russian coast even though both flights had the flight path on the map screen well within Russian borders as the flight started.