Some very passionate aviation geeks had quite the day yesterday, and it probably didn’t go quite as smoothly as they (or the airline) had planned.
In this post:
UA 7 Hub Run: race to visit all United hubs in one day
On Saturday, June 6, 2026, we saw the “UA 7 Hub Run,” as it’s called, which is the second year in a row that this has taken place.
The idea is that some aviation geeks set out on a journey to fly to all seven United Airlines hubs in one day, including Chicago (ORD), Denver (DEN), Houston (IAH), Los Angeles (LAX), San Francisco (SFO), and Washington (IAD).
This isn’t organized by United, though the airline does definitely embrace these passengers. I believe it’s arranged by that guy who made headlines last year for completing a four year mileage run to earn lifetime Global Services status with United — talk about commitment!
So a group set out to take the same six flights, flying to all seven hubs in one calendar day. This time around, roughly 70 people participated, and they had the following planned itinerary:
UA504 Newark to Washington departing 6:00AM arriving 7:22AM
UA1775 Washington to Chicago departing 8:15AM arriving 9:36AM
UA723 Chicago to Houston departing 10:30AM arriving 1:26PM
UA1246 Houston to Denver departing 3:00PM arriving 4:44PM
UA2240 Denver to Los Angeles departing 6:05PM arriving 7:40PM
UA2056 Los Angeles to San Francisco departing 9:34PM arriving 11:02PM
As you’d expect, those are all legal connections, though it definitely leaves little room for things to go wrong, especially early in the day. So, how did everything play out?
This didn’t go smoothly, with eight hours in collective delays
I have to commend the people who organized this for setting up a website with great tracking, showing exactly how the entire journey went (though the times don’t quite match the flight status published by United… though it’s close enough). Unfortunately this year’s trip didn’t go so smoothly:
- The first flight from Newark to Washington departed and arrived early, so things were off to a great start
- Unfortunately due to aircraft maintenance, things went downhill very quickly with the second flight, from Washington to Chicago, and that was delayed by over two hours
- United didn’t want these passengers to miss their connections, so United ended up holding the flight from Chicago to Houston for well over two hours, so that passengers could make their connection
- It’s hard to make up time when there’s not much of a buffer in the schedule, so roughly that amount of delay was maintained most of the way, though a little time was always made up
- In the end, the last flight, from Los Angeles to San Francisco, ended up being delayed by around 30 minutes
The collective delays across flights added up to around eight hours.
Man, talk about bad luck! I’m sure people will have conflicting takes on United holding flights for these passengers. United does have its ConnectionSaver program, where it will sometimes hold flights for late arriving passengers, based on a variety of operational considerations. Suffice it to say that a delay of hours to wait for connecting passengers probably doesn’t happen very often, though.
Some people would argue it’s kind of unfair to other passengers who actually had somewhere to go. Like, “sorry you’re going to misconnect on the way to that funeral, there are frequent flyers who are trying to fly to all hubs today” doesn’t have great optics.
At the same time, these avgeeks were paying for their tickets, and were largely high value customers, with a disproportionate number of passengers being Global Services and Premier 1K members. Furthermore, they were traveling as a group of 70, so they probably made up close to half of the passenger numbers on some of these flights, so that’s also a lot of passengers to leave behind.
So yeah, everyone can decide for themselves what they make of this. Personally, I commend the passion… talk about a memorable day!
Bottom line
A group of around 70 people attempted to take six flights to visit all seven United Airlines hubs yesterday, flying from Newark to Washington to Chicago to Houston to Denver to Los Angeles to San Francisco. This was the second year in a row where such an event was organized by a passionate Global Services member.
Fortunately for them, it worked out… but not without a little help from United. A significant maintenance delay on the second flight meant that travelers would’ve misconnected. However, subsequent flights were held — in some cases by hours — so everyone made it to San Francisco with a delay of only around 30 minutes, in the end. However, collectively, they racked up around eight hours in delays. Talk about a rough travel day, eh?
What do you make of this UA 7 Hub Run concept?
