United Airlines is significantly reducing capacity to Australia for this upcoming peak season… for a second time (thanks to @IshrionA and @xJonNYC for flagging this).
Continue reading: United Reduces Australia Flights In Peak Season… Again
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Where will the 777-300 that was to be used from SFO TO Melbourne be deployed to?
Usually United uses them to Asia or Frankfurt. Could they use it from SFO to DC or Ewr?
If it's not generating profit, then they reserve 100% rights to make decisions that will move the airline forward
United has historically used the densely configured 772 between SFO - IAD. The route appears to value frequency over premium hard product.
Not sure if the Qantas comment was satire, but I recently flew UA economy to Australia and Qantas on the return. Everything about Qantas was so much better. They gave amenity kits, much higher quality meals, great pillow and thick blanket. Seats were more comfortable and had a lot more recline. Service was better. I get Polaris and Qantas Business may be similar, but UA economy vs Qantas economy is like night and day.
Mostly speculative but not supported by data. Misses a lot of the market dynamics.
Market is not as seasonal as speculation assumes or United's capacity was, but also ignores that market dominated by Australian point-of-sale which Qantas has a stronger position is (of course they have a stronger marketing, sales and distribution capacity in Australia). But then strong US$ (weak A$) has weakened the ex-Australia demand without sufficiently stimulating ex-US demand. See this data driven analysis: https://www.analyticflying.com/p/the-great-united-airlines-australian
The market is still largely driven by Australians.
I think United thought Virgin would help deliver customers. Without realising that Virgin is now just another Jetstar.
Great news. The fewer loud obese Americans visiting Australia the better.
The only thing American tourism does to the world is damage the ear drums of locals and stimulate the “hop on hop off” bus industry.
Australians have a preference for flying with Qantas….hell Americans do too! There’s just NO comparison between Economy at Qantas and Economy at any US carrier. Qantas understands how to do long haul even if you’re in the cheap seats.
Interesting. I’ve generally found American tourists to be amongst the most polite overall, however my observations have all been in Europe where the bar is quite low to begin with.
Thanks for the update Ben. I always have wondered why cargo revenue is never counted when talking about profits for these type of routes?
There simply continues to be excess capacity to Australia and United is the most exposed, having the most flights of the US airlines. None of this is surprising. Flights to Australia and New Zealand were half empty on some days during last year's peak season and upgrades easily scored.
UA probably had planned to use these wide bodies to fly point to point between large US cities (not necessarily United hubs) to the 17 Chinese cities with 10 million+ people, but chilling relationships kind of killed the deal. And demand for Europe couldn't digest all these surplus capacity so Aus/NZ became the beneficiaries, until they too don't have enough demand to justify the cost.
Dude, an Aussie complaining about loud tourists is peak irony. The absolute most obnoxious travelers on Earth.
Quick and 'easy' way to cut capacity. IMO, it's a trade-off of a few cuts here vs 5x the cuts in Domestic, all to achieve the same decrease in ASMs.
My company started only using United Polaris & ANZ for our business travel between mostly Melbourne but occasionally Sydney and USA (mainly SFO). Qantas’ transfers at LAX have gone wrong too many times…
You do know that Australia is one of the most obese nations and they are always whining and complaining. Amongst the worst customers I deal with are Australians and as if they behave abroad lol. No sense of style and don’t understand the concept of talking quietly.
> The San Francisco (SFO) to Sydney (SYD) route was supposed to operate 2x daily throughout the winter season
You don't specify, bu are you talking about the Northern winter (or, more relevant to peak seasonality, the Southern summer?)
Please be more precise!
When you talk AA you need to combine the Qantas routes since it's JV, it's really one airline and those two combine eclipse UA. DL has no Aussie partner so they are a true after thought.
I've worked in cargo finance for a major US carrier as well as network profitability reporting for 2 US carriers and one foreign carrier. Cargo absolutely is included in the revenue calculations and almost never is cargo enough to maintain a passenger flight when passenger loads are as low as loads on UA's flights were reported to be last season. For some reason people on these and other forums like to romanticize about cargo making these flights profitable. My colleagues and I would just laugh and shake our heads, dumbfounded. Cargo is nice to have but it simply will almost never turn a money losing passenger route profitable
And yet Delta made money flying the Pacific last winter while American and United did not.
The data no one wants to believe is real.
United dumped capacity into the Pacific last winter and it back
Yeah @sunviking82 is right, given the immense strength of QF in the US-AU market, and the fact they have a JV, that needs to be considered when analyzing AA’s South Pacific network. As Ben pointed out, given Australians heavily prefer flying Qantas and most demand is ex-Australia, it makes far more sense to do things on QF metal for the JV
Silly me. I mistakenly thought this was an article about United. Apologies for my confusion.
I can understand Australians flying on Qantas as united staff qualities and mentality is far worse
The exchange rate is affecting the number of Aussies visiting the US, too, as it’s quite expensive for Aussies to visit US now.
Really wish they'd do SFO-BKK!
Almost the same distance as SFO-MEL and it connects with TG.
SFO-DPS would be cool if they can offer a 1-2x weekly.
