I will never understand why the hell we are not flying at least ONE flight a day (a very easy turn for crew) MCO-SJU.

Look, when literally every single competitor - Jet Blue, Southwest, Spirit and Frontier are all heading there (all multiple times a day each) it’s kind of a clue.

The reality is I don’t care how loyal you are to United, there is no way in hell you are flying on us, connecting in IAD or god forbid EWR and spending 8+ hours of your day when there are countless flights non stop on other carriers. You just aren’t.

Just try it. The world isn’t going to end and we aren’t going to be entering Chapter 11 if it fails. I highly doubt it will and I think they would be pleasantly surprised.

I would agree with you, but unfortunately that might not be the case. One of the VPs came by and had a Q&A at my indoc class and when asked about those types of markets (SJU, SDQ, etc…) he mentioned that it’s a tough market. Primarily because those pax aren’t loyal to any one airline and go off of price. Apparently, those carriers run it at a loss from time to time.

That said, I believe UA would be successful on these routes. A lot of people would love to be on a legacy rather than a LCC/ULCC

They might love to be on a legacy, but would they pay for it?

They have proven over and over they will not, hence the cattle car configuration to a lot of those same markets.

that and those pax really know how to fight.

What did you do to get them railed up?

So you think it would be more profitable to dedicate a plane and a gate to a market that has 4+ competitors already offering a higher frequency, instead of finding another city pair that isn't going straight into a competition buzzsaw? If we supposedly have 1000+ routes we think would be profitable but we don't have the planes and crews to fly them, then I'd imagine there's plenty of other opportunities out there to make a buck.

Pretty sure United already has every population declining rustbelt and upper midwest town covered. Probably going to need to spread our wings to some odd and unfamiliar routes soon. Maybe time to try something new and learn some new tricks. When your're green you grow, when your ripe you rot..

There is no single market where there are 4+ competitors into MCO. 2 max. GOL flies a 737. Who wants that. We can expand the joint venture with Emirates in and out of MCO. Not too mention the other Europeans markets that has one to two carriers to it. We can definitely dominate a lot of markets if we wanted too just need planes and crews.

Emirates is apart of no alliance and no JV. The ME3 in general are like this. They use a diluted codeshare with United as long as a EK ticket alongside a United operated flight and that’s it.

With more planes and crews I imagine any carrier could dominate any market, at least I’d hope

You mean like Greenland and Mongolia and all the other stuff we’re already adding this summer? I don’t think there’s an airline out there today that’s more willing to take a few risks than UAL.

True however, we do have a partnership with Emirates. We could expand the partnership with them in MCO to make traveling to Dubai seamless for UA pax and vise versa

Im guessing you are NOT originally from or identify as Puerto Rican or Dominican? They really shouldn't be grouped together anyway, but they are similar in that both are largely that third often overlooked sector that isn't business or pleasure rather what JetBlue calls VFR - (Visiting Friends and Relatives)
We are kind of like a high end shopping mall competing with Target, Wall Mart and the Dollar Store for customers who look first at the number on the tag.

IKR I'd love to drive an X5 and have everyone see me in it, but my Santa Fe gets the job done.

Tony Hinchcliffe said it best…

We did a good job squeezing the ULCC/LCC in the FL market. I bet we can do the same in SJU.

Buy the X5, be an airline pilot

why squeeze anyone anywhere if you can deploy company assets elsewhere and realize higher yields?

it’s no different than you bidding for an efficient high credit trip over some MDG trip.

we should do both.

Because if you squeeze enough, the competition disappears. You’ll end up with higher yields at the end anyways

That still assumes that the “juice is worth the squeeze”. There may just be more juice elsewhere, e.g. becoming more dominant in DEN

I get the sense that our network team knows what they are doing but i am sure they are open for suggestions too…

Intentionally operating at a loss to starve out smaller competition. I believe that was the playbook for Starbucks massive growth in the 90's and early 2000's.......although I'm not sure it's analogous to Airlines in a smaller ( at least smaller than SF Bay Area, Metro NY, LA Basin Houston, Chicagoland and DC metro) market.

Starbucks did not lose money in the 90s or 00s.

You may be thinking of Amazon that was operating at break even as they expanded. They are about the only company that has pulled off the grab market share at a loss, then turn it around model. Hasn’t worked for the airline industry yet, and it’s been tried a lot.

No No... I mean lost money only at certain stores and locations.....They would go into neighborhoods and intentionally operate at a loss to eliminate competition that was mostly small business owners who couldn't match scale.

If you take over the market cap by taking the competition out, those pax will end up on us. Don’t know about the extent of Starbucks, but it seems that’s the strategy of UA and DL at least

DL just cancelled their mco-lhr after barely starting it. Yields just too low.

