United Airlines has updated its winter schedule for 2025-2026, and it includes a gargantuan expansion to Mainland China and Hong Kong. Will these flights actually operate, though, or what’s the intent here?
In this post:
United schedules more China routes, launching this winter
United has loaded several new routes to Asia into its schedule. With these schedule filings, all the routes are expected to launch as of the start of the IATA winter season, in late October 2025:
- Daily Chicago (ORD) to Beijing (PEK) flights, operated by Boeing 777-200ERs
- Daily Chicago (ORD) to Shanghai (PVG) flights, operated by Boeing 787-8s
- Daily Newark (EWR) to Beijing (PEK) flights, operated by Boeing 777-200ERs
- Daily Newark (EWR) to Hong Kong (HKG) flights, operated by Boeing 777-300ERs
- Daily Newark (EWR) to Shanghai (PVG) flights, operated by Boeing 777-200ERs
- 3x weekly San Francisco (SFO) to Chengdu (CTU) flights, operated by Boeing 787-9s — note that CTU is listed as the airport code, but TFU is now the airport used for long haul flights
All the flights are already bookable, though currently only the highest fare classes are available. One would assume that will change soon, as first loading the highest fare classes is standard practice, though that might not happen… we’ll see!
These all represent route resumptions, as these are routes that United has operated in the past. However, they’re all pre-pandemic routes, which haven’t been served in recent years.
We’ve seen a lot of placeholder flights in the schedule for China in recent years, but in this case, we’ve also started to see inventory loaded into the schedule, which is more than we’ve often seen in the past.
Will these routes operate, or are they just placeholders?
These United routes to Mainland China and Hong Kong are now on sale (at the highest fare classes), but what’s actually going on here? Does United actually intend to operate all of these routes, or are these placeholders? A few thoughts…
United does need places to fly its wide body aircraft in winter. United’s South Pacific expansion hasn’t been terribly profitable, and we’ve seen the airline cancel flights there. Maybe United is trying to predict where demand will increase next, and hopes that demand between the United States and China will come back strong. Admittedly this seems like a huge gamble.
Keep in mind that flights between the United States and China are slot controlled, and I’m not sure if United has actually gotten permission to operate these routes, or how it’s able to add so many new routes so quickly. The Department of Transportation (DOT) dormancy waivers for China flights end as of late October 2025, so perhaps that’s part of the motivation here. Presumably those could be extended, though.
Operating a lot of China flights has been challenging in recent years, not just due to lack of demand in some markets, but also because of restrictions with using Russian airspace. Is United scheduling these flights based on the belief that Russian airspace restrictions will end in the coming months? Maybe that ends up being true, but I also wouldn’t assume that it’s a given.
So we’ll have to mark this as “developing” for now, but it sure is an interesting number of new routes to see added to the schedule. If these were purely placeholders, you wouldn’t think that inventory would be loaded.
Bottom line
United has just scheduled six new routes to Mainland China and Hong Kong, for travel as of late October 2025. This includes routes to Beijing, Chengdu, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. I’m not sure what exactly is going on here, and where these routes fall on the scale of placeholders to firm plans. Presumably at least some of these additions are based on the assumption that Russian airspace restrictions will end.
What do you make of these United routes being added to the schedule?
It kinda looks like United wants to be first out of the gate among the US Carriers... and I'd think Air China can offer connections to other destinations within Asia
Those EWR flights are going to be a struggle without Russian airspace. Get ready for payload restrictions
With the current strict bilateral, I don't se UA launching any of these flights soon.
The evidence seems convincing that these are placeholders, but why make placeholders? I assume it's not just incompetence.
These are ALL going to happen. Scott Kirby is on a group Signal chat with Sean Duffy.
he better be on a phone call w/ Boeing to get some jets.
Oh I'm on that chat too!
Oh, Timmy....venting and huffing that United's route network is so much more advanced than Detla. Get a grip, gurl. And stick to your lane.
and yet UA can't generate more profits despite flying more ASMs than DL - or AA - even while nearly every UA unionized employee will have contracts that are amendable by this summer.
Tens of thousands of underpaid UA employees and people like you continue to spout about UA's expansive network that can't match DL's profits despite huge labor cost advantages.
spew on
Why is first loading the highest fares standard practice? Generally speaking, not just in this case.
Purely (very purely) speculation, but I suspect step one is deciding to resume a route with high level revenue management numbers, then later comes the nitty gritty of determining fares for each discounted fare class. Once step 1 is decided, no harm in opening the flight to full fare.
Because UA knows they probably won't actually operate any of these flights, so they want to keep actual bookings as low as possible to not have to refund/reaccommodate so many pax when they cancel the flights.
UA really cooking these days! honestly quite refreshing to see this degree of dynamism from a U.S.-based carrier
in other United news, their 10K mechanics voted to reject UAL's contract offer by over 99%.