They can't due to the category rating of Thailand being too low. No direct service is allowed at this time.
Sure airlines can and do carry cargo on long haul flights, but one has to consider the payload available. A lot of US-Australia flights are long and can significantly limit the payload available for cargo. It's particularly worse on westbound flights which are significantly longer than eastbound. Just for example, in Dec and Jan United carried an average of 4.4t westbound and 8.6t eastbound. That's pretty slim pickings, especially westbound.
Facts and accurately seeing the big picture are boring if you are the one that was defending a decision that some (a few) of us knew was not sustainable.
I have said for months that for-profit companies can only do what is economically sustainable. UA added tons of capacity into Asia/Pacific, it is well documented that large portions of the capacity esp. in the S. Pacific did poorly, and so it was a given that UA would have no choice but to pull that capacity back in the coming winter.
DL is the last of the big 3 into the S. Pacific and yet continues to grow and add cities. They are not trying to be the largest but actual DOT shows that DL is generating the highest margins across the Pacific which has been one of the most difficult regions for US airlines.
UA has been the share leader since DL started to pull down the NRT hub while AA has struggled esp. from the west coast. DL’s S. Pacific is entirely from the west coast and DL has grown w/o a JV.
Size is clearly not the metric that drives sustainability in the market.
DL says it intends to add MEL and has 2 dozen A330NEOs and A350s coming in 2024 and 2025; some of those aircraft will absolutely be used for Pacific growth.
UA’s attempts to dominate the Asia/Pacific backfired on UA. Some of us saw it months ago.
AA, DL and UA will all have a presence and it is likely, that just like in other parts of the world, UA will be the largest but not necessarily the most profitable and certainly on a unit capacity basis; DL will be second and likely the most profitable per unit of capacity while AA will hold on with a presence, most of which will not make money.
And, let’s once again remember, that AA and UA’s flight attendant contracts will add hundreds of millions of dollars in costs each year which will further degrade their international profits.
The traffic is mainly one way: aussie tourists off to the States for holidays. Not much by way of business travel, relatively speaking. And on the subject of preference (which has already been well explained in previous posts), aussies generally prefer to fly QANTAS over U.S. carriers. Not for any patriotic reasons. Not even for cost (QANTAS is expensive). But because the service and product in QANTAS economy is still better than the competition. I can't stand QANTAS for the wrong direction it took under the now-departed Leprechaun. Given the choice, I will always fly Virgin Australia, Air New Zealand, or some other carrier. But even I admit the economy experience in QANTAS is better.
Dude, please be more precise in your reading comprehension! He clearly states what he is speaking about for the article in the first paragraph. A little common sense goes a long way…
“United Airlines has just updated its schedule to reflect significant capacity cuts to Australia for this upcoming peak season, which runs from late October 2024 until late March 2025”
Why is no one talking about the Almighty Delta and the far superior CASM, TASM, PASM & most importantly GASM that the beloved and exalted Delta can get on the true Queen of the Skies, the A350-900!
DPS won't be getting a mainland USA non-stop, ULR and not enough high yield to cover the expenses of a ULR flight.
There may be a slim chance of GUM-DPS though on the 737s.
The irony of a Aussie complaining about tourists considering their "Bogan" behaviour in the tourist 'bogan' hotspot of Bali in Indonesia.
Once again AA mouthpiece JonNYC has proven himself to be worthless scum -
IshionA’s post had an earlier Twitter time stamp, and JonNYC just pretended it’s his original info without giving any credit to IshionA
Have to agree with the comments about Aussies overseas too. You can always spot which flight is going to Australia by looking for the gate with the worst dressed people.
The worst Australians travelling abroad tend to be those from Queensland (the equivalent of the deep south in the USA)
It's the service (i.e. "the lack of") stupid. A plane is a plane is a plane. Its the service that differentiates if you want to build market share. I also suspect that there aren't big commercial accounts that utilize USA-Australia routes. UA provides huge discount incentives to commercial customers for Business Class in exchange for minimum levels of business.
Also, it is important to the use of "downgrade" to 777 aircraft for ULH flights. The difference between cabin pressurization and humidity control is a huge advantage on post flight "recovery" on carbon fiber bodies over aluminum bodies.
I found United an amazing airline
I believe Australians need to stop being loyal to Qantas. Rather see what is out there. I was booked on qantas recently from Melbourne to Dallas. For family reasons I had to bring my flight forward. I then found out what loyalty was. $A 12000.00 to change my flight. I cancelled it and discovered how good other airlines actually are
United have recently given me refunds when technically it was not necessary. This is service that is lacking on qantas.
Agreed. Flew UA j Akl-sfo this year. Staff very casual and slightly disinterested compared to nz and qf attendants. Also Polaris J chock full of miles and points people from the US. Could tell by their bmi’s and general demeanour that they weren’t cash paying business clients.
Totally. This is what Greg Foran of air nz said. It was the dumping of capacity by US airlines that was affecting the Nz long haul routes.
I flew on June 5th from DFW-SFO-SYD with United. I flew Economy and it was as good an experience as one could expect when flying 15 hours in a tin can. I'm a big guy and even in Economy I was reasonably comfortable. All in all I can recommend United.