United will add non-stops from San Francisco to Munich (Photo: Flughafen Munchen)
With United executives promising in recent weeks that the company would focus on building up its domestic network, the carrier just announced 47 new daily roundtrips will be added to its summer schedule, almost all of them in domestic markets.
The one new international route included in the announcement is San Francisco-Munich, which will operate on a seasonal daily basis starting May 24. United will use a 787 on the route (which is already served by United’s Star Alliance partner Lufthansa).
On another key international route – Newark to Tel Aviv – United said it will up-gauge one of its two daily flights to a new 777-300ER, equipped with the airline’s new Polaris business class. That change, which takes effect May 5, will make EWR-TLV the second international route to get the new aircraft. (The first will be SFO-Hong Kong, where a 777-300ER will replace United’s 747-400 service starting March 25.)
New domestic routes added to United’s schedule include five from its San Francisco hub, six from Chicago O’Hare, two from Denver, and one each from Newark and Washington Dulles. MileagePlus members should be aware that because these routes were just announced, there should be plenty of award seat availability right now.
United’s new Polaris cabin on the B777-300ER, going onto the Newark-Tel Aviv route in May. (Photo: Chris McGinnis)
The new San Francisco routes, all starting June 8, include three flights a day to Santa Rosa, California (a very short route – 65 miles as the crow flies); two a day to Spokane; and new daily service to Cincinnati, Detroit and Hartford Bradley. The announcement did not specify the aircraft types on each route.
From Chicago O’Hare, United will begin three daily roundtrips to Rochester, Minn., and three a day to Champaign/Urbana, Ill., beginning June 8. On the same day, it will start new daily service from ORD to Charlottesville, Va.; Reno; and Spokane. And on August 1, United will begin twice-daily service from O’Hare to Columbia, Mo.
Other new routes include twice-daily flights from Washington Dulles to Springfield, Mo.; daily service between Newark-Sacramento; daily flights from Denver to San Luis Obispo, Calif., all starting June 8; and daily Denver-Columbia, Mo., service beginning August 1.
United is adding a new route from Denver International to Hawaii (Image: Jim Glab)
The company also plans to expand some existing routes from seasonal winter service to year-round operations this summer. Effective June 8, that includes San Francisco-New Orleans, Chicago-Tucson, Dulles-Ft. Lauderdale, Newark-Salt Lake City and Denver-Kona. On July 1, service from San Francisco to Kalispell, Mont. (gateway to Glacier National Park) also becomes year-round.
United also said it plans to increase frequencies in 15 existing markets. United will boost its Atlanta schedule to eight flights a day from both Washington Dulles and Newark. Newark-Detroit goes up to seven daily roundtrips. The new daily frequencies in other markets include Denver-Albuquerque (5); Denver-Ft. Lauderdale (2); Denver-Orlando (4); Denver-Tampa (2); Newark-Portland, Ore. (2); Dulles-Jacksonville (3); Dulles-Providence (4); Dulles-Portland, Me. (4); Dulles-Roanoke, Va. (3); Dulles-Charleston (S.C.), 3; Chicago-Ft. Lauderdale (3); and Chicago-Ft., Myers (2).
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It’s not the biz traffic that would support Rome-SFO, it’s leisure, which is very heavy– sometimes it feels like there are more Italians in SF during the summer than Americans! So perhaps a seasonal flight would make sense.
Given that SFO isn’t very good for onward connections, other than Hawaii, any flight from Europe to SFO has to be justified by the traffic that starts and ends there.
Given that there are many airlines that travel that route with one-stop, there has to be a question of whether the loads would be sufficient to justify those long routes. Italy and Spain are not the businesses destinations that the UK and Germany are, so it would be lower-yielding tourist travel and high-cost legacy airlines with older planes are not the perfect fit..
The Santa Rosa service is presumably to feed passengers from Sonoma and Napa Counties into SFO for connections further afield. I can’t imagine many people flying solely from SFO to Santa Rosa or vice versa.
It’s a nice little airport in and of itself, and you can park there for $5 a day, which is a bargain.
Guess work about Alitalia which once served SFO-Milan with 767s or 747-200s, is possible next year. My guess is that it has to do with aircraft availability. One can search that info easily as it appears they hope to start by 2018 sometime from SFO to Rome. With this area growing leaps and bounds, I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens. Depends on what happens in the world too.
Good point. Well at least we’ll get Barcelona soon enough from Oakland on Norwegian… Rome is sorely missing from SFO despite never ending rumors of a return from Alitalia. Not sure why UAL does not jump on that.
Nice little bump from SFO, but again, adding service to international destinations that are already served by others. How about Spain or Italy?