“United Airlines’ executives think they can strong-arm 10,000 Teamsters technicians into accepting a terrible deal. Instead, our members just sent a clear message that this company can’t ignore. United’s radical, un-American contract proposal is dead on arrival,” said Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien.
Apparently Timmy doesn’t have a clue on how labor relations negotiations go. Generally speaking, one doesn’t accept the initial opening offer. Because they can always do better.
Do better with your tiny typin’ fingers.
No it is NOT normal for companies to lowball contract offers and then for the union to have the offer the negotiating committee sent for a vote end up soundly defeated by members. United tried it with its pilots and ended up spending twice what they planned after Delta pilots accepted their union and company’s first contract proposal.
And United can’t budget on proposals that haven’t even been agreed on which simply means that...
No it is NOT normal for companies to lowball contract offers and then for the union to have the offer the negotiating committee sent for a vote end up soundly defeated by members. United tried it with its pilots and ended up spending twice what they planned after Delta pilots accepted their union and company’s first contract proposal.
And United can’t budget on proposals that haven’t even been agreed on which simply means that United’s labor costs will increase dramatically when you factor in that multiple labor groups representing over 50k UA employees need new contracts
A whole lot of routes simply won’t be near as profitable at higher costs including to Asia on fuel guzzling 777s
United execs themselves said massive international growth is over but some still are addicted to big route announcements
Might want to check the history of
DL pilot negotiations 2019-2022 there Tiny Tim. Normally pilots don’t vote to strike as they are signing a new deal.
https://www.airwaysmag.com/legacy-posts/delta-pilots-agree-to-strike
you clearly are desperately trying to conflate multiple issues but did UA's mechanics reject a contract proposal or did they not?
Strike votes are what almost universally happens as part of contract negotiations.
DL pilots negotiated a contract worth twice as much post covid as UA offered its pilots.
UA's mechanics union says that UA's mechanics would trail AA and WN's mechanics and risk outsourcing of work to China.
UA's mechanics did not do a...
you clearly are desperately trying to conflate multiple issues but did UA's mechanics reject a contract proposal or did they not?
Strike votes are what almost universally happens as part of contract negotiations.
DL pilots negotiated a contract worth twice as much post covid as UA offered its pilots.
UA's mechanics union says that UA's mechanics would trail AA and WN's mechanics and risk outsourcing of work to China.
UA's mechanics did not do a strike authorization vote. they rejected a contract proposal that they viewed as wholly inadequate compared to their peers.
@justin (below)
UA has said that its labor costs would rise. They set their investor guidance - even w/o disclosing specific numbers - based on their expectations of what they think the union will accept.
UA cannot possibly be expecting to pay every labor group in excess of what they are negotiating.
The inability of some to accept that UA's costs are going to go up, its profits relative to DL will drop, and there simply won't be the level of expansion that many here are dreaming about - even if UA actually accurately filed the schedules here correctly
@Tim useful insight. This could impact United’s financial performance just as all other union negotiations do, as WN and AA can attest.
Hasn't UA been doing this for years now? I wouldn't read anything into it. As you mention, these routes need both the reopening of Russian airspace and additional frequencies to work, and we haven't heard any announcement about this.
UA has been putting the EWR-HKG route on and off repeatedly for the past year, seems like they're constantly trying to restart it and sell tickets but they have to retract it each time. Not sure whether this is just a repeat of that pattern or they actually think something different is on the horizon.
Based on how closely this resembles United's pre-pandemic schedule and equipment, my guess is that these are mostly placeholder flights with the possible exception of ORD-PVG (unless someone at United somehow knows about a big geopolitical change coming up soon).
For one thing, EWR would require Russian airspace reopening and airlines feeling comfortable enough to fly through it, which isn't likely anytime soon. EWR-HKG is near the limits of the 777's range even with...
Based on how closely this resembles United's pre-pandemic schedule and equipment, my guess is that these are mostly placeholder flights with the possible exception of ORD-PVG (unless someone at United somehow knows about a big geopolitical change coming up soon).
For one thing, EWR would require Russian airspace reopening and airlines feeling comfortable enough to fly through it, which isn't likely anytime soon. EWR-HKG is near the limits of the 777's range even with Russian airspace.
ORD-PEK is scheduled on 777-200ERs, which United used before Covid. However, United no longer flies 777s long haul out of ORD and all former 777 routes have been replaced with 787-8s or 787-10s. The only 777s O'Hare regularly sees today are the high-density domestic configured aircraft which are rotated in and out using SFO-based crews.
The third thing is the fact that the Chengdu flight still is using CTU rather than TFU which seems like a pretty big oversight.
(Cue ~25-30% of lil Timmy D’s anti-United rants suddenly deflating)
90% of the rest of the respondents say the same things I said - but go ahead and that I am personally picking on you.
this schedule won't happen.
but I'd love for you to tell us the flights UA will have to cancel if they did get the green light to restart flights that have been suspended due to Russia overflight restrictions.
