United Airlines will begin year-round service between Denver and Frankfurt next year, giving all United hubs in the Continental U.S. a nonstop flight to Germany, except for one…
Let’s not turn good news into a complaint. The new service from Denver will begin on May 02, 2019 and be operated under the following schedule:
|
Flight |
Frequency | City Pair | Depart | Arrive |
Aircraft |
||||||
|
UA 182 |
Daily | DEN – FRA | 3:40 p.m. | 09:20 a.m. +1 day | Boeing 787-8 | ||||||
| UA 181 | Daily | FRA – DEN | 11:05 a.m. | 1:20 p.m. |
Boeing 787-8 |
The flight becomes United’s 15th daily to/from Frankfurt, an impressive mix of flights from San Francisco, Houston, Chicago, Newark, and Washington Dulles. The new Denver – Frankfurt flight will be well-timed for customer connections, allowing for many new one-stop itineraries to Germany from cities served exclusively by United Express in the Rocky Mountain region.
The new space is now bookable on united.com. Keep an eye out for saver award space, which may come later.
But I cannot help to point out that this route announcement leaves only one hub in the United States, Los Angeles, without service to Frankfurt.
I know, I know. Lufthansa and United are JV partners and Lufthansa flies from LAX to Frankfurt once per day during the fall and winter and twice per day during the spring the summer. But “metal neutrality” may be true on the revenue sharing side, but not on the consumer side. Lufthansa also flies to Denver, San Francisco, Houston, Chicago, Newark, and Washington Dulles.
I don’t deny for one moment that United has a stronger hub presence at all of those cities compared to highly-competitive LAX. Even so, Frankfurt is such an important city for United and the Star Alliance network. While United serves London nonstop from LAX, the lack of a partner hubbed in London often necessitates double connections. No flight would be more helpful to me than a nonstop between Frankfurt to Los Angeles. I am sure I am not the only one.
CONCLUSION
Even as I am disappointed that Denver got the new Frankfurt flight instead of Los Angeles, this is great news for consumers. And I am excited about the new Denver flight. Hopefully, the new Denver flight will complement the Lufthansa flight and remain the schedule for years to come.
Think you meant Denver to Frankfurt, not Denver to Chicago…
I made the edit for Matthew who is traveling today. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.
Hey Matthew,
“United Airlines will begin year-around service from Denver to Chicago next year, giving all United hubs in the Continental U.S. a nonstop flight to Germany, except for one…”
You mean Frankfurt.
Sorry, missed that it had already been spotted.
And a little more from a local Denver reporter on the reasoning behind the Denver flight https://twitter.com/JesseAPaul/status/1068214951779528704
An LAX-MUC flight on United metal would be great. Munich is much better for connections than FRA.
A little bit surprised by this, as award availability on LH’s flights between DEN and FRA/MUC has always been among the best of LH’s US routes, which suggests they’re not packing the existing flights full. Of course United tends to be much stingier about releasing saver level award space. So we’ll have to see how this shakes out.
Prior to the UA retrenchment at LAX there was a new LAX-FRA flight. I remember getting an opup on it once… And that T7 FIS was closed when we landed at LAX and were bused to TBIT
But it is not clear what UAs commitment is to LAX. It was a mistake to give up all of T6