United Airlines is adding two new Japan routes, including the first nonstop flight from the continental United States to Sapporo and a new daily Chicago – Tokyo Narita flight that restores another important Asia link from O’Hare.
United Airlines Adds Nonstop Sapporo Flights, New Tokyo Narita Service
United Airlines is expanding its already-large Japan network with two new routes this winter: San Francisco – Sapporo and Chicago – Tokyo Narita.
United Adds San Francisco – Sapporo
Starting December 11, 2026, United will launch 3x weekly seasonal nonstop service between San Francisco (SFO) and Sapporo (CTS), operating through March. United says this will be the first nonstop service between the continental United States and Sapporo.
The route is expected to operate with a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner according to this schedule:
- UA234 San Francisco (SFO) – Sapporo (CTS) dep 10:30 AM arr 2:15 PM+1
- UA235 Sapporo (CTS) – San Francisco (SFO) dep 4:15 PM arr 8:25 AM
Hokkaido, the second-largest and northernmost of Japan’s four main islands that includes cities like Sapporo and Niseko, is a wonderful winter destination, with skiing, hot springs, seafood, Sapporo ramen, and the famous Sapporo Snow Festival. For those who love Japan but want something beyond Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and the usual first-timer circuit, this is a very cool new option.
The flight from San Francisco will be timed to optimize connections from nearly 80 U.S. cities, taking advantage of SFO as United’s premier Pacific gateway to support a seasonal leisure route that probably would not work as well from anywhere else in the United network.
United Adds Chicago – Tokyo Narita
The second route is Chicago O’Hare (ORD) – Tokyo Narita (NRT), which launches October 24, 2026 and will operate daily year-round, subject to government approval. United says it will be the only U.S. airline flying nonstop between Chicago and Tokyo Narita.
The route is expected to operate with a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner.
United already serves Chicago – Tokyo Haneda, so this is not about simply putting Chicago back on the Tokyo map. Instead, it is about Narita connectivity. United and ANA can use Narita to connect passengers onward across Asia, and United specifically mentions connections to Cebu, Guam, Kaohsiung, Palau, Saipan, and Ulaanbaatar on United, along with ANA connections to cities like Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur.
Haneda is better for Tokyo, but Narita is better as a connecting hub for certain onward markets. United clearly sees value in having both from Chicago, especially as it continues to build out its Pacific network and offer more one-stop itineraries from the Midwest.
United’s Japan Network Keeps Growing
United is already the leading U.S. carrier between the continental United States and Japan. The airline says it carried more than 1.8 million passengers between the two countries in 2025, more than all other U.S. carriers combined.
This winter, United says it will operate up to 13 daily flights from the continental U.S. to four Japanese airports:
- Tokyo Narita (NRT)
- Tokyo Haneda (HND)
- Osaka Kansai (KIX)
- Sapporo (CTS)
Including Guam (GUM), United will serve five airports in four Japanese cities: Sapporo, Tokyo Narita, Tokyo Haneda, Osaka, and Nagoya (NGO).
Patrick Quayle, United’s Senior Vice President of Network Planning and Global Alliances, framed the expansion this way:
“Whether customers are dreaming of skiing in Sapporo, planning a business trip to Tokyo with some exploration added in, or an even bigger adventure across Asia, United gives travelers more ways to get there than any U.S. airline.”
While easy to dismiss as press release fluff, United has been consistently leaning into longhaul and international growth, and Japan remains one of the clearest areas where United has a structural advantage over American and Delta.
Delta has Haneda, but no Japanese partner. American has Japan Airlines, but a much smaller U.S. longhaul network to Japan. United has ANA, a large transpacific network, and hubs like San Francisco and Chicago that can support both local traffic and connecting flows.
CONCLUSION
United is adding two new Japan routes this winter: seasonal San Francisco – Sapporo service and daily year-round Chicago – Tokyo Narita service.
The Sapporo route is the “flashier” addition and gives United a true first from the continental United States to Hokkaido. The Chicago – Narita route is more strategic, restoring a useful Narita link that strengthens United’s ability to connect passengers from the Midwest across Asia with ANA and its own Pacific network.