Placeholders. I don't realistically expect any of these to operate this winter.
The People's Republic of China requiring visas for US citizens deters me from going. Getting visas take planning, something that I won't do for now. It's not like I must go there.
It's true that there are ways to go to China for up to 10 days (240 hours) but a USA to PRC round trip does not qualify.
Surprisingly, not everyone is a leisure traveller.
Just hop over to Hong Kong for the day and reenter to restart the 10 day visa if you want to do a roundtrip ticket
That's not how the ten day visa free situation for Americans in mainland China works. To do that you need to fly in to an airport from one country then fly out to a *different* country. And it doesn't apply at land borders. So a roundtrip from Hong Kong (even though it counts as a different country for the purposes of this visa) won't get it for you - you would need to fly out...
That's not how the ten day visa free situation for Americans in mainland China works. To do that you need to fly in to an airport from one country then fly out to a *different* country. And it doesn't apply at land borders. So a roundtrip from Hong Kong (even though it counts as a different country for the purposes of this visa) won't get it for you - you would need to fly out of HK to the mainland then on to a different country, or fly from a different country then on to HK.
You can enter Hong Kong at least visa free. Not even a stupid ESTA-type pre-registration required.
Interesting that UA is using the larger plane for Beijing rather than Shanghai out of Chicago.
Not necessarily, seeing as that flight might have a higher connecting component, and their primary Chinese partner's hub is in Beijing.
Bigger planes have lower unit costs, which are arguably better suited for the lower yielding nature of PEK/PKX
Pretty sure these are placeholder flights. SFO-CTU can't even operate because all international flights to Chengdu go to TFU now.
Are we sure these flights were newly loaded into the schedule (as in they didn't previously exist as a placeholder), or are they just placeholder flights and UA hasn't gotten around to scrubbing them? For those who haven't been paying attention, the latter has been very commonplace for China and HKG routes ever since the pandemic started, and I'd be surprised if that wasn't the case here.
@ Derek -- At a minimum, there was no inventory previously associated with these flights. A couple may have been loaded and zeroed out, but to see all these flights bookable now (even if at a high fare) is quite interesting...
that is the way UA did it for months after Russian airspace was closed.
again, this is all highly unlikely even if Russia airspace opens - unless UA announced a whole bunch of cancellations of other routes or flights.
There is a clear dfference - over the past couple years United was loading only a couple placeholder flights (EWR-PVG, EWR-PEK being two).
The ones listed in this article haven't even been loaded as a placeholder recently. This is United probably still doing it as a placeholder, but for some reason now sees the need to try to add a significant number of new placeholders.
or someone grabbed an earlier rather than the latest file...
It’s inconvenient that US Citizens need a visa to enter mainland China.
Why can’t the whole world stop with the immigration nonsense and just open up all borders. Borders are artificial constructs limiting the free movement of individuals of the same species. This has no precedence in the animal kingdom.
Braindead take
@Arps - if 'a precedence in the animal kingdom' is that important for you, then how about finding your place at your local animal park? Humans are classified so for a reason.
"Humans are classified so for a reason."
What is that even supposed to mean? There's no special "classification" for humans, relative to any other taxonomic designation.
@ImmortalSynn - is it really that you don't get it, or just saw this as a chance to tackle over? I've seen you doing the latter frequently over the time.
Currently visa-free for tourists...
China has a transit without visa which is permitted for upto 240 hours.
But you need to be traveling to a 3rd country after China, otherwise (if you’re a U.S. citizen) you need a 10 year tourist visa for $140.
Right? No other animals would ever mark or defend their territory!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territory_%28animal%29#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DIn_ethology%2C_territory_is_the%2Cless_commonly%29_real_physical_aggression.?wprov=sfla1
Someone thinks the Ukraine war will end soon!
and the obvious question is what routes get cancelled for all of this to happen.
UA is simply not receiving enough new 787s from Boeing this year in order to make this schedule happen.
unless of course, UA publishes flights that it wants to fly and then never does... that is how their China schedule operated for months after Russia invaded Ukraine...
A friend of mine in Procurement at AA told me the other day that AA was rethinking upgrades on their older 777 fleet and were looking for buyers. Wonder if UA is getting some used 777"s?
The war will certainly not end soon, but the US may join the Dark Side, which would likely open up the use of the Russian airspace by US airlines and possibly increase the demand for China-US travel. Plus with Trump tanking the US-EU relationship, TATL market is already falling, and the airlines on both sides of the pond will need to relocate the capacity somewhere.
most of us are really hoping that the war will end and that it will be Europe that takes the role in making sure everyone stays in their boxes.
If you-know-who pushes it over the finished line 3 years into this thing, at least have the decency to recognize what he does.
now for the Gaza golf course proposal...
several of these are obviously predicated on an increase in the number of allowable US-China frequencies and also removal of the Russia overflight restrictions. EWR-HKG does not work on a 777W with Russia airspace restrictions.