Why the example is always about going to a funeral or a wedding?
#stupid. Pls don’t say, ‘this is what they like to do, like others might like to play golf for the day’. Nope. Objectively this is a colossal waste of time/energy/money etc. as is golf, BTW.
I did something similar in 1989. I finished spring term at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. My truck and mother was on its way to California from back east. We planned on driving up the ALCAN. At that time United’s 10:30pm FAI-ANC 727-22 continued south with stops at SEA-GEG-SFO then ended at MRY at my sisters place where my truck was waiting. I left FAI around 11pm and landed in MRY around noon the next day. Same aircraft all the way through.
In the third or so paragraph, you mention seven hubs and then list only six airports. I think you’re missing Newark.
70 people misconnecting is basically a cancelled flight to deal with.
Probably was less overall disruption to hold one or more of the flights. Though sounds like DEN-LAX might have the only one held longer than otherwise given teh same plane used IAD-ORD-IAH-DEN
Tell me you're an incel without telling me you're an incel.
Sorry, I am calling BS on blaming connection saver for the length of the delays. Two of the connections ended up being over 2 hours long - way longer than necessary for people to make it to another gate. One of those was on the same aircraft. 2+ hours between flights on a narrowbody? UA should use their Asia hubs to learn how to operate efficiently.
I benefitted from UA connection saver at two of...
Sorry, I am calling BS on blaming connection saver for the length of the delays. Two of the connections ended up being over 2 hours long - way longer than necessary for people to make it to another gate. One of those was on the same aircraft. 2+ hours between flights on a narrowbody? UA should use their Asia hubs to learn how to operate efficiently.
I benefitted from UA connection saver at two of their hubs, SFO and GUM. In both cases the flights were held just long enough to make it to the next gate at a reasonable walking pace without any stops - not for hours.
UA could "lean in" to this and have a special run where the same plane does the whole route. Everybody wins: There's no danger of misconnecting, UA gets a PR win, and normal pax don't get delayed.
Of course they could get delayed: a delayed rollover will impact the passangers of the following flights.
"subsequent flights were delayed - sometimes by hours" ... Quite Unfair to legitimate pax .
How were these not "legitimate" passengers? There's no suggestion they were comp'd so they purchased their tickets, or used miles/points, just like everyone else. It's no different than any other large group traveling and having to make a connection.
They flew Delta back to Newark
Is that one of those 737-900s that Delta flies transcon (SFO/LAX-JFK/EWR) while United offers a mix of Polaris on 787 (best), 757 (2-2 lie-flat), or 772 (2-4-2 rear-facing lie-flat)?
(At least EWR Terminal A does have a beautiful new Delta SkyClub, UnitedClub, American Airlines Admirals Club, and soon-to-be brand-new massive Amex Centurion…)
If my flight had been held for TWO HOURS so this group could continue having a fun day out I might be a little upset.
(Maybe, hear me out, we should have an EU-261-style rule in the US, so that delays like that, under the airlines’ control, would lead to compensation for affected passengers…)
Except in LAX and DEN the arrival and departure dates were otherwise identical. So I suspect it isn't that UA was holding the aircraft but rather that it was the same aircraft, no?
Wow, what a bunch of dorks
(The lady doth protest too much, me thinks…)
Very cool. Good on them!
Counterpoint. You want to go for lunch to your favorite little restaurant. The door is open because it's blocked by a line of 70 people. They don't care about the food, drinks, service, or price. They're part of a club and today they're "Occupy Restaurants." When they're done holding all the tables preventing other customer or "turns" they'll go to the next one.
Seven restaurants in all. Regulars can't go...
Very cool. Good on them!
Counterpoint. You want to go for lunch to your favorite little restaurant. The door is open because it's blocked by a line of 70 people. They don't care about the food, drinks, service, or price. They're part of a club and today they're "Occupy Restaurants." When they're done holding all the tables preventing other customer or "turns" they'll go to the next one.
