I received a rather cryptic post from United Airlines shared via Instagram Stories and wonder what it could mean?
United Airlines Teases Announcement On Instagram Stories
This popped up in my stories feed last week. It was so strange I took a screenshot of it:
I’m genuinely at a loss. First, it’s nice to know I’m a “close friend” of United’s (indicated by the white star over a green box). But what could this possibly mean?
A new route? Is this a land mass? I thought it might be the islands of Maui, Lanai, and Moloka’i in Hawaii, but they do not quite match.
I also took a look in the Carribean and do not see a match.
Spain?
The Cook Islands?
Cape Verde?
Nope.
This morning, United posted this for everyone:
View this post on Instagram
Here’s the tease:
Pssst, we’ve left some crumbs for you in our last five posts. Have you spotted them?
All will be revealed January 30 at 8 a.m. ET.
So what do you think?
Crumbs…I’m hearing about more meal service upgrades to Hawaii, new premium cocktails onboard, and new cookie (hence crumbs) but I have not heard anything about a new route announcement.
If you look at the captions of the teaser post, along with the previous five posts, the first letters spell out S T R O O P, which along with the “crumbs” could suggest the return of the Stroopwafel…
ChatGPT thinks the image above is referring to Greenland:
Maybe… especially with Greenland in the news as Trump renews the call for “Manifest Destiny” 2.0. But it doesn’t look like Greenland either…
So let’s put our collective wisdom together and try to figure out what is going on here. In any case, it appears we will know for sure tomorrow morning.
gemini first thought it was Socotra (Suqutra) Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. I re-prompted it, and it changed its mind to the Canary islands…
“By visually comparing your image with a satellite view of the Canary Islands on Google Maps, and focusing on the key features outlined above, you will see very strong evidence that the islands depicted are indeed the Canary Islands. The number of islands, their relative shapes, sizes, and positions align remarkably well, making it the only logical conclusion.”
@friendly-sky – I would love it to be Socotra (I’ve recently seen videos and it looks amazing) but the Canaries would make more sense from positioning and marketing.
I doubt UA would be flying the Yemen anytime soon!
Anyone who thinks this looks like a map of Greenland has never seen a map of Greenland.
Typical of the computational idiocy called “AI”.
Crumbl Cookies
Looks like Seychelles to me..
It’s not the Canary Islands, doesn’t look anything like them.
I don’t think this is a single group of islands. Rather this is three different destinations, just lumped together to confuse the rubes. It doesn’t look like any group of 3 islands that I know of – and, critically – any group that would make any sense as a destination for United. For example, each of these little blobs could be countless little islands anywhere across the globe, but United isn’t going to fly to some obscure little rock in Indonesia or the eastern Caribbean.
To solve the puzzle, you need to look at each “island” shape (or are they even islands at all?) by itself, one at a time – and given the low-rez generic shapes provided, and the uncountable little islands scattered across the world…good luck. There’s no guarantee that these shapes haven’t been rotated, squeezed, broken apart or otherwise manipulated. I also note the “drop-shadows” depicted in two of them (but omitted from the smallest). Lots of trickery here and not much to go on.
Or maybe this is how United does customer research? No new destinations to announce, this is just a Rorschach test seeking to discover where customers are hoping they’ll fly to next. Hey, is that Bali, Bora Bora, or Santorini?” (answer: No, no, and no – but maybe we should think about it!)
Maybe just some new announcement of enhanced snacks available (warm, crumb-inducing chocolate chip cookies…)?
Could be three distinct islands…do you recognize any? I don’t.
The smallest of the three (as depicted) has some resemblance to Cozumel – if you flop and rotate it. It’s off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, not far from Cancun, and is popular with SCUBA divers (it also gets lots of cruise ships). Cozumel would make sense as a seasonal destination from Texas or East Coast cities. I believe United used to fly there years ago. But that “fish-shape” can be an awful lot of islands…I think the search is easier if you start by looking at where (what regions) United might want to expand service to, and then start looking for matching shapes.
United has been on a tare lately adding service for old 757s and 737 MAXes. Where else might they use those planes? Yeah, the Canaries (they already fly to Tenerife). Madiera? Eastern Caribbean? (Dominica? St Lucia? St Vincent?).
Yes, Socotra is nearly the right shape, but it would be a pretty improbably choice (I’m trying to be nice).
It’s an entertaining game, but it may just be (literally) cookie crumbs.
I think it is an imaginary island Kirby dreamed about during the weekend.
Um, you guys should know that United already flies to the Canary Islands (Tenerife, from Newark).
So expanding service there? That’s possible, but none of the shapes in that image look like any of the Canary Islands (unless you do an awful lot of violence to their coastlines). The smallest of the shapes looks a bit like Madeira, but flopped and rotated and squeezed a little – but that (roughly) fish-shape fits thousands of islands around the world. Do any of them make sense as a destination for United? Madeira could, I suppose, but there are a LOT of similarly-shaped islands in the world.
Could it be the return of the Stroopwafel???
Yeppopppp. Stroooooops will be baxk
Madeira
Uhm.
Who
Cares!
I
Do.
Fiji and their surrounding islands.
EWR-HEL
EWR-VLC
ORD-NAN (don’t feel great about this one)
i think Matt has it, the return of the Stropwafel.
It is the return of the Stroopwafel.
Stroopwafel makes most sense.
I think it is Madeira rotated ~90 degrees to the left… the view you would have flying from the US East Coast.