United announced some impressive expansion out of San Francisco yesterday, whereby we’ll see United launch 787 flights to Auckland and Tel Aviv.
United’s new San Francisco to Tel Aviv route
United will be launching 3x weekly Boeing 787-9 flights between San Francisco and Tel Aviv as of March 30, 2016.
The new flight will operate with the following schedule:
UA954 San Francisco to Tel Aviv departing 8:00PM arriving 8:10PM (+1 day)
UA955 Tel Aviv to San Francisco departing 12:55AM arriving 6:00AM
The 14hr10min eastbound flight will operate Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, while the 15hr5min westbound flight will operate Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays.
This complements United’s twice daily flights between Newark and Tel Aviv, which are operated by 777s.
United’s new San Francisco to Auckland route
Perhaps even more interestingly, United will be launching service to a new destination as well. United will launch 3x weekly Boeing 787-9 flights between San Francisco and Auckland, New Zealand, as of July 1, 2016. The flight will become daily seasonally, starting in October 2016.
The new flight will operate with the following schedule:
UA917 San Francisco to Auckland departing 10:45PM arriving 6:55AM (+2 days)
UA916 Auckland to San Francisco departing 1:20PM arriving 6:40AM
The westbound flight is blocked at 13hr10min, while the eastbound flight is blocked at 12hr20min.
What makes United’s new flights so interesting
Both of these new routes make perfect sense. It’s nice to see an airline being a bit innovative with new routes. Tel Aviv is clearly a very strong market for United, and the airline has also been talking about expanding to Auckland for quite a while now.
Years ago, Houston to Auckland was supposed to be the launch route for United’s 787, though that never came to fruition. Instead Air New Zealand recently announced flights between Houston and Auckland.
So what makes these new routes so interesting?
The Tel Aviv route is interesting because American has just one flight to Tel Aviv, which is operated out of Philadelphia. And they’re cutting that route in early 2016, thereby pulling out of Tel Aviv altogether. American claims they haven’t turned a profit on the route in six years. It’s bizarre to me how United can make twice daily flights to Tel Aviv work, and now they’re adding even more capacity, while American can’t even make a single flight work. I wonder if the additional frequency has anything to do with American pulling out.
Furthermore, the Auckland announcement comes shortly after American announced that they were expanding their partnership with Qantas, and launching flights between Los Angeles and Sydney. During that announcement American also expressed interest in soon launching service to Auckland, though no exact details had apparently been worked out yet. I do wonder whether the timing of United’s flight to Auckland has to do with them wanting to beat American to New Zealand.
Bottom line
These are exciting new routes for those in the Bay Area, and certainly add value to customers, rather than the typical capacity dumping we’ve mostly seen from airlines lately when it comes to adding flights.
The new Tel Aviv flight will become bookable as of October 10, while the new Auckland flight will become bookable as of October 17, 2015.
What do you make of United’s new flights to Auckland and Tel Aviv?
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