United Airlines announced a second San Francisco – Manila flight, new service from San Francisco to Adelaide, Australia and flights to Bangkok, Thailand and to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
- Seasonal Adelaide Service. No airline has ever flown non-stop from the U.S. to Adelaide, about 725 miles west of Sydney. New seasonal three times weekly service starting December 11 with a Boeing 787-9 is another roll of the dice. United partners for domestic connecting traffic with Virgin Australia, which helps a bit, but they already get that with existing Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne service. This is a bet on passenger traveling to and from South Australian capital city of 1.4 million. United is the largest carrier between the U.S. and Australia, surprising many that it isn’t Qantas.
- Flights to Bangkok. I wrote back in September that United was looking to add Bangkok service they just didn’t announce it in the fall. Starting October 26 it’s here with a Boeing 787-9. And it’s the way they used to serve it – intra-Asia. The flight will be from Hong Kong, non non-stop from the United States.
Chao Phraya River
Street Food in Bangkok’s Chinatown - Flights to Ho Chi Minh City. I flew United from Hong Kong to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam in 2009 on a Boeing 747. Hong Kong fifth freedom flying is back with United returning to Vietnam October 26th with a Boeing 787-9. I also suggested Ho Chi Minh City as a probably United expansion route in September. United flew Hong Kong to Ho Chi Minh City from 2004 through 2016. (The route was downgraded to a Boeing 737 in 2011.)
Presidential Palace
Pho Hoa - Second Manila Flight. When United announced Manila service two years ago it seemed like a bit of a long shot. Only Philippine Airlines flew non-stop from the U.S. to Manila, and the impression was always that this was a low yielding route – largely ‘visiting friends and relatives’ business. It’s clearly wound up successful – they’re even dedicating a large Boeing 777-300ER to the flight.
Manila Airport
United is clearly the global carrier among U.S. airlines, and among airlines with the widest reaches in the world, willing to take big swings even to destinations where they lack partners or connecting traffic and that haven’t demonstrated passenger demand yet. Most seem to work in the sense that they’re able to support continued operations and have been growing profitability.
I find the service from Hong Kong especially interesting, because they have been growing their flying from Tokyo Narita to Asian destinations, taking advantage of route authorities they acquired decades ago from Pan Am.
However Hong Kong to Bangkok and to Ho Chi Minh City are only around 1,000 miles each and using existing aircraft flying to Hong Kong can make for efficient scheduling if they can fill the aircraft, versus dedicating planes to 2,700 and 2,900 mile flights from Tokyo. That helps de-risk these route additions.
And with Adelaide being only three-times weekly and seasonal, their downside is limited and the flight doesn’t need to return the following season if it doesn’t work. It will be interesting to learn if that one is subsidized, the way new service to Brisbane has been.
ADL is a bit of a surprise, though it is a gateway to Australia’s wine region and a very pleasant city. Will UA be receiving incentives from the state of South Australia to fund this route, like Queensland does with BNE for US carriers?
HKG-SGN has been flown before, pre-merger and makes sense given Vietnam’s increasingly key role in global trade and manufacturing. Would not surprise if eventually, SGN goes nonstop.
HKG-BKK likely to feed leisure travel, and to capitalize further on the White Lotus effect. BKK is a long sector from the US, and the yields are usually poor, so not at all surprising UA is not launching this as a nonstop from SFO.
ADL is odd. Perhaps, Rupert Murdoch lobbied for this (he is from there). You know, he didn’t want to deal with some of his minions stinking up the private jets, so send them commercial instead!
As for the HKG regional additions–probably a good idea with all the hype The White Lotus season 3 is providing for tourism to SE Asia (filmed in Thailand). Reminds me of what they’re doing in Tokyo, at least with regional flights to unique locations like Ulaanbaatar, also recently announced. Even if it’s on a United-metal 737, it’s still kind cool. At least they’re trying.
@ Gary — United continues to leave Delta in the dust. So awesome!
@Gene — Woah there, partner! Hold your horses! Thems fightin’ words to @Tim Dunn and I.
I’ll give you this: United is the only US carrier to fly nonstop from the US to Manila and soon-to-be Nuuk, Greenland, but most folks are not going there, or they’ll prefer a ‘nicer’ alternative (like ANA or JAL with a stop in Tokyo is arguably superior to a domestic flight to SFO, then MNL). And sure, Delta pulled out of its nonstops to New Delhi and Mumbai, but well, by comparison, American no longer flies directly to anywhere in Africa, so you win some, you lose some (on routes).
