United Announces New Routes To Europe, Including To Iceland

It's so sad to see how the ME3 are destroying the heroic US airlines' international networks and driving them toward bankruptcy. I sure hope the government acts soon.

@Doug - guessing your last name is "Parker"?

these are certainly a lot more exciting than watching AA cancel JFK-ZRH and force move it down to PHL, or DL who can't get anything done without a JV or equity investment.

Curious to see how UA does even with seasonal service to Zurich. As I understood it, the current SFO-ZUR flights served by Swiss' "Roche Coach" are subsidized because of the pharmaceutical's presence in South San Francisco needing a non-stop back to company headquarters and are generally not turning a profit. Plus, they're both *A with no other direct competition. Doesn't this seem counterintuitive?

*ZRH...not ZUR

@AdamR - if UA didnt think they'd make money on it, they wouldnt fly it. Period. Plus, they have full immunity and revenue sharing with LX. They definitely worked with LX to make this happen. UA doesnt just fly flights for the fun of it - they do it if they think they will make money. If it doesnt come back in 2019, that'll tell us they didnt make money.

@Jason - Given the recent reversal on Basic Economy, I'm not sure UA's making the most informed decisions at the moment. 😉 But I hear ya. Still seems peculiar, though. We shall see in CY19, I guess.

I'm more curious why United is leaving a 788 on the ground in Zurich for 23hours 40 minutes? The outbound Zurich flight departs 20 minutes before the flight from SFO arrives.

@Phil - the arrival from San Francisco probably turns another flight, like Washington. The IAD flight arrives early in the morning, so that inbound from Dulles makes up the San Francisco departure. And the inbound from San Francisco makes up the Dulles departure. This is likely, given that UA has announced that it's moving 788s to Dulles from Houston. So they're not leaving a plane in Zurich for a day. this is just an efficient movement of airplanes.

@Jason I hope that's the case, was just curious since they haven't loaded or announced an equipment swap yet for the IAD or EWR flights yet, and they're still showing the 763/4s on the east coast routes for that time period. I'm sure it'll update as we get closer.

Hopefully UA has an agreement with local police in Iceland already, got to know how to pull people from planes that agrees with local regulations...

@Alan - really? Are you serious?

That's a lot of summer seasonal flying, what do they do with all those planes in the winter?

Wow. What a nice surprise. My "portuense" friends must be feeling very proud with this achievement.

The fact is that United has the best international route network of the US airlines. It will be a massive improvement and extremely impressive network once the new Polaris seats are installed, but those need to be installed on all the 787s and not just new deliveries and 77WS. Crossing fingers for installs going faster than planned...but not holding my breath.

@George

Portuenses with an "s" for more than one. Portuense when it's one person. Just a small portuguese class 🙂

Doesn't Wow fly out of Newark? It's gotta be like half the price of United; is there that much pent up demand to Iceland? I was there in June but the country wasn't that hopping...

They are also axing services. We lose our daily antique 757 rotation Newark to BHX in October. Use it or lose it, sez UA.

I'm surprised to see United adding two months to the DC to Lisbon seasonal service but not doing the same for their DC to Madrid seasonal service. Every time I ride that DC to Madrid flight early in the season, it is packed. I'm also wondering why United doesn't operate a DC to Madrid to Barcelona flight in the off season.

So where will these fit on the Polaris roadmap? I'm not familiar with United's current biz class - how do these 4 routes compare?

All good routes. Ps UA has not yet added a South West link to their basic economy fare box, as I've asked.

1. I first sat on the AA 64/65 JFK-ZRH flights uh 20+ years ago. Same antique 767 since then. Every year I kept asking: gonna ever put a newer aircraft on this route?

2. Reykjavik is an odd one. WOWAir presently seems to be offering the cheapest-ever NYC flights to TLV via KEF ($138 ow). And aside from WOWAir there are so many cheap flights to Iceland now (hello WizzAir) how does anyone expect to make any money on this route? And moreover where are all these budget tourists going to stay in notoriously-expensive Iceland? Though I guess I must have said the same thing about Norwegian. Maybe as some have speculated Norwegian won't be around next summer, so there's that...