The Announcement

On October 10, United Airlines announced eight new destinations and a few other new routes. I had predicted, because of my own selfish desire that United fly the routes, San Francisco-Hanoi and San Francisco-Bangkok as well as Newark-Palermo. The only one I predicted accurately was Newark-Palermo. The full list of new destinations are:

• Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – United will serve Ulaanbaatar from Tokyo-Narita on a 737 starting May 1, 2025.
• Kaohsiung, Taiwan – United will serve this southern Taiwan destination from Tokyo-Narita on a 737 starting July 11, 2025.
• Dakar, Senegal – This will be flown from Washington-Dulles starting May 23, 2025. I’m guessing this will be flown on a 787-8 but that info is not confirmed yet.
• Nuuk, Greenland – From Newark, this route will start on June 14, 2025. The speculation is that this will be flown on a 737 MAX 8, but no confirmation from United yet.
• Palermo, Italy – United will fly to this destination from Newark and the route will start on May 21, 2025. This route was originally planned for summer of 2020 but the Covid lockdowns prevented it from happening. The route will be operated by a 767-400ER.
• Bilbao, Spain – Starting May 31, 2025, United will fly to Bilbao out of Newark. United didn’t state what plane they will be flying on the route but my guess would be a 767-300ER or a 757-200.
• Madeira Island, Portugal – United will operate a 3-times weekly flight to the Portuguese island out of Newark. This is another route that might be operated by a 737 MAX 8, but we don’t yet know for sure.
• Faro, Portugal – This Portuguese beach destination will start out of Newark four times a week on May 16. This is another flight I think could be a 757-200.

A few other items were announced as well, including year-round service from Tokyo-Narita to Palau. This service is in addition to the flights on United between Palau and Manila and Palau and Guam. There will also be a new daily flight between Houston and Puerto Escondido, Mexico on an Embraer E-175. San Francisco will see a new service to San Jose, Costa Rica once daily. And lastly, United will fly Washington-Dulles to Venice, Italy and Nice, France in summer of 2025 in addition to the Newark flights to those destinations.

My Thoughts

It is nice that United is adding some new routes and I think a few of them really stand out. Their announcement in summary was, “people are bored going to Rome” and that sentiment doesn’t necessarily sit well with me. Yes, people want new destinations and there are travelers who want to go to these new destinations but I wouldn’t define most of what they announced as popular tourist destination.

The exciting routes to me are Nuuk, Ulaanbaatar, and Palermo, with Palermo being interesting because it is in Sicily and directly competes with Delta’s newly announced route to Catania. The most exciting to me is Ulaanbaatar; I would love to visit Mongolia and spend some time on steppe exploring. It is not an easy place to reach on Star Alliance with transit of China, South Korea, or Turkey being the only way to get there until this United flight starts.

Seth recently visited Greenland on the new Air Greenland service to Canada and I think he raises some very practical questions on the ability of Greenland to handle a large influx of tourists. The route is super cool though and I do hope to experience it and explore Greenland.

I am sure Bilbao, Spain will perform well for United but I do wonder what United will run the route on. The runway at Bilbao is 8,500 feet and surrounded by hills and mountains so it will need to be a performant aircraft, making me lean toward a 757-200.

Faro, Portugal makes some sense because of the large Portuguese population in New Jersey and Faro being a well regarded beach/coastal locale.

The Kaohsiung route is an interesting addition out of Tokyo. My understanding is that there is a ton of demand to Taiwan and this is another option where United can route traffic to the country on their metal with a single stop in Japan. With slots at Narita fairly easy to come by I could see United continuing to explore options out of the airport to tertiary cities in Asia.

Overall I was relatively unimpressed by the announcement. It almost feels like United hired a British stag/hen party planner and just went with whatever destinations they recommended. Maybe folks really want to go to places on the Mediterranean for the Instagram novelty but that doesn’t excite me very much. We’ll have to see how the routes perform, especially as year-over-year travel numbers start to decline.