United Airlines is launching daily service from San Francisco to Manila, and bringing back Los Angeles – Tokyo Narita and Hong Kong. They’re adding Taipei flying and are trying to expand back into mainland China.
- United serves Manila via its Guam hub and via Palau, a throwback to the Continental Micronesia days. Effective October 29, they’ll offer Boeing 777-300ER service San Francisco – Manila. Only Philippine Airlines currently serves Manila non-stop from the mainland U.S.
- Los Angeles is a smaller hub for United than San Francisco, but Narita flying will return in addition to their Haneda service. United once operated a full-fledged hub at Narita, a throwback to their acquisition of Pan Am’s Pacific routes.
Their Boeing 787-10 service starts October 28, and will mean 4 daily Tokyo flights on United and joint venture partner ANA. American and joint venture partner JAL have 4 flights as well. Delta and Singapore Airlines also operate the route.
- Los Angeles – Hong Kong returns October 28 as well, with a Boeing 787-9. They fly twice-daily from San Francisco, but haven’t restored Newark service without the ability to overfly Russia presently. That’s a big bet on a market that’s broadly less important than it was pre-pandemic, and most importantly prior to China’s crackdown and the territory’s focus inward towards the ‘Greater Bay Area’.
- United will increase San Francisco – Taipei to twice daily. While the U.S. and Taiwan have important commercial and security ties, the market is crowded and getting more so given a third Taipei-based airline now flying to the U.S. in Starlux in addition to EVA Air and China Airlines.
At the start of the pandemic, American Airlines filed for codeshares with Philippine Airlines amidst fairly outlandish rumors they’d fly to Manila. (With the dismantling of Los Angeles as their transpacific gateway that seems even less likely now. They’d almost certainly only consider any such route from Seattle.)
United Airlines at the time was locked in a pitched regulatory battle with Philippine Airlines – United wanted better landing slots at Manila to offer viable service, and had been frustrated. In response they pushed back against Philippine expansion into the U.S. This included PAL Express codeshares on Philippine Airlines Manila – Guam flights and on Philippine’s Manila – Seattle service. Put another way, United sought to have the U.S. government punish consumers and competitors because it’s been unable to get what it wants from the Philippine government. (United should have more desirable access to the Manila airport, but linking air service to underserved places like Guam is bad for the country.)
Meanwhile United wants to double down not just on Pacific expansion and on Hong Kong, but returning to the mainland China market as well – which remains limited by bilateral caps on the number of permitted flights, a far cry from when United was trying to fly to every secondary city nobody had ever heard of on the mainland. (One United captain believed he was bringing Covid-19 cases back from China in December 2019.)
It’s too bad that United didn’t launch San Francisco-Guam-Manilla.
I’ll hand it to United. They own the Pacific.
Where’s Delta? You sure don’t hear anything about Delta and China Eastern anymore.
Good for United. I fly to Southeast Asia several times a year from LAX and it has been many years since I flew an American airline. I am pleased with the service and cost of Asian airlines and would only consider a change if the numbers and service of United become competitive.
HKG is how you serve Guangdong and southern China (and maybe even further north) these days, especially when CX doesn’t have more pilots to increase US flights.
Before resuming HKG (and even now), UA has been selling its own metal to ICN/TYO/KIX and send you onward to NH/OZ/CX/HX. Now they fly China passengers through Japan/Korea too. I bet that’s how they can justify twice daily LAX-TYO despite the lack of Japanese tourists.
It used to be UA and NWA owning the pacific, but DL has destroyed the NWA network and AA hits key markets but relies on oneworld partners of JAL/Cathay/Qantas/ and their ownership in China Southern (hopefully joining oneworld soon). Korean Air is not an option for most and China Eastern hasn’t been a player of late. UA is the us flag carrier around the world but domestically week. . almost Pan Am all over again.
Let’s not forget that United lost money flying the Pacific for 3 years pre-covid when Delta made money, even before retiring the gas guzzling and maintenance heavy 777s. The objective of for profit airlines is not the number of routes they fly but whether they make money or not.
Part of the reason why the Pacific is so hard for US airlines is because Asian airlines have so much lower labor costs and usually better service.
Both CX and PR have A350-1000s in service or on order and they are far more efficient than anything in UA’s fleet.
UA better have some high quality corporate contracts in hand in order for these routes to work.
Starting transpacific routes in the fall is not a great harbinger for early success.
And all 3 of the US airlines fly exactly the same number of flights to China – 4 each per week.
Hopefully this will ease the terrible transpacific award availability right now, especially in F/J. Manila would be interesting except that I’ve heard horror stories about transiting through that airport.
