I assume United is now using that new software to guide flight paths through cheaper airspace.

I'm fresh off UA 898 PEK-IAD, and the route was curious. The plane made a hard left turn quickly after takeoff to get the heck out of Chinese airspace for the nearest country. In this case, it was the home of yak's milk. We jetted straight for Mongolia (which is mostly the wrong direction on the way to IAD), and as soon as we crossed that little line on the screen, we did another quick turn to head north for the pole.

Inside Mongolia, we headed for the top right corner of the country to stay in their airspace as long as possible before crossing into Russian airspace for the trip over the top to Canada.

I didn't notice any aberrations on the Canada-USA routing... straight down across Toronto.

Thought this was all very interesting, and I could only attribute it to the ATC cost savings scheme. Anyone else have an alternative explanation?

(FWIW, F service was good, very friendly FAs, quiet cabin, got lots of work done, enjoyed an uncharacteristically good filet mignon and glass of Shiraz.)

They are definitely using the new system on their long-haul routes, but it's not exactly as precise as you think from what you saw. They have to fly on fixed airways whenever they're not over the US, Canada, or an ocean, and are even more restricted over China and Russia -- they're only allowed on a few routes over there. It turns out, there aren't many options western airlines can use north of Beijing that are close to the great circle PEK-IAD, and in fact if the winds indicate flying west of the great circle, the airway you flew on (G218) over Mongolia is just about the only option.

The thing about their new software is it compares multiple possible routes with that day's winds, payload, etc., with the overflight charges, so they get a different route from day to day. Just avoiding the overflight charges would be a piece of cake. What's important is knowing when to fly further to avoid expensive airspace and when to just go right through it, comparing all the costs and keeping in mind things like whether they're payload-limited and whether they have schedule issues, aircraft maintenance time limits, etc.

I wouldn't want to be the guy debugging that software.