This is Quayle and his team doing what United does best right now: using its hubs, partnerships, and widebody fleet to add interesting longhaul routes that other U.S. carriers either cannot or will not touch.
images: United
The airport doesn’t have the de-icing capacity for more intl flights lol. I flew JX from CTS-TPE in Jan 2026 and flight was delayed 40 min to de-ice. Same with the BR and CI flights. And everyday too. They need at least more than 1 de-icing truck.
Wow! That is exciting. Haven’t made it to Hokkaido, yet, but a nonstop to Sapporo would make it even easier to get there. Probably the cargo alone would make this routing profitable. Most of the best sushi comes from up-north anyway.
Yes, a very exciting route! I have great memories of Hokkaido as a child and feeding apples to the resident bear population.
UA is definitely leading the pack among US airlines when it comes to flights between the US and Asia.
CTS is s great add and keeps UA as the biggest kid on the block to East Asia so good for them. As noted AA with JAL is solid but pedestrian, and DL of course us nearly a non-player just trying to dump pax in Korea and be done with it.
As for ORD those NRT yields are garbage so ANA will most likely drop theirs to move that plane somewhere else and with U.S. point-of-sale higher that bodes we’ll for UA vs ANA on the route’s yields.
Matthew, perhaps you can explain why DL managed to make $300 million in 2025 flying the Pacific even though UA had a much larger TPAC system but only made $505 million.
And can you also explain how UA’s larger international system benefitted them given that UA only made $1.4 billion in 2025 international profits while DL made DL made over $2.0 billion.
In fact, there is nothing cool about copying your alliance partner’s strategies so that they don’t show you up but that is the only reason why UA had to add service to CTS.
With $4/gal jet fuel certain throughout the winter, it is doubtful that UA will make money on much of their TPAC system during the dead of winter while flying half of their routes on gas-guzzling 777s.
@Tim, kudos to Delta for being the more profitable carrier (for now), but here I’m just talking about the route addition, which I think is a smart add for UA that will do well. it also generates a lot of free positive press (like any more exotic airline route announcement) and I meant what I said in my story…that skiing has become so expensive in the USA, that it may actually be economical for folks to fly to Japan to go skiing…and that’s what matters to them, not RASM/PRSAM.
Matthew is right.
Has anyone (besides TD, possibly) ever chosen to fly a route or airline based on profitability, revenue, or other fonancial metrics? Don’t most people use common sense like routes available, price, on board experience, direct flights; etc?
UA does curreently have the best route network in Asia among US based airlines, which is hard arugue with unless goal posts are being changed.
passengers may not choose to fly a carrier based on profitability but perhaps you and Matthew can tell us who has to subsidize financially underperforming airlines?
are we supposed to think that UA can make just 2/3 of the international profits that DL makes and everybody goes home happy at both airlines?
Not a chance.
DL employees and stockholders are better compensated and actual data shows that DL passengers spend more on DL… so it absolutely does matter who makes more.
NRT is Open Skies for US airlines. There is no government approval other than routine paperwork.
and are we really supposed to believe that flying UA’s smallest TPAC aircraft from ORD to NRT is an accomplishment?
apparently the power of the NRT hub doesn’t count for much.
Tell us how much service there is from ORD to ICN, TPE and HKG – all hubs that have far better connectivity into Asia than HND and it will be clear why UA had no choice but to offer an ORD-NRT route even though it is clear it will not make money compared to other TPAC hubs and their ORD routes.
Tokyo’s two airport system might be good for local Tokyo service but it is the worst of any Asian country for service deep into Tokyo – which is part of why UA makes so much less per seat mile flying the Pacific than DL. NRT is a money-loser.
Again, nothing to do with shat passengers chiose to fly, nor with UA leading the pack with regards to US airlines in terms of routes to Asia and within Asia.
Atrempting to change the goal posts at it’s finest.
“are we really supposed to believe that flying UA’s smallest TPAC aircraft from ORD to NRT is an accomplishment?” Yes – the 787-9 is soon to be United’s most common widebody and I have never once boarded one and said “wow this plane is too small” – you are really grasping at straws now TD! I’d also add they added this as a daily service which is quite impressive – this will funnel more pax into their NRT hub network.
