Earlier today, United Airlines announced its international expansion for 2025, and it’s truly unlike anything we’ve ever seen before from a US airline. United already flies to virtually all of the popular hotspots, so rather than just adding more flights to Nice and Venice (though it did that as well), United expanded to places like Kaohsiung, Nuuk, Ulaanbaatar, and more.
Along those lines, I saw something on Twitter/X that I can’t help but share.
Fly a United 737 from Ponta Delgada to Ulaanbaatar
@iTripReport shared a graphic that really sums up how far United’s network has come over time. Specifically, you can now fly a United Boeing 737 all the way from Ponta Delgada, Portugal, to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. That’s 12 segments moving continuously in the same direction, covering a distance of 15,422 miles.
Admittedly from a passenger experience standpoint, this is probably also the least comfortable routing you could do on a US airline. But to me, it really sums up how United’s global network has become such a point of differentiation.
To be clear, I’m not saying United’s global network is amazing because you can fly a 737 across the Pacific, but rather this is more a metaphor for United’s overall network. We can also compare the general route maps across the Pacific of United to American and Delta, and the difference would be equally apparent. United is quickly becoming the Turkish Airlines of the United States in terms of its network.
Before someone else comes out and says it, I recognize that airlines are for-profit businesses that report to shareholders, and that’s fine and all. But as an airline passenger, I look at where an airline can take me, and not its stock price. For that matter, United’s financial performance is impressive, as the airline increasingly enters Delta’s league, and leaves American in the dust.
I think United’s investment in its network will pay off financially, as the airline is playing the long game. It’s not just about the international destinations served, but about how it makes United an airline people want be loyal to, an airline people want to collect miles with, etc.
Patrick Quayle is living the avgeek dream
Patrick Quayle, United’s SVP of Global Network Planning and Alliances, is an absolute visionary, as he’s the guy who has been behind United’s global growth. I’m equal parts impressed by him and jealous of what he gets to do every day.
If you’re like me, and you were an aviation geek growing up, you probably liked taking out a map and drawing lines, and creating your own fake airline route network. Quayle is quite literally living that dream.
I love Quayle’s adventurous spirit with expansion. For example, several months back we learned how United was reducing some operations in Guam, and planned to shift some 737s to Tokyo Narita instead, which is what makes some of these routes possible. As Quayle told The Airline Observer:
“Our job is solving problems and being creative, and not complaining. We have these assets that are out in the western Pacific, so let’s use it to try something different.”
That’s such an awesome attitude. It’s not “oh, let’s go with whatever the safest option is,” but instead it’s “let’s try something different.” United CEO Scott Kirby also deserves credit here, as clearly he’s onboard with this strategy. Quayle could be as creative as he’d like, but if he didn’t have the support of the CEO, this strategy would go nowhere.
Honestly, the contrast between American and United has never been clearer. American has spent the past couple of years trying to kill business travel and focus almost exclusively on domestic expansion. Meanwhile United is investing in its product and building an unrivaled network.
Bottom line
United has been steadily expanding its international network in recent years, but today’s expansion announcement showed a level of creativity we’ve never seen before from a US airline. It’s almost like some avgeek kid is building an airline route network, except, you know, he’s actually running network planning at one of the world’s biggest airlines, and the strategy is working.
Here’s to hoping that these routes succeed, and that this isn’t the end of United’s creative expansion…
Anyone else love to see the direction that United’s network is headed?
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