The last time I flew UA was probably 35 yrs ago (ish) on a 727 (I miss them) from SFO to PHX. Whoever was flying dragged the approach in along the Salt River bottom.
That said, UA is starting to look like the better option for me than AA since they are flying more places that I want to go. AA or UA are probably my only domestic options since friends don’t let friends fly DL. 🙂 Still wondering which is the best Star Alliance mileage program to join.
@ Woofie
IMO Turkish
@Tim Dunn:
Let’s just admit that Delta’s pull-out from Asia (starting with Taiwan and then everywhere else) for a reliance on China Eastern and Korean Air looked great on paper 8-10 years ago but hasn’t materialized not least because of geopolitical issues with China.
FNT,
instead, let’s admit that Delta stopped losing money flying the Pacific – which it was doing shortly after the NW merger – and spent 10 years working to redefine its Pacific strategy but made money over the Pacific when neither American or United could or did.
UA might or might not make these two latest routes work but DL is growing in the S. Pacific and will certainly grow to Asia. Route announcements for 2024 will start coming out.
It is highly unusual for US carriers to add Asia flights to start in the fall, let alone w/ just 3 months notice. It will take time for data to filter out but quick adds in the “wrong season” isn’t how the industry, even United, has demonstrated to make money.
Tim No
Most Asians do travel to Asia over from Nov to Mar.
This is a great time to ready those flights.
Funny you always talk about DL making money on pacific and UA losing money. Anecdotal much!!
But here we are, UA keep adding to intl network and DL, which is supposed to be minting money is nowhere to be found.
All right, we will check in 2024
“most Asians” don’t pay high enough fares to support a US carrier transpacific flight.
A strong corporate contract might – but there are deeply entrenched carriers on both routes.
And the profitability data comes right from the airlines and is distributed by the DOT. Do you also think that UA makes money flying to Europe or should be consider that data suspect?
UA reports its earnings tomorrow afternoon and AA on Thursday morning. Shall we compare the 3 at least at the system level as well as RASM and entity size level info by Thursday afternoon, even if we won’t get profitability by global region for months?
Add:
LAX-BNE from 1 December…
Tim, the only place I’ve seen idea that UA lost money in the Pacific is from you. I’ve googled and not seen it anywhere else.
UA has proven themselves as willing to cancel unprofitable routes, so the continuation of most flights vouches for their success.
Also, I think Asia as a whole is much more profitable with limits in China flying, meaning the local carriers there are unable to capacity dump and depress yields. The limited options to connect in China make the nonstop flights from the US, along with the JV options through Japan, much more profitable.
Mark,
it is precisely because I know where to find data that I had perspective that others don’t.
Google
Net Income U.S. Carriers All regions Bureau of Transportation statistics
and you will get a page with drop downs that you can select each US carrier and look at their financial data by global region.
and, yes, the Pacific is much higher yielding because of the amount of capacity that has been pulled out helps everyone else.
and that is why UA might do ok… but the point is still that, if the market is really that great and there are really opportunities to make money, other carriers will add flights there.
American and Delta both have new airplanes coming.
The question is whether the profit is more than what can be made across the Atlantic which is red hot right now.
The notion that other carriers can’t or won’t add is not correct.
The second daily flight to Taipei does seem a little puzzling, particularly since there are some seriously high quality competitors there.
@sunviking82 – Pan Am had a lot more going on in the Pacific than United does but still a good analogy.
This is incredible news, and something that I have been saying would make complete sense, given UAs spare widebody availability.
As an SFO area based traveler, I’m just a little disappointed with the schedule. I’m not going to take a flight that arrives at my Asia destination some 8 hours before I can even check in to the hotel.
It would have been better to have a late morning departure from SFO, with a turnaround from MNL in the late afternoon. Even better, combining that with a triangle routing via CEB.
That all said, United’s move is miles better than anything that American or Delta is offering to East Asia (basically nothing). Asia is the fastest-growing aviation market in the world, y’all.
“It’s too bad that United didn’t launch San Francisco-Guam-Manilla.”
It would mess with HNL-GUM. United probably has a lot of military on that route but not enough to make it self-sustaining if you open direct service from SFO. SFO-GUM cannibalizes HNL-GUM. In UA’s mind it’s probably better to have one semi-profitable route from the US to GUM than two unprofitable ones. And I say this as one who has done SFO-HNL-GUM many times and wished there was direct SFO-GUM service instead.
hopefully the inflight service will improve and catch up to the Asian carriers.