United Airlines Closing Foreign Crew Bases

I am a victim of United myself. This airline acres NOTHING for people and I mean NADA. I know it’s tough times and I respect all the decisions they have made. It’s HOW they are doing it and with such little care, thanks or support. United is a toxic company once again under the leadership of one of Aviation's worst , Scott Kirby.

The culture of American and United and their relationship with AFA is toxic.

It looks like the big winner is Delta which has stayed union-free and found ways to work through this crisis.

United's London (LHR) crew base is a legacy of its acquisition of Pan Am's LHR routes in 1991. Eventually, I could see it close too. The HKG base made no sense with virtually no regional service on UA from HKG before the pandemic and to serve the normal roster of ORD (1), EWR (1), SFO (2) made no sense, financially. NRT and FRA are larger stations for UA, but even with the NH/UA cooperation, a lot of UA will move to HND.

@shoeguy for both UA and AA, LHR is a very large operation. I would be surprised if they close this base.

Together with Northwest, United (inherited PanAm rights) enjoyed unlimited 5th freedom rights at NRT (well, we were occupied by the US after WW2). There was like a dozen UA aircraft at NRT during the evening bank (similar story with Northwest), making NRT look at a US airport. The 5th freedom flights gradually disappeared, and flights started to shift to HND, now there is no reason to keep a base here.

There are technical intricacies that came into play with the overseas domiciles. I know in some regards, F/As based overseas were considered to be employed in the State of Illinois. e.g. Occupational injury claims for NRT based F/As fell under Illinois statutes. Not sure what other technicalities applied to these bases as to where they technically were employed. So, perhaps CARES stipulations did apply to them?

It might be a good time to take stock about what these unions are actually doing for the staff. Are they helping in some material way?

@ shoeguy - if you had interacted with these foreign base crew, you know they have lines beyond just one leg origin and destination, like HKG base have lines post merger: e.g. HKG-EWR-FRA, or pre merger: e.g. HKG-NRT-ICN, so no, HKG base is not solely for flights out of HKG, simiarily, ORD base have lines like ORD-HKG-SIN as well, no one ever said US base cant fly intra Asia neither.

Hi Ben,
Big fan of your blog here, but i never commented on something. Now I have to... yes, as a stemmcell courier flying out of Frankfurt, mostly to the US, mostly with UA and LH, I think I almost new all in FRA based UA‘s... and i love them and I‘ll miss them and I‘m very sad about this. I‘ll fly wirh UA to IAD next week, and can‘t believe, that there won‘t be any known face on board.
I send my best wishes to all of them, it was always a pleasure, being their guests... they treated me always wonderfull. I‘m from Lufthansa and have tears in my eyes writing this...
i hope I reach a few of my UA crew members. My speculialpersonal greetings and hugs go to France and the Netherlands where few of them live. Thomas

I flew with United Airlines in the 1990's from Chicago to Paris Charles de Gaulle with a Paris, France based flight service crew, when United had a base there. They were exceptional, kind, and very skilled at offering an international premium cabin product. Of course, United's Chairman at the time was seated in First Class with his spouse. I travelled in Connoisseur Class, their Business Class product at the time. A great experience due to the elegant "French" staffing!