United Airlines has teased a number of new routes it will unveil tomorrow morning. Will see new longhaul international flights? Here are my thoughts and predictions.
United Airlines 2023 New Route Teaser: Love For LAX?
In a brief tease on Twitter, United promises it will unveil new routes tomorrow morning, April 18, 2023, at 08:30 AM ET.
New routes drop. April 18 at 8:30 a.m. ET. pic.twitter.com/mGEcovqBmp
— United Airlines (@united) April 17, 2023
It is not clear if the new routes are for 2023 or 2024 or whether they are longhaul or shorthaul, but historically United has only teased longhaul routes.
Note that Los Angeles (LAX) is mentioned twice in the teaser tweet. Will we finally see new routes from LAX?
One of the tweets highlighted above is this one:
Any plans for a BNE-LAX service?? Hoping something is available before may 2023!
— Braydan McDermott (@BraydanMcDermot) November 4, 2022
Thus, I’m going to guess LAX – Brisbane (BNE) will be a new route. Qantas already serves it, but United has enjoyed great success on its San Francisco – Brisbane route launched earlier this year.
Maybe New Zealand too? Something like LA to Christchurch (CHC) or Auckland (AKL)? United and Air New Zealand are joint venture partners. Plus, Delta launches new LAX-AKL service later this year.
With Delta starting service to Tahiti from LAX, might we see United also add service to French Polynesia (PPT) from LAX? (I think this would be a bad idea, FWIW, and would rather see something like Los Angeles to Rarotonga [RAR] on the Cook Islands, a subsidized route that Air New Zealand ran for years but abandoned around the time fo the pandemic. I don’t think we’ll see this either).
I’ve long wished to see Los Angeles to Frankfurt (FRA) resume on United metal, but Lufthansa probably has that covered, and I’d also like to see United fly to Brazil from LAX, but considering how AA flopped on its LAX – São Paulo (GRU) route, I’m not sure.
Air Canada has seen great success with its Vancouver (YVR) – Bankgok (BKK) route and I suppose we could see a new Asian longhaul, but I tend to think we’d see LA – Shanghai (PVG) resume before UA tries Bangkok or tries to restart Singapore (SIN) service from LAX.
And of course there might not even be a single new LAX route…maybe we’ll just see more service to secondary Italian cities or to Central Europe from Newark (EWR) or Washington Dulles (IAD).
CONCLUSION
This is always fun and we will certainly unpack the new United Airlines routes tomorrow, hopefully with at least one new dot and line from LAX.
What are your predictions?
H/T shoutout to @Jared H lol
As much as I love Jared, this came from Twitter!
touche
BNE for sure. If anything it offers a shorter flight and decent connectivity to secondary cities in OZ The airport is nice, the location is good…I imagine it’s going to become the go-to for anyone going on to places like Adelaide or Perth as, really, why would anyone connect in SYD…it’s a horrid transfer process.
As to the others, who knows. I would love to see IAD-VIE as a surprise, but doubt it.
Just curious- where do you get the insight that United has seen great success in sfo-Bne and air Canada has seen great success on its Bangkok service? These airlines don’t disclose that type of information.
Inside sources.
Whoever your internal sources are, they shouldnt be telling you that and you shouldnt be putting it in your article. I’ve worked in network planning both domestically and internationally and revealing that type of information could get somebody fired real fast.
I updated my article, which is why that reference was deleted (to avoid confusion). I also corrected your spelling error in the ORD-KEF comment.
Thank you for correcting my spelling error. I’m not perfect and I’m willing to take it since I give it. I appreciate constructive criticism.
And thank you for correcting me concerning the NZ-UA JV. I should have known.
I don’t know anything about the success, but it downgauged from a 787-9 to a 787-8 and remains at 3x a week instead of going daily, so…?
it’s been 3x/wk since the launch. As much as UA may want to upgrade that flight to daily, it’s not that simple with gov’t regulations and landing/takeoff slots. It may be easier to add frequencies domestically in the US, but internationally is another matter.
Brisbane isn’t a slotted airport and there are no restrictions limiting flights between the US and Australia. United could add more service tomorrow if they wanted to. There’s nothing stopping them
Maintaining the 3x isn’t a bad sign though if it was really performing well, it wouldn’t have swapped to a smaller plane and it would have increased frequencies. Also, subsidies are involved with this route, so even more reason that the frequencies and aircraft size should increase.
Not that it’s performing poorly, but there aren’t many (any?) signs that it’s a stellar performer.
any chance we see another transatlantic on a 737 like the Ponta Delgada route?
Maybe ORD KEF?
United already flies ORD-KEF seasonally.