While United is indeed attempting more exotic overseas routes (as here), I’d say Delta is still better than United (and American), generally. In the premium space, DeltaOne suites, lounges, and food, are simply better than Polaris. The food is tastier; the crews are friendlier. The only draw-back is that Delta’s flight attendants should care more about themselves (and properly unionize!).
Anyway, this is the playful banter on the industry that I do very much enjoy. What else do you got?!
“I find the service from Hong Kong especially interesting, because they have been growing their flying from Tokyo Narita to Asian destinations, taking advantage of route authorities they acquired decades ago from Pan Am.”
@Gary – One of the reasons for HKG is that the Vietnam – US Aviation agreement does not allow a fifth-freedom flight via Japan.
United is behaving like one of those government-funded Middle East airlines flying to every faraway dot on the map. The difference is United is a for-profit company. Obviously, few Americans need this flight. (I show up in Adelaide once every decade or so and don’t mind the connecting flight.) I’m particularly skeptical that the fine folks of Adelaide are interested in SFO (as opposed to SoCal) but it’s United’s money.
@Gene
Dig to Delta goes nowhere with me as I’m flying Delta to SYD (Delta One) 4/5 for 2nd time. The service, food & FA’s couldn’t be better.
@Gene
Dig to Delta goes nowhere with me as I’m flying Delta to SYD (Delta One) 4/5 for 2nd time. The service, food & FA’s couldn’t be better.
@Gene – what about AA? They aren’t even lined up at the starting line.
Could UA be bringing back the HKG hub that they dismantled a few years back? They had a solid operation fed by their non-stops from both SFO and LAX.
1990
let’s also remember that UA is a for-profit business just like DL.
UA loves to talk about closing its revenue and earnings gap to DL – and then do stuff like this, alot of which seems like nothing more than finding places to fly planes in the winter and adding a bunch of capacity over the Pacific including with costly tags which compete with much lower cost Asian airlines.
problem is that UA is far more interested in sexy route announcements than closing the profit gap w/ DL which is notable given that UA has a $1 billion labor cost advantage since nearly all of UA’s non-pilot unionized workers will have amendable labor costs by this summer.
unlike Gene, some us can see the big picture.
If UA manages to fly more ASMs than any other US airline AND lead in customer service and financial metrics, then hats off legitimately should go to them.
But all they are leading in is flying more ASMs while trailing DL in customer service and financial metrics.
@Tim Dunn — Pete Townshend said it best: ‘Won’t get fooled again.’
These are indeed businesses, not charities. Yet, there used to be this concept of ‘corporate social responsibility’ (you know, both stakeholders and shareholders matter), which I suppose has been basically been ‘tarred and feathered’ lately. In its place, we’re going back to the ‘greed is good’ model, which often harms the stakeholders in favor of a few shareholders. Me no like-y.
Delta remains my personal preference among the US-carriers (and SkyTeam for that matter, in terms of airline alliances), and I do enjoy my Diamond/SkyTeam Elite Plus benefits with them, thoroughly; yet, I still get a little excited when United (or anyone) tries something new, or brings back something interesting (call it ‘sexy’ if you will, and maybe it is!)
You do have more technical expertise on this than I do, for sure. Yet, available seat miles are not the only metric for evaluating an airline’s success. Eh, maybe for investors, yes. But for consumers, workers, etc., there’s a lot more at play here.
I think @Gene means well. He’s definitely in-favor of ‘not doing business’ whenever a credit card issuer, airline, or hotel does something that upsets him. I respect that to a degree. I also recognize that these entities do change over time, so it may be best to keep options open as a consumer.
@ Tim — I heard that DL will be re-deploying its 767-300 fleet for hourly service to SAL. It will be very profitable.
Tim, UA’s airline revenue is higher than DL’s.
Also, the slide below shows UA makes more money operating the airline. DL’s extra profit comes from its extra credit card revenue, due to it renegotiating its agreement with AMEX later in the cycle, after UA renegotiated with Chase. UA will erase that gap when it renegotiates.
https://weekly.visualapproach.io/p/airlines-as-loss-leaders
So great to see United – the de facto flag carrier of the U.S. – being bold and forward-thinking.
I remember the old United tag flights between HGK and Bangkok. I think they used to overnight in BKK and somehow that was a lot cheaper than staying on the ground in HKG. The flight departed Bangkok early in the morning as I recall.