Is United Airlines Planning A Second Dubai Flight?

I also think this is very likely to happen. If it was to launch, I'd assume United's flight would depart IAD at night (around 8-9pm), since EK's flight departs in the morning. And if UA has spare aircraft in the winter, it would make sense for UA to have a long turnaround at DXB and depart Dubai around 8-9am to maximize connections from that bank of EK flights. This would allow many more efficient one-stop connections from the DC area to cities where flying Emirates currently would mean a long layover at DXB due to the current EK flights timings.

With the airspace restriction, I thought UA couldn't get enough of DXB (and the onboard connections by India's Unofficial National Carrier EK). UA went from SFO/ORD/EWR - DEL and EWR-BOM to 1-2x daily EWR-DEL. DXB's a natural spot for VFR given UA's historical traffic volume and client base.

Would probably leave during the 10 pm bank. IAD is one of the most heavily banked hubs I have ever experienced.

I didn't realize IAD-DXB only flew daily - and in the morning. IAD-DOH is double daily and IAD-AUH is daily evening. Given a UA IAD-DXB would actually have some domestic feed, it makes sense.

Agree, this will probably be the 10 PM bank. I believe when they used to fly DXB and KWI from Dulles, they were at the 10pm bank. The EWR flight leaves at 9:15pm for comparison.

This would a flight resumption as united used to fly from IAD-DXB til 2015

This is not only likely to happen but also will be permanent.
UA has a surplus of widebodies; they made half what Delta made across the Atlantic in 2023 and lost money in the 4th quarter of 2023 across the Pacific when they tried to dump 60% more capacity into the region and only shot themselves in the foot.
The notion that UA held onto widebodies during the pandemic as part of a plan to increase UA's profitability is simply a Scott Kirby fantasy.

UA's India service has been cut dramatically. They are dropping their daytime EWR-DEL roundtrip which did poorly compared to the nighttime roundtrip.
They essentially compete with AA and DL via their JVs to India instead of on UA metal.

DXB is the next best alternative to serve India even though there is no JV so UA only carries the revenue as far as DXB and then has to prorate a chunk of it to EK which is trying to stay relevant in the US and Europe-India market amidst large capacity increases.

We won't see UA try to do in the S. Pacific next winter what it did last year; Japan remains weak. UA's best strategy is to try to compete for traffic in high growth areas of the globe and EK provides a way to do that where UA cannot.

IAD would be fantastic because otherwise it's just Emirates to get to Dubai and it's hard to use miles (except for Emirates miles, of course) to book a rewards flight on Emirates, so we don't have any great options. United is certain nowhere near as good as Emirates, but a direct flight that I can actually use my miles on is a winner in my book.

Your right. I said 8-9pm because I thought for a second that this is the time when Emirates' night flights from the Northeast US depart around. I was wrong, they all depart around 10-11pm (the nonstops to DXB at least). 8-9pm are the MIA and MCO flights (near my home). I also haven't flown through IAD in years, so I forgot about the bank timings. I do think the IAD flight might depart closer to 11pm though, since there is a huge bank of UA flights which arrive in IAD around 9-9:30pm. Given that it's an international flight, boarding will likely start an hour before departure, so UA would likely schedule the departure near 11pm to get all of those connections. And that flight would still be able to arrive in DXB in time for the night bank of departures from DXB.

Manny , Emirates will never join an alliance.

You should stick to Delta. The Cargo pays for all their international flights. Stats that are never revealed.

and yet actual data which UA files with the DOT shows that UA did not make money where you think they did - and it includes all sources of revenue.

UA managed to make $2 billion less than DL in 2023 at the bottom line level.
It would be nice if you and others would quit repeating the same stuff about how well UA does and get to the real facts of why UA underperforms DL.
Throwing excess capacity into markets is a big reason why.

Everyone here, this will be a non stop flight, not a direct flight. Please learn the difference, otherwise, you look silly.

And how stingy is UA on releasing saver award availability, and particularly on international Polaris business!

"Never" is a very long time in the airline business. Only a fool would ever say it.

"The Cargo pays for all their international flights."

And you believe that?

No offense, but you should probably follow your own advice regarding looking silly. All nonstops are also direct flights. Not all direct flights however, are nonstop. Just as calling a square "a rectangle" is not incorrect, so is calling a nonstop a "direct."

It certainly makes a substantial contribution. Back in the day it was said that Qantas and United both had an extremely lucrative air cargo business between Australia and North America that also happened to carry passengers.

I get Emirates is better than United. However, the EWR-DXB route, Polaris is in definitely superior to Emirates 2-4-2 biz class on that route.

United, like all US airlines, breaks out cargo revenue.
In 2023, they reported $1.5 billion in cargo revenue out of almost $54 billion in total revenue.
IOW, cargo amount to less than 3% of UAL's total revenue.
UAL does have the most cargo revenue of the US combination airlines but their cargo revenues are not enough to offset passenger airline losses.

And, again, as much as some people want to believe otherwise, UAL loses money at times of the year on its transatlantic and transpacific systems - and they made $2 billion less than DAL - or less than 60% of DAL's profits despite flying more ASMs.

UAL simply does not do as good of turning all of its flying into revenue as some people think.

None of which changes that I do think another DXB flight will work financially for them but it comes only after they tried to flood the Pacific with capacity during the winter of 2023-24 and all they succeeded at doing was losing money while Delta made as much money in the 4th on a smaller Pacific system as it did in the 2nd and 3rd quarters which were peak travel periods.

United should make as much money as Delta but it is stuff like last winter that proves why that doesn't happen.
When it takes 2 to 3 times for UAL to find profitable places to fly its planes, flights are going to keep changing because UAL is being run by people that understand that United has to make money.

This reminds me of Lucky’s classic blog post “Why I Love the Vibe of Dubai.” The online bard of our time!

I've had great luck getting amazing mileage deals on United business class, but I also like to plan way ahead of time, and I am usually pretty flexible with my travels and just want to go somewhere, so I go where the deals take me.

Emirates' currently deploying A380s with 1-2-1 business seats on IAD-DXB route. In fact there's no plane with 2-4-2 biz on Emirates fleet. I think you meant 2-3-2 777 biz?

I think this is an excellent decision by United!

Crossing my fingers for some seasonal Bangkok flights too!

Give it a year or two. Once NRT-CEB proves successful, BKK shouldn’t be too far behind. And, hopefully year round, not seasonal.

Could it be from IAH (Houston)?