fishforfun

Florida. The answer you’re looking for is Florida.

Gone Flying

UA was the biggest airline to Europe last summer by seats scheduled, so we don’t even lead across the Atlantic, and one glance at our Asia/ Australia/ South America route structure shows there is definitely room for growth in those markets. Throw in 65 767s that are all 20-30 years old and 32 330s not much younger and I don’t think we are as far ahead on the WB deliveries as you seem to think we are.

blue vortex

And that's what it is....."a glance" at our age route structure. Reality is different, our Asia loads suck, I know, I fly those routes. And as far as Australia/NZ goes we have a ton of competition there. I would not be surprised if NZ fails as did Tahiti. South America is generally low yield as is India. And as being far ahead, I get your point that we are not, but my point is these will be replacement aircraft. 763's will be replaced by 330s. Some existing 330 routes will shift to 350. And they won't be coming any time soon. I don't see much growth potential internationally. My comment about being Europe sewn up wasn't the fact that we are the biggest it's just that our route structure is fully fleshed out. That would be a better way of putting it. If we expand internationally, what specific cities would we target?

170Till5

I heard we were targeting Africa more and the Middle East, like Egypt for example… and then the whole Middle East blew up, so that’s on the back burner for a while now.

Gunfighter

We used to fly to Cairo and Amman in addition to Tel Aviv. I suspect BOM is still on the list of future destinations as well. Our expansion of SYD and addition of AKL utilize our current WB fleet while waiting on Asia. I have confidence our network planners can find use for a dozen or more new WB.

iaflyer

Like other have said, I think an Airbus WB order in 2024 would be a 767 and A330 replacement. The 767s (some 25 years old) are due for replacement shortly, if not only for the not-competitive business class. The 330s, oldest is from 2003, so end of decade replacement is likely for them.

Add in some A350-1000 to get the very long range like India and maybe some unique places like Nairobi/Singapore/HKG. CAI/AMM/IST were all destinations back when, maybe they make sense again.

I don't see much medium sized cities China like United is doing, as US/China relations are a bit chilly and we don't even serve the big cities very well.

Buck Rogers

Can say unequvically, ALL those destination are cool. Did ALL(*) of them and had great fun since they wern't daily departures. That dictated 2-3 day layovers. Took my wife(kids/their girlfriends) to most of them and several times to some(CAI/AMM/IST). I hope Delta re-engages. I prefer NR on our metal.

* Never got to Nairobi but had 2 on my schedule the 1st month they were to start up service.

Gone Flying

im not a network planner and I know we have people that make those decisions, but UA has been very bullish on their international. SK has stated they are making money on just about every international route they fly as of a few months ago. I’m not saying we need to order 200 growth WBs tomorrow, but there is definitely potential.

what makes you think PPT is a failure? If it was why did they bring it back? Honestly with our Air France connections we should be doing great on that route.

if NZ fails that’s on us, UA and AA have both successfully expanded NZ service in the past year or 2. UA now flies to Christchurch as well as Auckland.

it looks like UA currently has 20 year round intercontinental destinations out of SFO. I’m sure we could fly at least half that profitability out of LAX (the largest O&D market in the world) easily. (I count 7 for us currently out of LAX, UA also has 7 year round destinations out of LAX in addition to their SFO flying.)

AA has been very profitable in their SA flying, and now we have a partner in LATAM, I’m sure we could make money on more routes.

Tinpusher007

BOM, perhaps DEL as well and maybe we'll stick our thumb in AA's eye and steal their proposed SEA-BLR if the tech traffic can support it. There have been unsubstantiated rumors of MEL. Plus the company has stated their intention to make ICN our "Asian AMS". Filling that out includes LAX and JFK which have both been mentioned directly (I know I know) and also SLC with the right a/c whatever that winds up being. I dont think CAI and AMM require the performance of an A350 at least not in terms of range from NYC which is where I assume we would relaunch those services from again. This mgt team isn't a fan of a lot of CAPEX for new wide bodies so if they are making the investment to the extent that negotations have taken an entire year to hammer out, they must have plans for these jets. TPE kind of popped out of nowhere so perhaps they are keeping their eyes on market opportunities on our metal. That said, Im expecting to be somewhat underwhelmed by this order but something is better than nothing.

iaflyer

I never did the AMM, that was pretty senior. But I had some great trips to all the other places NYC ERB flew to. I remember when Nairobi cancelled, I think they even had a crew in Nairobi ready for the return flight. Had we kept the 2008/9 schedule, I probably would of stayed on the ER until I could of upgraded on it. The trips were that good!

I think I didn't get to AGP, GEO, KBP, OTP, LYS but hit all the others.