Seven restaurants in all. Regulars can't go in. Tourists are frustrated. The restaurants don't want to turn down the customers even though there's no real revenue coming.
Seems a bit antisocial egotism is in play. So 70 people got to try their plan, the "big win" being bragging on social media. Works for Trump.
Your counterpoint is inapt. You posit "the restaurants don't want to turn down the customers even though there's no real revenue coming." There's nothing to suggest that the members of this group were not revenue passengers - either by purchasing their tickets with cash or using miles/points. Your counterpoint would have had to be that your favorite restaurant had half of its seating taken up by a party someone was throwing, or some other one-time event.
The same fleet was to cover IAD-ORD-IAH-DEN anyway on that day, that the subsequent delays are probably not really related to those 70 passengers. Although, UA could have substituted fleet but it didn't. DEN-LAX was definitely waiting for them though. 2 hour delay might be inconvenient for some.
Especially those connecting to transpacific flights in LAX.
So glad we are past the point where idiotic leftists are gluing themselves to stuff to protest climate change. 4 years to act...5 years ago! Now it's ok again to take completely needless flights. Small wins.
Apparently you confused OMAAT with the Slack channel for White House OMB.
Zing! Jack! Got’em! Bahaha!
(Don’t worry, Dr. Mantis Toboggan abandoned us and now lives in Asia.)
It makes sense for United to hold a flight for 70 people as that’s a lot of people to rebook! What disappointed me was that these 70 people didn’t continue westward to HNL and do the island Hopper to Guam. That would had been an even more epic trip and you know none of these 70 people would had slept the whole time.
A few of the group apparently did this today as a follow on
Wow. How lame are the lives of those people…imagine thinking this is actually a good use of time and resources.
Can we not ‘yuck’ others ‘yum’ …for once?
Wow, you all need to get a life
You first.
Honestly with ~70 passengers all at risk of having the exact same misconnect, I would suspect United's standard policies / connection saver would have actually held it for that long, assuming it wasn't causing an incremental cascade of 70+ delays on the other end for other passengers.
That is an awful lot of people to leave without... And most likely the standby list couldn't make up that many seats. I've seen flights delayed an...
Honestly with ~70 passengers all at risk of having the exact same misconnect, I would suspect United's standard policies / connection saver would have actually held it for that long, assuming it wasn't causing an incremental cascade of 70+ delays on the other end for other passengers.
That is an awful lot of people to leave without... And most likely the standby list couldn't make up that many seats. I've seen flights delayed an incremental hour for ~20 passengers to connect so 2 hours for 70 seems reasonable. Now the one I observed was an international flight so there's an opportunity to make up a lot of that hour delay in flight (it was a ~10 hour flight) and the misconnect implications on the back end are pretty minimal as it was landing in Sao Paulo.
So someone misses an international connection out IAH on a trip they and their family have been looking forward to due to a stunt by some super avgeeks? Hopefully, United checked on that before massively delaying the flight.
very impressive how UA handles delays and connections
Great. I haven't seen it covered but what about the the Lounge Crawl?
I’m hopping to join next year and I don’t think I would have become such a geek without OMAAT.
Same - I’d do this for Delta, American, or Alaska too. This seems kinda fun. I think we need Tim D., MaxPower, and rebel to do this with each of their respective “rival” airlines as well.
Great spin on a story. Missing a few facts including it was not an eight hour delay for these travelers. It ultimately was 20 minutes. What you're not looking at is all of the travelers that made it 6 hours early because United pulled in another plane after the breaks issue. The delays had nothing to do with the passengers on board but a mechanical failure.
You also seem to not have the facts...
Great spin on a story. Missing a few facts including it was not an eight hour delay for these travelers. It ultimately was 20 minutes. What you're not looking at is all of the travelers that made it 6 hours early because United pulled in another plane after the breaks issue. The delays had nothing to do with the passengers on board but a mechanical failure.
You also seem to not have the facts to share all the things United did to get all of the non-hub runner travelers to their destination, including rides in LAX over to the international terminal and having non-United flights held for people. I guess some people will do anything for a good head.
