United Airlines To Revamp Tokyo Operations, Launch New Intra-Asia Routes With Boeing 737s
The inimitable Brian Sumers has broken the news that United Airlines is planning to expand its operation of Boeing 737s flying out of Tokyo Narita airport to other destinations in Asia.
United is launching Tokyo to Cebu in the Philippines in October (delayed by the FAA from July). But they’re planning more.
They have pilots and planes based at Guam
And those their Guam operation underperforms
So there’s an opportunity to move some flying to Tokyo, they believe
Sumers interviewed United’s network chief Patrick Quayle and Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella. Nocella offers,
But we have these 737s and a slot portfolio at Narita, and all the feed from the United States on widebody jets, and it created a unique opportunity. This seemed like something we would like to try, and the advanced bookings [for Cebu] indicate that it’s going to be very successful.
View From Hilton Cebu Resort
Pan Am and Northwest Orient had traffic rights not just to fly to Tokyo, but special rights to fly beyond Tokyo to other destinations in Asia.
Delta Air Lines inherited those rights to fly from Tokyo Narita to beyond-destinations, but the airline shut down its Tokyo hub. They got the most slots to fly to close-in Tokyo Haneda, and prefer to connect traffic over Seoul-Incheon onto their joint venture partner Korean Air rather than operating their own flights beyond Tokyo.
United Airlines picked up Pan Am’s Pacific network, which is one reason that United is so strong across the Pacific today. They merged with Continental Airlines, which had its own legacy Pacific operation and a hub in Guam. Continental Micronesia was merged into the larger combined carrier with the merger.
United no longer operates flights beyond Tokyo, to places like Singapore, Seoul and Hong Kong. (They used to fly beyond Hong Kong as well, I’ve had the good fortunate of flying a United 747 from Hong Kong to Ho Chi Minh City in first class.) United’s intra-Asia flying ended completely in 2017.
United Airlines Boeing 747 First Class, 2009
The world is different, demand is different, and United has unique assets worth trying to deploy – to see if intra-Asia flying from Tokyo works, and if not to fail quickly and pivot. Sumers has a good discussion about how United evaluates new routes in his premium Substack that I happily pay for.
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Publish date : 2024-06-14 10:04:29
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