United Airlines will offer nonstop service between San Francisco and Barcelona next February…but only for two days.
Barcelona is hosting the 2019 Mobile World Congress and United will offer these special nonstop flights to cater to the Silicon Valley crowd who . The convention will focus on the latest mobile technology and is expected to draw more than 107,000 attendees from 2,400 companies.
The special flights, UA884 and UA885 will operate on the following schedule:
- February 23 – San Francisco 1:45 p.m. Barcelona 10:25 a.m.+1
- February 24 – Barcelona 12:50 p.m. San Francisco 4:20 p.m.
- February 27 – San Francisco 1:45 p.m. Barcelona 10:25 a.m. +1
- February 28 – Barcelona 12:45 p.m. San Francisco 4:15 p.m.
The flight will be operated by a Boeing 777-200 aircraft featuring United’s old three-cabin layout. United Polaris First is no longer a separate cabin, so eight comfortable seats in the front of the aircraft can be snagged for no extra charge.
But the flight is not cheap. Not at all. An economy class ticket is more than $2,500 round-trip while a business class ticket is more than $15,000 round-trip on the nonstop flight.
Award space is “standard” only and business class awards are only available for United MileagePlus elite members and Chase co-branded United credit card holders. Hint: it’s not worth it.
Of course flying the other direction on 24 February returning on 27 February is a much better deal:
However, there is is still no saver award space…
CONCLUSION
I’ll be curious to see if United can fill its seats. Frankly, I have my doubts at these prices. Will you take United’s nonstop flight to Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress?
They will have no trouble putting butts in these seats. Many hundreds of people based in SV go to Mobile. If they’re tech people based in SF, they’re almost certainly UA premiers, and the *A connections to BCN suck (hugely out of the way) if you want to go nonstop SFO-Europe. Many of these are senior who can and will pay full freight biz class.
The former Polaris First seats are only available to Global Services and 1K members only.
Is that in writing somewhere?
This is not true. I am gold and booked two of these seats over the phone with UA for ORD-HKG.
$15K for coffin class lol. If this was new Polaris seat maybe & maybe there will be a switch between now and February. I would rather connect and get a better seat.
They don’t need to fill it. Most Silicon Valley tech companies allow VPs and SVPs to book J for such a long flight (which they will for the convenience) — so filling up that cabin will pay for the flight itself.
@Bob, what about the rest of the plane. Anyone who is eligible to fly business will choose a different (connecting) flight after the business cabin sells out.
Personally have the same dilemna for another conference in BCN. After the bus cabin in the nonstop from EWR filled up, I chose a connecting flight through Zurich.
@Nate Nate – Yes, if people are slow booking, they’ll have to connect via FRA or ZRH, but in the meantime they will have sold 96 full J seats each way (as @Bob said, covering the costs of the flights), and a bunch of the people whose travel policies don’t permit biz travel, but permit preference for nonstops, will choose the much shorter nonstop flight at a sweet premium for UA.
Plus, I bet these flights aren’t covered by the UA/LH JV, so it’s all UA’s cash…
I am wondering if they will lower these prices (especially the coach) as the date comes closer.
I doubt it, because a lot of people make the decision to go to Mobile late in the process.
Considering the only other alternative is LEVEL. I’d go with an old reliable 777 !!
Wow, that is an aggressive and smart move by United. I’m impressed by their willingness to test this. Still hoping that United does a Berlin-SFO flight
For the love of god, proof read please. First sentence in and there is already a glaring error.
Sorry, I fixed it. You know prooofreading is a weakness when I’m trying to squeeze out several articles per day.