United Adds Flights To Auckland And Tel Aviv

Would love to see some "cheap" r/t business class fares AKL-SFO-TLV. That would rack up 41,814 EQM!

So where will they constantly be diverting to? HNL and FRA? HNL and LHR?

I suspect part of the TLV consideration is that NYC is just a much stronger market for that route, given the sizeable local Jewish population, than PHL is.

I guess UA has pretty much abandoned LAX as a hub but I would have guessed for similar reasons that LAX-TLV might be a stronger route than SFO-TLV.

SFO to AKL is exciting it's just too bad it's United and United's horrible product (both hard and soft). It still boggles the mind to think they are getting these spiffy new long range planes (787-9) and putting in their 1995 Business First (is that meant ironically?) seats....anyway, I say this as a United 1K flier who is finally abandoning them this year.

What Mark said. If you're going to pay for either Y or J, NZ will always be the way to go. And as they're both *A members, earning points can't really be a deciding factor. United is too far behind the power curve to really be considered a viable contender in any market outside the US, save maybe some routes in Asia or the Middle East that are only served by carriers with questionable safety and service reputations.

How many miles for SFO to AKL?
I assume seating should be wide open.
Would you think this would be a good way to use UA points to get to Australia?

@Bgriff, I wouldn't be surprised to see UA open LAX-TLV in the future, but that will compete with El Al's LAX-TLV.

The SFO-TLV route was petitioned by the tech industries in both Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv, as TLV has one of the world's biggest emerging tech centers. That bodes well for high revenue business passengers for UA's SFO-TLV route and with no competition at all from any other carrier. Besides, it's a short hop with frequent hourly flights from SFO-LAX on UA to provide additional feed for the SFO-TLV route.

Hopefully the new flight SFO-AKL will add some much needed competition and lower fares. Flying from YUL to AKL through SFO with AC and onwards with Air New Zealand, econ alone is 3K for the winter months, and J class begins at 8K! Looking forward to some lower fares and more seat availability!

14+ hours on a United flight? No thank you!!!! That would be the last airline among all US airlines I would want to spend that much time inside a plane.

Don't forget that they are also launching Dreamliner service from SFO to Xian, China, starting seasonally next year! Didn't see a post on here about that.

Anyone else kind of bummed the new UA is using a flight number starting with "9XX" over the pacific? should be "8XX"

We posted yesterday about how there is no award availability as yet on the AKL flight. We await developments with interest.

[andrew10412 says:
October 9, 2015 at 2:55 pm

Anyone else kind of bummed the new UA is using a flight number starting with “9XX” over the pacific? should be “8XX”]

Even more interesting is that UA is slowly moving away from the "traditional" flight numbering that segregated pmUA and pmCO flights. The 8xx and 9xx series flights are traditionally pmUA trans-oceanic. But the 787-9 are sCO planes with sCO crews.

In the first paragraph of your Auckland story you should correct the last date to October of 2016 not 2015.

Previously, the only nonstop from the west coast to Israel was El Al's flight from LAX. By contrast, El Al, United, and Delta all operate flights from the New York area to Tel Aviv, and El Al just started BOS - TLV a few months ago. The west coast's Jewish population outside of LA (especially in the Bay Area and Seattle) as well as Silicon Valley's tech companies strike me as able to create enough demand for the SFO - TLV flight.

I cannot imagine why anyone would choose United on the Auckland route when they could bank their miles on Air NZ and actually have a pleasant flight experience. (I say that as Skyteam and Oneworld elite to be fair, but having flown Air NZ's 773 on that route recently I have no clue why anyone would choose UA).

United Airlines. Why would you? Why would anyone? E-v-e-r?

It's the techie guys run from sfo-tlv. Probably a high percentage of revenue biz passengers

Sounds great. Why not off these premium saver award seats for only 10miles instead of 140k as they will sell just as many seats... NONE. The entire schedule for SFO-TLV has no premium saver award seats available. United has a pattern (like Qantas and others) of never offering premium award seats on certain routes and this looks like another one unfortunately.

Has anyone flown United recently now 5 years after the merger? Food is better crews are happier, 787's are awesome, free beer and wine though I wish free liquor would come soon. Glad to see SFO grow for UA. . Now Tel Aviv and Singapore? great news.

It looks like 787 disappears from Nov-March. Any idea why?