Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco skyline (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)ASSOCIATED PRESS
Expanding United Airlines on Wednesday announced a major expansion at its San Francisco hub, saying it will add seven new international flights in 2019. The carrier plans flights to Amsterdam, Melbourne, New Delhi and Toronto as well as added service to Seoul.
font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; vertical-align: baseline;">
In August, United had 330 peak daily departures from San Francisco, easily the largest hub on the West Coast. The carrier has said it will expand capacity by 4% to 6% annually from 2018 through 2020.
Over the past two years, United has added 120 new routes including 22 new international routes, said Patrick Quayle, vice president of international network. On trans-Atlantic routes, “we’ve added more flying in the past two years than in the previous decade combined,” he said.
The new San Francisco flights include Melbourne, which United will serve from San Francisco and Los Angeles aboard a Boeing 787-9; New Delhi, which United will serve from San Francisco and Newark aboard a Boeing 787-9; twice daily service to Toronto, aboard a Boeing 737-800; daily to Amsterdam, previously announced, aboard a 787-9; a second daily flight to Seoul aboard a Boeing 777-200ER, and year-round service to Auckland and Tahiti, now operated seasonally.
Besides being the principal carrier in San Francisco, United is also the second largest carrier at Los Angeles International Airport, where it operates 172 peak daily departures, up from 145 a year ago. “Los Angeles is a huge market for us,” Munoz said. “We would love to fly even more, (but) there is not a whole lot of room left to grow” at the airport, where gate space is in high demand and construction is ongoing.
Both executives expressed concerns about the U.S. presence of the three subsidized Middle East carriers. Qatar owns 49% of Air Italy, which said last week that it will begin service from Milan to Los Angeles and San Francisco in April.
“With regard to the Italian version of Qatar, we are strongly opposed,” Munoz said. “It is clearly an in-your-face to the [Trump] administration that will [lead to] a heated moment of exchange. You will see a fairly strong retort, not only [from] us but [from] this administration.”
Quayle said United “would be significantly larger in India” if Emirates, Etihad and Qatar were not siphoning off traffic between the U.S. and India. “We make it work,” Munoz said. “It’s not the easiest thing.”
Questioned about whether Boeing should have provided airlines with more information about a new automated stall recovery system on the 737 MAX, Munoz said “the aircraft is safe and reliable.”
On October 29, a Boeing 737MAX operating on Lion Air Flight 610 crashed after takeoff into the Java Sea in Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board. If the aftermath of the crash, Boeing has been widely criticized for not providing airlines and pilots with sufficient information regarding the stall recovery system known as MCAS for Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation.
United pilots “are properly trained” and “no additional training is necessary,” said Munoz, who added, “You’ve heard from our pilots who’ve said the same thing.”
No comments:
Post a Comment