I did see that, but I wonder if it had to do with Virgin also flying into MCO. I know DL/Virgin codeshare so that was my initial thought. Virgin MCO-LHR always had unfavorable loads for nonrevving

SK was asked about international flights out of MCO at a meeting and his answer was essentially, “I can make a lot more money with the airplanes elsewhere due to the yield.”

Loads to MCO are always full . Has nothing to do with yields. Yields to MCO have always and always will be low. Airlines have to fly there because of what it is. Same for Vegas. Percentage wise very few business travelers. Vacationers dont pay the bills.

which is why MIA/FLL/PBI starts to make more sense these days. Especially since the S Florida area is dependent less on tourism as its main source of income.

Core point here is he didn’t say it’s unprofitable. Just not as much as other locations for a fixed amount or resources.

I suspect it’s why DL pulled their route. It’s not that it wasn’t making money, but that airplane can make more money somewhere else.

I thinks it’s always about how many FC seats they can actually sell and cargo. I would think flying between major business centers will always beat Orlando.

I’m sure that’s the case. NY will almost always have higher yields along with LAX (to name a few), that’s why so many carriers call those cities a hub.

That said, management have alluded to having another hub in a couple of years. In the same convo, they said that the SE is the weakest with regards to our network. They have every other region on lockdown.

MIA won’t be it since AA is there, FLL doesn’t offer enough gates nor infrastructure, same for PBI, ATL has DL, so there’s only MCO/TPA.

That’s from a network perspective.

MCO specifically probably won’t be a hub unless another carrier goes belly up and take their gates. But It also doesn’t make sense to have MCO as a hub right now. We still have a lot of improving to do with the hubs we already have.

Call me crazy, but in a few years when the dust settles, planes are on property (or about halfway through the order book), the new hangers are up, and possibly less competition in MCO, it’ll be a hub.

Heard it here first lol

With the economy heading where it is, airlines planning for a recession, way better chance of closing mco then making it a hub.

That makes zero sense given the management strategy. Though I disagree with you, I respect your decision to exercise your 1st Amendment right on the matter

What strategy is that???

The United Next Plan? I’m not trying to be crass, GPullR, but our management team is pretty vocal about their intentions and what their plans are. Maybe MCO never becomes a hub, but closing MCO/TPA doesn’t make any sense. One last place to park incoming planes, the displacement would hinder growth, and management wants to be full steam ahead with hiring and taking up market share as competition pulls out during a recession.

Even if we’re in a a position where we stopped growth altogether and allowed attrition to right size the airline, a base closure would create displacements and thus hundreds of trining events.

Closing MCO, or anything other base, wouldn’t make sense

Smart people buy low, not sell low... IF the economy tanks there are some really good deals to be made.

It happens all the time. United next is 100% dependent on economy. If we go into recession for 3 or 4 years its all out the window. It's is a plan when things go well. This whole craziness that has been going on for the last 4 years won't last. It never does. There is always something completely unforseen that happens. Its proven itself over the last 40 years.
my point was not mco closing as much as it was about it never being a real hub. It only was opened as a pilot base because of the staggering amount of commuters. It allowed the company to save a fortune on hotels with very minimal expense. Thus why its a better chance to close it then make it a hub. Not that either will probably happen.

zero chance MCO closes. If you havent checked we are hiring all we can from Spirit and Frontier. We have resources to weather a storm, and the strategy of crippling the competition is in full swings with routes, bases, and hiring their pilots. MCO/LAS was only about securing pilots and forcing higher costs on low cost competitors. Its a smart strategy because training costs cant really be reduced, and in fact Kirbys strategy is forcing more costs on airlines whose business plans are based on spending as little as possible. Take away MCO and swa/frontier/spirit pilots will have an argument to decline the UA interview and stay in FL.

Totally fair assessment. I’d argue that this last statement contradicts itself… maybe? If the company saves more than it spends by having MCO as a base, it’ll stay. By the looks of things, it won’t be going anywhere.

Lastly, and I’ll finish with this, I believe the plan accounts for recessions. I’m 1000% positive that they saw a down swing coming at some point and planned for it.l just like we did (or should have done). Whether it was having billions in the bank (something like $14-$16 billion) to weather the storm or growing in certain markets because competitors pulled out, I think we’re gonna be better than we went into this mess.

As always, anything can happen, but I feel like we have one of the most competent management teams out there. Fingers crossed though!

LAS and MCO weren’t opened for commuters. That’s a secondary benefit for those who live there. Poaching from ULCC’s in their own backyard is the goal, along with obvious network benefits.