Rich people like to ski in the winter or escape the cold to the beautiful California sun. In a match made in heaven, United Airlines is adding flights this winter between Orange County, CA and Aspen, its latest point-to-point route.
United Airlines Adds Orange County – Aspen Service
The new daily service will launch on December 16th and run through March 26, 2022. SkyWest will operate the service on behalf of United under the United Express banner and utilize a Bombardier CRJ-700 for the service, featuring:
- 6 first class seats
- 64 economy class seats (including 16 extra-legroom “Economy Plus” seats)
The flight will operate according to the following schedule:
- UA5450 Depart Santa Ana (SNA) 4:00pm, Arrive Aspen (ASE) 7:08pm
- UA5707 Depart Aspen (ASE) 2:00pm, Arrive Santa Ana (SNA) 3:24pm
Fares start at about $259 one-way for economy class or $459 for first class. Mileage space, including “saver” space, is currently available on many dates.
Aspen joins Honolulu as the second of United’s so-called “point-to-point” flights from Orange County / Santa Ana. While network carriers usually operate flights via a hub and spoke model, United has improvised and experimented during the pandemic as it sought to meet demand where it was, which was not always via its seven hubs in the continental USA.
Orange County – Aspen will not be the only ski destinations United serves this winter from Southern California. The carrier will also offer nonstop service from Los Angeles (LAX) to:
- Aspen
- Eagle, Colorado (Vail)
- Hayden, Colorado (Steamboat)
- Montrose, Colorado (Telluride)
- Bishop, California (Mammoth)
- Sun Valley, Idaho
- Bozeman, Montana (Big Sky, Bridger Bowl)
- Jackson Hole, Wyoming
CONCLUSION
If you detected a bit of facetiousness in the opening paragraph, it is only because many of our dear Award Expert clients from from both Orange County and Aspen are very wealthy and very high-maintainence. Just an observation…but I had to chuckle at the new route because I do believe it will be a hit.
image: RedRipper24
Shocked they aren’t using a CRJ-550 for this….
wouldn’t it make sense to deploy one of those 50-seat premium config regional jets on this route then? with business travel not recovering yet seems like the obvious move.
CRJ-550 is only operated by GoJet… the logistics would be bad since their bases are STL, ORD and EWR.
Gojet 550’s are not rated for ASE. Very specific training goes into flying to Aspen.
United should be on some soy milk for little Muffy and Beauregard on this route!! Better install that latte machine while you are at it!!
Over under 50% cancelation rate into ASE?
My suggestion is stick to the facts and leave adjectives such as opulent and affluent out of your stories. I can assure you the average flyer out of SNA is not “opulent”. The reasons why fares are inflated at SNA is the very tight flight capacity restrictions out of SNA along with nose abatement. and the very short, dangerous runway. We have the same challenges and complexities that all other California airports face today. We have people being kicked out of their apartments and people on food stamps etc and scores of other social problems. We now have airlines such as Spirit, Sun Country, Allegiant and Frontier that appeal to mainstream flyers. And we of course have your favorite legacy airline that you have biased reporting all the time.
Just a little fun. I live here too. I’ve seen the disparities in places like Santa Ana.
Ahh the 1%!!
Yikes, $250 one way. These fares will go down dramatically once United realizes people aren’t gonna pay that fares, and not everyone in Aspen is a billionaire.
Right now it is over $1100.00 in economy from Denver-aspen-denver for the next 10 days as it is aspen food and wine.. It is 132,000 miles for this $1100 route nuts.
If you want SFO-ASE-SFO it is $1800 on United for Economy….
But only 6 first class seats? A lot of the rich folks will need to sit with the cattle.
Interesting flight times – I would have thought the outbound from SNA would be in the morning so that you could be on the slopes by noon.
On the east coast, we have JetBlue with summer service to ACK and MV. So the rich liberals back east are not left out! It used to be nice in Nantucket, now it’s overrun with hyper monied bassholes.