Chris Sloan of The Points Guy recently sat down with two United Airlines leaders. Comments on the Los Angeles hub caught my attention.
Sloan interviewed Greg Hart, United’s chief operations officer, and Andrew Nocella, United’s chief commercial officer. During the conversation, the topic of United’s LAX hub arose. Los Angeles is losing its nonstop flight to Singapore next month and has fallen behind Delta and American as LAX’s #3 carrier.
First, Nocella hinted that the Singapore flight may return and that United does “well” out of LAX:
As we looked at Singapore, we felt like the second flight out of San Francisco at this particular moment in time was the better choice for that asset. That’s not to say we won’t ever fly LA to Singapore again. Quite frankly, we fly many other international routes out of LA, and we do well out of Los Angeles in total.
But he blamed space constraints at LAX as limited growth.
We basically fully utilize our gate facilities at the airport. It’s not that we don’t want to grow. It’s that the facility footprint we have today … is full. So our footprint is just slightly smaller than some of our competitors, and therefore our operation is slightly smaller. That’s the output of all kinds of things that have happened over decades.
Of course using a gate for a 787-9 to Melbourne or a CRJ-200 to Colorado Springs are two different things. United is in fact utilizing its gates at LAX right now (and regrets selling its stake in Terminal 6), but LAX could easily grow through larger aircraft.
At least he affirmed:
It’s a race that we’re in and not going to be giving up on… I believe in Los Angeles. I think I’ve proven that time and time again. We’ve grown the operation considerably in Los Angeles over the last 12 months.
I haven’t seen the considerable growth, but I am thankful that United continues to affirm its commit to Los Angeles. I also recognize United’s investment in premium ground services at LAX.
CONCLUSION
The whole interview is worth a read. There are other nuggets explored like terminal upgrades at Washington Dulles, returning to JFK, and United’s new premium economy product. I’m further convinced United is not abandoning LAX.
> Read More: Wow! United Private Suite at LAX Offers VIP Ground Services
United has slipped way too far at LAX. They were the biggest carrier at LAX and now they are probably #4 after AA, DL, & WN. I doubt they can grow. There’s no low hanging fruit. Can they fly to their competitor’s hubs like: ATL, CLT, PHL, DTW, MSP? Some of those have been tried and failed.
LHR is flown only once a day with a 787. BA has two A380s and a 787. AA has two 777s. VS has three 787s and even NZ brings in a 777.
UA is also ending BJX, MEX & SIN so it doesn’t seem like they are in it to win it like AA & DL. AA has to fight because they have no other hub that can do what LAX can do. DL has SEA but it’s not as good as LAX. UA has SFO so it’s not worth it for them to get into a fight that they cannot win with other airlines that are in it to win it. United is at least fighting for SFO and they are winning especially against Alaska and Southwest. My guess is that they’ll continue to fight at SFO and LAX will just wither in the wind.
I’m amazed that airline execs keep giving these interviews to TPG columnists given how inaccurate some of their reporting is.
When was the last time an airline felt great in hindsight about selling gates/slots at a key space constrained airport?
UA looks like idiots with LAX and JFK
AA not much better with LGA
Build terminal 9. Plenty of ground space east of Sepulveda. Upgrade T8 and connect to T9.
They made a big mistake with T6. Not sure the solution is more flights on 777s and 787s though. London, for instance, is already so heavily served as noted above that it hardly makes sense for UA to expand, unless they could do it with a 737-Max.
“United has slipped way too far at LAX. They were the biggest carrier at LAX and now they are probably #4 after AA, DL, & WN. ”
Amazing you can get multiple facts wrong within just 2 sentences. First they’re #3. And regarding “slipping way too far”, here’s what the landscape looks like
LAX-only (sourced from LAWA, full-year 2017)
AA 18.83%
DL 16.66%
UA 14.18%
WN 13.16%
AS 8.72% (inc VX)
And now that SF Bay Area has far higher income, both household and per capita, than LA Basin, I guess favoring SFO over LAX was definitely the smart choice. (AA also just announced cancelling LAX-YYZ)
As for DL, I suspect a sizable portion of the extra pax count of DL over UA are simply pass-through to Australia + onward cnnx, both on DL and VA, since LAX is literally their only gateway to hand off Oceania pax.
UA has 3 gateways to do that on their own metal – LAX SFO IAH, plus ORD if you count handing off to JV partner AirNZ. AA/QF is mostly LAX+DFW, with a handful more connecting at JFK and SFO (not a hub but at least a handoff point).