Tim you also brought up an interesting point about NRT’s open skies for US airlines. United now flies their from 6 of their US hubs and have built out their own NRT network – can you remind everyone how many places Delta flies to NRT from? Seems to me like Delta just takes its slot allocation at HND and calls it a day on Japan…
can your grapes be any more sour
Seriously ????
Andy,
if NRT was so great of a hub, then UA wouldn’t have tried to move its IAH flight from NRT to HND.
NRT exists solely because HND does not have connectivity deep into Asia like ICN, TPE and HKG do.
the Chicago to Tokyo market has more than enough capacity to carry the local market to HND; NRT is simply for connections but the lack of a local market means that UA loses money operating its vaunted NRT hub.
DL doesn’t need a “connections only” hub in Asia because it has ICN which is a far larger international hub than either NRT or HND.
and DL and UA are jsut about the same size from the US to NE Asia – Japan, S. Korea and China.
UA’s larger TPAC size is because of its presence at HKG (which DL is partly fixing in a few weeks) plus MNL and SIN – which will be addressed in the coming years with the A350-1000s and more 359s.
If CTS were a great market, it would be flown year round but is only being flown because flying it – a leisure route w/ $4/gal jet fuel – is better than parking the plane for 4-6 months and paying employees to do nothing.
UA flies too much capacity in the summer compared to what they can fly in the winter and that is why their margins are so much lower than DL’s.
Tim, as we’ve covered before, when you talk about how much an airline makes per seat mile, it makes it look like you don’t understand how airline economics work.
It’s the same when you talk about how profits are allocated by region.
1 – Airline profits are measured by yields. Period. UA and DL had almost identical yields in Q1, in spite of the billions of extra dollars made in DL credit card revenue. Multiple pieces have shown UA is more profitable in terms of airline operations. It also explains why DL is shrinking in NYC while UA grows.
2 – There is no single way to break out earnings by region. Each airline does it differently. They can measure how much a region has gone up down, but comparing one airline to another doesn’t work.
You know this, and we know you know this. Please do better.
And utterly worthless delta doesn’t even offer JFK-HND (or bothered to bid for it, for that matter)
What a worthless carrier. Enjoy all your “profitability” while wasting time connecting at DTW MSP or SEA while we directly get to places nonstop from EWR.
Time is precious. Guess yours is not.
This year, China carriers have cancelled a number of routes to Tokyo Narita. This allows foreign airlines like UAL to obtain landing slots.
i believe UAL still have route authority for IAD-NRT. Would UAL restore this route later this year or next?
We’ll see. The SFO-CTS is a classic Quayle route, but the ORD-NRT caught me by surprise. I think many of us had written off NRT as HND opened up a bit more, but this addition and UA’s Fifth Freedom routes from NRT suggest otherwise…
Hi Matthew,
ANA’s flight schedule for ORD-NRT allows connecting to UAL 5th freedom flights in both departure and arrival at NRT. Thus, like you, I am surprised that UAL will reinstate ORD-NRT route. We will know very soon if ANA would let UAL do the flying, and redeploy the planes and slots to other service
Would NH’s passengers want to fly on UA metal? I can’t see that being a very popular move.
US-Japan largest markets by PDEW:
HNL: 2,238
LAX: 1,928
SFO: 1,073
NYC: 1,039
SEA: 475
ORD: 350
WAS: 269
IAH: 244
LAS: 215
BOS: 210
Great add!
I’m surprised that Dallas (DFW) is not in the list.
I’m even more surprised that there is an airport called WAS…did they mean IAD?
Also does LAS even have direct flights to Japan?
I said markets not airports.
DFW is under 200.
It is worth noting that WAS is an IATA metropolitan area code representing the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area in the U.S. It is not a code for one specific airport, but rather a booking code used to encompass all major airports in the area, including DCA, IAD, and BWI.
By “connecting people, uniting the world”, UA keeps “leading the way”.
Prestigious tasks for UA’s fleet of 86 B787 Dreamliners with an average age of 7.2 years.