The article I’ve been waiting for all day!
I was so excited when I woke up this morning and saw that on Twitter and IG, I was definitely not expecting any new routes anytime soon.
There definitely has to be at least one route from LAX, if not that is just insulting to tease us like that in the spoiler and then give us nothing. I have seen really good arguments for BNE, AKL, and CHC.
LAX-BNE: this is the one most people are predicting. Multiple of the comments that are blurred out in the teaser are asking for LAX-BNE, so if the reveal tomorrow is just them removing the blur, this would be one of the routes. Outside of the teaser, UA also seems to want to aggressively grow the new partnership with Virgin. SFO-MEL just got upgauged to a 77W yesterday, so it wouldn’t at surprise me to add LAX-BNE announced right after that. LA is also a larger O&D market for BNE, with QF capacity still below pre-pandemic levels on the route, and obviously no VA flight. So all in all, there are a lot of reasons this is the leading candidate for a new route.
LAX-AKL: a lot of people have been predicting this as well for a while now. There was an article in a NZ newspaper that NZ wants their JV partner (UA) to add more capacity to NZ as they are short on WB capacity. Many have speculated NZ operating 1x daily on their own metal and UA taking over the 2nd daily on UA metal. Also with DL launching this route, I can see UA wanting to respond by adding it themselves too. In summary, I would say this could very likely be included too.
LAX-CHC: this one is a bit more conflicting to me. Is the market really there? Why are there no other flights? Would they launch LAX-CHC without it being served via SFO? These are all questions I am asking. However, AA was going to launch LAX-CHC before the pandemic. The O&D market to LA again is bigger than SF, so that could be a reason to chose LAX over SFO. And finally there is talk UA needs to add a route like this in order to renew the JV. A few trusted insiders, such as xJon have also predicted this. So while it isn’t my first prediction, I am not ruling it out.
I think those are the 3 most likely routes. We could also see CHC from SFO instead, but the teaser makes be believe we should be seeing at least one if not multiple routes from LAX. LAX-FRA is another route Matthew mentioned above, a lot of people are pushing for this to come back, and I fully expect it to return in the coming years, I just don’t see it in this announcement simply because of the timing and summer being so close. I expect LAX-FRA to be operating on UA metal by summer 2024 or 2025 though.
Finally, there could be short haul international or domestic routes included too. There are a ton of domestic opportunities from LAX such as ATL, MIA, FLL, DFW, MSP, PDX, the list goes on and on. UA has tried many in the past and left due to the competition, but if you are going to be a serious player at LAX, you can’t be afraid of the competition. I’d also like to see both DEN-MEX and LAX-MEX return on the short haul international side.
Anyways, these are my thoughts based on the teaser, curious to hear what everyone else thinks!
Would love to see LAX-MEX return!
I would love o see more South America, not only out of LAX , but bring Intl Flying back to JFK
this would help re-develop the station and take the Heat off EWR which is taxed.
I don’t know what is going on with JFK, but would love to see it.
UA will definitely grab any JFK slots that they can as soon as they become available, whether that be from JetBlue having to give slots up either because of the AA alliance or if the Spirit merger goes through. Also not sure what happened to Aeroflot’s slots but those might eventually come up. There are probably other ways too that I am not mentioning.
But regardless, when UA does get slots at JFK, and they will eventually, Kirby has been very clear the top priority is LAX-SFO-JFK transcon flights. We won’t see any international flights out of JFK on UA anytime soon.
There’s no reason for United to go back to JFK. They make tons of money at Newark. While they may lose some business by not being at JFK, they are not hurting. If they were to go back it might just be the trans cons to lax and sfo again. Forget international flying. They’d be eaten alive. Those days are in the past, now that United owns Newark
Correct, if/when UA can get JFK slots, they will first bring back LAX/SFO, and then if they had additional slots they’d maybe go to other hubs. But they want to get LAX and SFO back up to a good amount of daily flights, I’d say at least 4 or 5 in each direction on each route. That is priority for UA.
Now that would really be like a dream come true !! I was really hoping that all this fuss today about new routes was all about the return to JFK!! But I digress. It’s ok, I know they’ll eventually get back in there. Two of my sources confirmed this as well. It’s just a matter of time!! Food for thought: UA will be getting a TON more wide bodies than all US combined. They will need hubs/ airports to drop all this extra capacity, moral of the story, don’t discard JFK for long haul flights just yet…standby and be on the lookout!
@Gravelly I’m expecting this announcement to be long haul out of LAX for sure, hopefully other stuff as well but the only real clue in the teaser is LAX international.
