United Airlines is opening two new flight attendant bases, in Dallas and Sacramento. The Dallas choice is the real surprise, given American's fortress hub there and United's small presence.
The base locations are solely based on staffing needs. In both of these cases, these are satellites of IAH and SFO. It helps build in redundancy and additional flexibility.
This has nothing to do with Kriby's home or American Airlines.
Current AUS-based flight attendants do not cover trips flown out of IAH. So SMF will not cover trips in SFO, nor will DFW cover IAH.
But United obviously knows where there are concentrations of flight attendants living by their home addresses. If there are enough in any particular city, and enough main-line flying in that city, it eventually becomes cheaper to have a flight attendant base there (and save hotel costs) than to spend the money on the logistics of the new base (airport real estate for a base office, etc).
This is a simple economic decision, nothing more.
DFW is the fourth largest metro area in the US, on track to overtake Chicago and become third. Lots of FAs probably live there because their partners or family live there. Doubt there’s much more to it than that.
With Dallas, maybe a combination of "it's the largest U.S. metroplex without a base at the moment, so maybe the hiring opportunity or demand is there" + maybe we can more easily poach WN/AA employees if the opportunity down the road demands it.
For Sacramento, a solution for the HCOL in LAX/SFO/San Diego but still maintaining physical presence on the West Coast without a lengthier commute in from PHX/Vegas.
“Time to collect on those inheritance taxes!” —Scott probably.
I’m actually shocked you find this shocking, Ben.
These are basically satellite bases. DFW & IAH, SMF & SFO. AUS is also a satellite base for UA to IAH.
AA also does this with RDU & CLT.
I’m not Ben, but thanks for letting me know about that. I was just tying together the other United-related recent-hubbub.
Not sure why this is surprising. DFW may not be a hub but it's a huge metro area while SMF is a cheaper place to live and commute to SFO. Better have bases where FAs actually live than have them commute and risk not showing up to work because they don't make it on the flight…
Flight attendants bases have less to do with the airlines level of service and more to do with airlines trying to make life a bit more convenient for flight attendants. United Airlines has satellite bases in SAN, MCO, FLL, TPA, AUS, PHX. None of these airports except for MCO are focus cities for United. What these cities have are large numbers of United FAs' who live there and United is trying to make their lives easier by allowing those based there to start and end their trips closer to home. Take Delta as another example they have flight attendant satellite bases in RDU, TPA, FLL, MCO, DFW, AUS, PDX, SFO, PHX and LAS. Of those MCO could be considered a focus city for Delta and AUS is a focus city for Delta yet they have all these other bases where they allow FA's who are base there to start and end their trips closer to home.
Not every FA can pick up and move to a hub and I get it commuting is a choice but I also think its good to see airlines acknowledge how tough commuting can be and how disruptive to the operation it can be when crew members have to call out because they can't get on a commuting flight.
I don't understand the bases in Eureka , Calif. or Council Bluffs , Iowa .
When UA takes over AA, they will have flight crews there already.
This is along the lines of other UA satellite bases for flight attendants. I don’t know all of them but there is also one in SAN.
I assume the SMF one is just because it is a more affordable place for FAs to live than SFO.
If Amtrak (2V) and UA/CO hadn’t soured their relationship so long ago it would make sense for them to extend NRSA privileges to each other within the SMF/SFO[OAK] corridor.
^This guy choo-choos…
UA should also expand upon its partnership with Amtrak in the northeast corridor, as should all carriers, because for NYC-DC or NYC-BOS, and everything in-between (no, not DC-BOS), it really should be trains for those under 4 hours trips. Basically, everyone gave up on NYC-PHL for that reason (sorta).
Dallas Stock Exchange?
“As things currently stand, United has roughly a dozen flight attendant bases.”
There are 19 flight attendant bases and with these opening there will be 21.
As previous mentioned the locations of FA bases have more to do with where flight attendants live. This reduces on the number of commuters while allowing people to have their trips begin and end at their home airport. I suspect many SFO folks are closer to SMF and will be happy to shorten their drive.
There is also an IROPS component. The base in Las Vegas helps when someone oversleeps because they have reserves ready to go. Some of the bases like FLL, TPA, MCO are helpful due to the distance to the nearest hub. Still others like BOS allow for faster recovery when storms happen. Given that DFW is where United redirects aircraft when IAH is closed due to weather, having crew there will be a huge benefit.
"I suspect many SFO folks are closer to SMF and will be happy to shorten their drive."
OK... but SMF is a minor airport compared to SFO. UA has about 20 flights per day from SMF and more than 300 from SFO. I don't see how adding a FA base to SMF changes anything for FAs who live in/near Sacramento because the vast majority of the time, those FAs are *still* going to have to commute to SFO. There are simply not enough UA flights to have much impact on the need for that commute.
There has to be more to the story - some reason we don't know about that explains why UA is focusing on such a tiny airport. (Or maybe the plan is for FAs to commute on UA flights from SMF to wherever they start their shifts?)
Flight attendants begin and end all trips at their home base. They can begin and end a 4-day domestic trip with multiple flight segments a day at SMF while never going to SFO.
All it takes is heavy fog to cause congestion at SFO. This will make it easier to get more FAs (including reserves) to the airports they are needed at more easily.
I suspect that the combination of the number of FAs who live in the Sacramento area and the scheduling flexibility it gives UA make this satellite base an easy win-win for the company and its workers.
For DFW, with the new Terminal F (6th terminal) opening in 2027 and AA having the exclusive usage, could UA be allotted some more gates in Terminal E? Currently UA uses terminal E and United Club is located in that terminal too. AA has too much dominance in DFW and it would be nice to see more competition to lower the prices.
That would be perfect! As I said yesterday, UA actually beats AA on price out of there frequently! I've even done some connections through them just to IAH before a TATL leg.
Yeah, something that they can even do is keeping IAH as the business travel hub, but making DFW as the leisure travel hub. Having United fly DFW-AUS would bring the cost down for a lot. AA monopoly on that route hurts our wallet so much. When Virgin used to fly AUS-DFW and I used to fly between the cities way more. With more companies like Samsung, having more international routes from DFW would be helpful. Please compete with AA compete!!! No one ever said their ROD is AA.