@ Sandy -- I'm sorry if you feel I wasn't fair, but there's not intended to be any spin to this story. As I said, I think this is a fun concept, and I commend the people who participated in it. I try to be balanced, though, and look at all sides of something.
I was suggesting that *other* passengers collectively suffered eight hours of delays, not the people who were just flying between hubs...
@ Sandy -- I'm sorry if you feel I wasn't fair, but there's not intended to be any spin to this story. As I said, I think this is a fun concept, and I commend the people who participated in it. I try to be balanced, though, and look at all sides of something.
I was suggesting that *other* passengers collectively suffered eight hours of delays, not the people who were just flying between hubs all day. You're right, those people were barely inconvenienced, and I think that also gets at the point I was making, about how there's another side to this.
Thanks for replying. You are still missing the point though. You are talking about the passengers that the HubRun inconvenienced and not all that got to their destination because of United getting involved. You also seem to want to blame an airplane breaks failure on a group of travelers.
Try a new headline that isn't clickbait - Almost 70 United Airlines Loyalist had an incredible journey! It
@Sandy how do you know all the other pax made it to their destinations in a reasonable amount of time?
Sign me up for BOS-JFK-ATL-DTW-MSP-SLC-LAX-SEA, said nobody ever.
Don't forget RDU, AUS, and CVG... /s
yeah they ain't holding those planes for you lol
I was wondering if you'd need to do LGA & JFK but I guess not ;)
Max Power: Kids. From now on, there are three ways of doing things: the right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way!
Bart: Isn't that just the wrong way?
Max Power: Yeah, but faster!
If the flights were held by some kind of automated system at United, then that's that.
But it was a stunt. If someone at United was deliberately holding flights to avoid a PR embarrassment, they owe the hundreds of needlessly delayed pax that weren't part of the joy ride some serious compensation.
any automation that automatically holds flights for even 30 minutes w/o human input is and should be classified as a failure.
UA has no such system; it was an intentional choice to tank their operation for the benefit of a PR stunt that simply proved why UA runs a second tier operation.
did I mention UA's bottom of the barrel baggage handling? :-) :-) :-)
A very unchristian last line Walter. A ‘good shepherd’ would care about the ‘flock’ of a neighbour and not mock the afflicted.
However, as you choose make mileage out of this situation Wayne, then I will feel free to do so at your expense too. What goes around comes around Ex-Mayor, yes?
Absolutely!
Holding planes for an hour and a half plus for people "trying to fly to all hubs today” doesn’t have great optics"
Best words of the internet today
UA is always about the fluff more than the substance
Let me top UA off today about fluff with Tim Dunn.
@ Tim Dunn -- We're waiting to learn which EWR-LAX frequencies UA operates with 737-900ERs, please!! These are the important details!
we're also waiting for the far bigger number which is how UA went from a better operating profit in 1Q2025 than DL to a $1.6 net income deficit to DL for the full year 2025.
as for the flight on the 739, please do check flightaware
our data is always correct
signed,
your flightaware account rep.
Flightaware has no record of UA flying 739.
As always, our data is always correct.
That Tim Dunn hole is lying.
Signed,
Your flightaware account rep.
Eskimo, you are wasting your time waiting for the one term Mayor of Lilburn, GA, to reply to your questions. A quick look at the publicly available information will give you a true picture of the personality behind the login name.
This is awesome! Now, where are the Delta-freaks and American-fanatics to do the same with their hubs?
I feel on the second day they should have flown SFO-HNL-GUM-NRT
Don't neglect the ROR!
And then continue on ROR-MNL
AA has too many hubs! New York (JFK/LGA), PHL, DCA, CLT, MIA, ORD, DFW, PHX, LAX. I asked ChatGPT about a hypothetical route and the conclusion generally was even going east to west you're probably going to have to spread it over two days, either working in a redeye somewhere or just having a long layover. The problem is getting in to, say, PHX, too late to catch the last flight to LAX. Oh well.