Adjusting to weaker demand, United Airlines is trimming service to both Hong Kong and Melbourne, Australia.
United’s Hong Kong Reductions
With civil unrest leading to weaker demand, United already cut back service to Hong Kong earlier this year. Chicago – Hong Kong has been suspended and the equipment from both San Francisco and Newark to Hong Kong has been downguaged from a 777-300 to a 777-200.
From January 12, 2020 thru March 27, Newark – Hong Kong (UA179/180) will shift from daily to three times weekly, operating on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. For a three-week period in late January and February, the flight will only operate two days per week.
San Francisco will remain twice daily, but during the same three-week period in January and February will only operate its second daily HKG service five days per week instead of daily.
United says:
This temporary change will help us adapt to the current environment, particularly during a time of the year that we historically see the lowest demand. We will also continue to serve Hong Kong twice daily from San Francisco.
United’s Melbourne Reductions
United is also scaling back its Los Angeles to Melbourne to flight. A nonstop from San Francisco recently started and LAX is seeing weaker demand as a result. During the Australian winter schedule, service will be reduced from daily to four times weekly. The service will operate on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday between March 28, 2020 and October 22. After October 22nd, daily nonstop service from Los Angeles will resume again.
United’s Agile Route Planning
One of the things that Patrick Quayle, United’s Vice President of International Planning, has stressed is the agility of the United team to make last-minute changes to the schedule. With the Hong Kong and Melbourne schedule changes, we see this on full display. Here, we’re not talking about schedule changes several months away. We are talking about short-term adjustments.
Where will the extra aircraft go? Traditionally, they have been used for domestic flights. We’ll see if any more 777s or 787s appear in the domestic schedule during the winter period.
> Read More: United Airlines Strategically Retools Winter Schedule
CONCLUSION
The further Hong Kong route cuts come as no surprise. With demand still weak, United’s decision to further scale back service to Hong Kong simply makes sense. As a Los Angeles resident, I’m more concerned about the Melbourne route. I figured the new San Francisco – Melbourne route would balkanize the LA flight and that seems to be happening. Hopefully Los Angeles to Melbourne won’t go the way of Los Angeles to Singapore.
LAX-SYD fortunately remains daily this winter (previously 3-4x weekly), and I think IAH-SYD has an extra weekly roundtrip as compared to 2018/2019. The LAX-MEL flight is tied to SFO-MEL on alternating days.
787 Polaris mods are starting up, and I believe there will be 1 788 mod line, and ultimately 2 789 lines until the program is completed. 787-9 service begins at EWR with EWR-CPT and a transcon rotation. 789 deliveries don’t resume until the late winter/early spring, so UA is a bit tight on 787s this winter.
They will need more than one mod line for the 788 and two for the 789. at 8 weeks per mod, you only get 6.5 aircraft per line per year. That would take two years to complete the 787 retrofits. My guess will be two for 788 and four for the 789 (once the 767s and 777s are done). There are new delivery 789s coming in early 2020 (and 13 total next year) so they can afford to run more mod lines and get the retrofits completed.
Oh man does a 777-200 on EWR-HKG mean people will have to sit in the 8 across business class seats for 16 hours
I think there are only a handful of 8-across configurations left, with two of them currently being upgraded to Polaris. It doesn’t seem like they’ll be around much longer.
Steve, does United really have A 777-200 with 8 across? Is that even possible? That is a horrible product. That sounds like a coach product.
I fly AA with only 4 across in Business Class. I just can’t imagine how you’d get 8 across.
rear facing seats.
I just checked and it’s the 6-across configuration (2/2/2). Polaris can’t come soon enough…
And yes, they fly their trunk routes within the US with 8-across 777s. I think they were ex-Continental planes. Also they fly these to Hawaii which is insulting (although better than a 737).
They’re ex-United business class. The pre-polaris standard United seats are the ex-Continental. I and most non-petite men find the 8 across seats fairly comfortable as they have decent length, width and foot space. I prefer them to the ex-continental seats and have no trouble stepping over people.
I agree. I much prefer the 8-across, due to comfort.
People have been saying that United couldn’t profitably keep 2 daily SFO-HKG flights. I guess they were right. I daily would work out fine. Use that 2nd flight for a different city pair that will achieve a better yield.
UA ceding the LAX-MEL route is no doubt due to their inferior hard product (and probably soft product as well) to QF and VA. Nobody is rushing to fly UA except UA FFs.
RE: Los Angeles – Melbourne frequency reduction
Apart from SFO being UA’s predominant west Coast gateway/connecting hub (not to mention Apple’s, and likely other tech companies’ carrier of choice), here again we see the competition killing negative impacts arising from anti-trust immunized joint-venture alliance in full-bloom as the recently approved QANTAS-American Airlines ATI-JV gives that alliance market shares on both ends that United lacks.
So, instead of taking on two other airlines, each of which can funnel passengers via their respective domestic networks, United retreats to its own fortress hub rather than play a distant second fiddle to QF & AA.
And for better or for worse (as long as the folly of these price fixing, capacity setting, schedule coordinating, competition killing, anti-consumer collusive alliances/cartels remain in favor…) , as United should.
Perhaps these ATI-JV cartel/alliances were once viewed as being a consumer/flyer friendly solution when compared to the old regime of restrictive bilateral treaties that limited flights to “chosen” “flag airlines” from each country, but 25+ years later, it looks like the airlines have figured out how to “game the system” in the favor and to such an extent now, that more and more things are becoming as abuse and anti-consumer now, as they were in the “bad old days” of the pre-“Open Skies” era.
And that’s such a shame.
Surely, Alfred Kahn, the Ivy-League (Cornell University) Economist who’s widely credited as the “Godfather of Deregulation”, didn’t have impenetrable duopolies like JFK-London/Heathrow, or other fortress like markets dominated by home country carriers such as Frankfurt/Munich is for Lufthansa-United led Star Alliance; Amsterdam & Paris for KLM/Air France-Delta anchored SkyTeam; Tokyo for ANA & JAL in their respective UA Star & AA oneworld alliances; Seoul for Korean Air-Delta SkyTeam; and now the next lucrative market that on its way to becoming a cartel member’s playground/ATM, AA & QANTAS’ to/from Australia.
And yet, here we are.
That’s “…surely Alfred Kahn … didn’t have impenetrable duopolies and/or fortress-like markets dominated by ATI-JV alliances like … in mind.”
With apologies for the editing error in the above reader comment!
United is going to feel a lot more pain on all long haul routes after the recent MP changes.
Why would anyone choose united for long haul travel anymore? 4 economy trips from lax to SYD or Mel doesn’t even guarantee silver status anymore! It’s crazy!
It’s one thing if they were at max capacity, but they’re not even close. My most recent flight was 40% full with open seats in every cabin! I had a full row to myself in economy plus.
But it’ll be my last flight on united. Switching to delta as at least I can gain status there. United flat out doesn’t care about economy international passengers anymore so I’m returning the favor and dumping them.
Minor edits for auto-(un)correcting misfires, plus “color commentary” for the above:
Perhaps these ATI-JV cartel/alliances were once viewed as being a viable consumer/flyer friendly solution when compared to the old regime of restrictive bilateral treaties that limited flights to “chosen” “flag airlines” from each country, but 25+ years later, it looks like the airlines (actually, bankers, institutional investors & biggest shareholders who are the airlines’ cartel puppet masters!) have figured out how to “game [rig] the system” in their favor and to such an extent now, that more and more things are becoming as abusive and anti-consumer now, as they were in the “bad old days” of the pre-“Open Skies” era.
And that’s such a shame.