I’m really hoping for JFK soon too. This is just a market they need to be in. I don’t care if they lose money on it, they still need to be there. It makes me sad thinking of how many bad decisions the old Continental management team made that are still hurting UA today. But I am extremely confident in UA’s current management team, they’re keep working to improve these things.
When UA gets back into JFK, which they will sooner or later, they need to put a competitive product on LAX/SFO-JFK. I think there were operational challenges with the high J 767 just because they don’t use these planes at SFO or LAX, but they cannot return with the 757-200. They might have the new 321s and Max 10s by the time they get these slots, w can see if these planes have a good premium product or not, but if not they just need to use 777s and 787s to JFK. It’s that important of a market.
Why anyone would fly any US airline on a long flight to Asia, ME or Australia instead of their local airlines is beyond me.
Well, when you’ve already become the best airline in the world, everyone needs to experience that novelty. Let us not forget:
https://liveandletsfly.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/United-Airlines-Denver-First-Class-Meal-03.jpeg
Do not freeze, do not refrigerate, dry storage only…
https://liveandletsfly.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/United-Airlines-Penne-Pasta.jpg
Lol that picture is funny. As critical as I’ve been of the UA soft product the past few years, especially catering, I’ve walked away from my last few short domestic flights impressed. This month I’ve flown DEN-ORD and DEN-LAX up front, and the meals are actually not bad, especially some of the preorder ones. And getting a hot towel again on those short flights feels like a treat. Maybe my expectation has just been lowered so much since 2020, but I still enjoyed both flights.
Glad to hear! I actually like United’s scrappiness but it’s a little (way) too scrappy in catering and pandemic cuts and the lack of restoral thereof. This Polaris branding is not matching. It’s not reasonable to provide an excellent lounge product with such a 180 on the soft product. It’s beyond time to step it up. I do think they have potential, but time will tell. I’ve pre-ordered Oscar’s book for a friend. Perhaps this will help them get back to soup and nuts…
soup to nuts* 🙂
The dining room is still fantastic – hasn’t really decreased in quality since the pandemic in my option – but the quality of the buffet in the Polaris lounges has decreased since the pandemic. They need to bring this back up to keep these lounges as the top lounges in the US.
The Polaris lounges are physically beautiful spaces. I was just in LAX Polaris last week, and was just in awe in some of the small details, such as the Polaris star on the roof in the center. Just really well designed and thought out. I still love going in these whenever I can, but think they need to bring the buffet back up to the original standard.
Yes, physically stunning for sure. I just can’t accept an ‘eat decent/better’ on the ground to ‘starve in the air’ approach. Seems this is the direction that American carriers are headed. Polaris needs to be Polaris through and through. Carriers like Ethiad are serving better meals thirty minutes before landing.
Yes agreed – the onboard catering needs to improve, but I am confident it will. UA management has heard the catering complaints loud and clear. Maybe they thought they could get away with it, or maybe they thought it wasn’t as bad as it was, but it has become a PR issue at this point and they are working to fix it.
They must fly their own product and get tons of complaints from 1K and GS so I think it’s the former and not the latter but a moot now as you said as we should see major changes. I’ll be waiting as that content should be interesting to compare and contrast. Overall if the union is saying to report degraded service issues, hopefully they’ll return to pre C19 staffing levels ASAP, at a minimum. Polaris soft product really needs to wow.
UAL purchased a maintenance hangar at Rio de Janeiro airport last year. I guess UA will increase flights to RIO from IAH.
Dallas, Texas?
I’d love to see new european routes from Houston IAH, Madrid would be absolutely amazing as well as asian routes like Shanghai, Beijing or Hong Kong. Also more secundaria y cities in South America like Medellin, Cartagena or Belo Horizonte.
BKK to lax or somewhere else in the US.
LAX will be boring at best. Everyone loses money there and it’s even worse internationally with every flag carrier flying to LAX.
The timing is probably for Winter 2023 so I’d imagine we see South Pacific or more India. Maldives as a long shot out of EWR.
This announcement clearly is going to have something from LAX.
Yes, it is a tough market given the competition, but it is also an important market, you can’t just ignore it.
I hope for KRK or WAW at the very least…AA planned KRK before the pandemic.
Perhaps surprisingly, Los Angeles-Athens was one of the world’s top 10 unserved routes pre-pandemic, with over 80,000 people travelling anually via a hub. I know its probably unsustainable to run such a long route depending heavily on leisure traffic, the summer season schedule has most likely been finalized, and LAX is not a big long-haul hub for United, but since they’re launching SFO-FCO (which had even less traffic), maybe Athens is the next obvious destination from the west coast.