United this week announced four new flights over the Pacific as part of its winter 2025-2026 schedule plan, including three cities it hasn’t served in a long time… or ever (I’m looking at you Adelaide). The four new routes?
- Hong Kong – Bangkok 1x daily from October 26 on a B787-9
- Hong Kong – Ho Chi Minh City 1x daily from October 26 on a B787-9
- San Francisco – Manila adds a 2nd daily from October 25 on a B777-300ER
- San Francisco – Adelaide 3x weekly from December 11 on a B787-9
Yes, Adelaide is flashy and fascinating considering that it’s a smallish city on the southern coast of Australia. For the people of Adelaide this is huge news. I’m just wondering if United can stimulate enough traffic to make this work, but it feels like Christchuch… and idea worthy pursuing.
And Manila? A second daily 777-300ER?! That is so much capacity… and I have zero doubt this will work. Even better, when the downturn comes, all that VFR (visiting friends and relatives) traffic will keep coming. This is the closest in my mind to a slam dunk.
And then there are the two flights from Hong Kong to Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City. This I had to sit with for awhile, but I may be coming around. Maybe.
When I heard this was happening, I was instantly transported back 20 years to my days working in Marketing Planning at United. See, early on in my tenure, we announced we would fly a B747 from Hong Kong to Ho Chi Minh City as a tag, and it seemed crazy. It was a big deal, and it fell on the Marketing Planning team to coordinate inaugural festivities. The best thing that happened to me workwise at United was… not being chosen to deal with that mess.
My coworker had to herd cats on this one. I remember that we were supporting a charity that was delivering wheelchairs to kids in Vietnam, and they had chosen David Hasselhoff to be the star to carry the torch for them on that first flight. I just remember this being a complete and total nightmare. But I digress.
That 747 took off from San Francisco on December 9 and after a stop in Hong Kong, arrived in Ho Chi Minh City on the evening of December 10. It would turn around the next morning and then fly back to San Francisco. There was another 747 that did the same thing but went to Singapore instead. The key to these flights was connecting traffic, of course. United was counting on people coming in from or through San Francisco as well as Chicago — the two regular gateways to Hong Kong before the Continental merger — connecting through to Ho Chi Minh City. This was a headscratcher.
Hong Kong flights were pretty consistently pushing loads of the mid- to high-80 percent range. That didn’t leave a ton of room to connect people on to Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City. You could try to fill that with local traffic, but United was going to have to put out a very low fare to even hope it could make a dent.
Incredibly, these flights lasted all the way until the end of summer 2011. I honestly have no idea how they made it that far. They came back in 2012 with Continental 737s. That lasted until the end of summer 2016 when Ho Chi Minh was gone for good. The Singapore flight actually went back to a widebody but it disappeared at the end of summer 2017. Now, with nonstops from San Francisco, that route wouldn’t make sense anyway.
So, let’s fast-forward to today. United had been serving Hong Kong from multiple gateways, but it is now back down to two in a post-pandemic, post-Russian airspace closure world: San Francisco and Los Angeles. SFO went to double daily in late 2023, which is when LAX gained its first nonstop. LAX doubled up from late 2024.
These four daily flights make for a rather efficient flight pattern. The daytime 787-9 from LAX spends 2 hours on the ground before coming back, and the daytime 777-300ER from SFO sits for 3 hours and 10 minutes. The evening 787-9 from LAX is on the ground for 2 hours and 25 minutes while the evening 777-200ER from SFO turns around after 3 hours and 45 minutes.
In other words, there is no room on this fleet to squeeze in a tag on to another city like in the old days. And that’s because this isn’t really the same thing as the old days at all. This is a different plan where a 787 will be dedicated to flying these routes. That’s right, this isn’t a tag.
Those evening departures from the West Coast to Hong Kong will arrive in the morning, and a 787-9 will be waiting to take people off those two flights into Bangkok. Then it will turn around in time to connect back to the late evening flights to the US.
After the 787 gets back from Bangkok, it will pick up passengers off the daytime flights from the West Coast and fly them to Ho Chi Minh City. It will spend the night there and then fly back in the morning in time to connect people to the early returns to the US.
You know what? Let me put this in an image that makes more sense.
So, United is using a single 787 to add both Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City to the network. (Of course the airplane will eventually have to route back into the system for maintenance, but in general, think of this as one dedicated airplane.)
This sounds insane, right? Why not fly nonstop? After all, these airplanes can technically fly these routes. From SFO, both Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City are shorter than Adelaide. But, even if it wanted to do that, United doesn’t have the airplanes. Eventually Boeing will deliver more airplanes, but for now it would need 4 airplanes to fly roundtrip to both cities from San Francisco. This new plan requires just 1.
Of course, just because you don’t have the airplanes to fly nonstop shouldn’t mean you should fly with a stop in Hong Kong without something better to back up this plan. Here’s why United probably thinks this will work better than it did before.
First, take a look at this chart showing capacity and load factor in the Hong Kong market for United (including Continental before the merger) over time:
Data via Cirium
In the last year, United has significantly increased its capacity in Hong Kong, and load factor has fallen off. There is room to take more traffic on those airplanes. But this is not two flights coming in and connect to two flights going beyond in Southeast Asia like before. Instead, United will have two flights feed one connector beyond. So there are more seats feeding into the connection and there are more empty seats with the increased capacity.
Ok, but why not fly them from Tokyo? United is building up its hub there with those new flights to Cebu, Kaoshiung, and Ulaanbataar, but it can’t do these. Joint venture partner ANA already flies to both Ho Chi Minh City and Bangkok. United couldn’t do that without truly angering ANA. Besides, those are longer flights that can’t be done with a single shell anyway.
Hong Kong is in this sweet spot. A single 787 can connect perfectly to and from the four flights over the Pacific. And those four flights over the Pacific just happen to be split into two banks with the same cities served. It makes this an easy set-up.
Does this mean it’s going to work? Oh man, I have no idea. This is definitely something different that we haven’t really seen tried before in this way. It’s creative for sure, and it has actual promise. But am I skeptical? Absolutely.
50 comments on “United Goes for a Twofer By Routing Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City Flying Through Hong Kong”
Oof. Not sure it’s the best time to be announcing more international travel with tariffs hitting those countries, especially Vietnam, hard…
Not only that, but who would in their right mind would choose to fly to the US with the political instability & global boycotts of American brands & products at the moment.
Wait are you telling me you know what Trump and the USA will be doing 6 months from now regarding politics, tariffs, trade and the economy ? Even if say you work in the room outside the Oval I don’t think the man himself can answer my questions above truthfully.
@30 west,
I think I can guess as the decisions of policy are coming directly from the Heritage Foundation & the “Project 2025” documentation. Their long-term desire is for an ultra-conservative worldview that prioritizes Christian nationalism & extreme isolationism. The leader Kevin Roberts is an extreme right wing catholic & wants to turn the US into his own perfect image, but as he’s now finding out, the plan is beginning to backfire & all you need to see is what’s happened in the stock markets over the past few days for absolute proof.
The optics are a bit bad, but BKK and SGN are much more tourism and VFR markets rather than big business destinations.
Granted, but why fly United for the reasons mentioned above? There are other choices & the US has become politically toxic to the rest of the world.
If you’re flying to or from the US, then avoiding US-based carriers out of principle is just silly. Of course there are other choices but the vast majority of people will choose based on price, schedule, and onboard service (more so for premium cabins).
If you’re not flying to the US and just flying SGN-HKG, sure, avoid UA if it makes you happy, but that was never going to be the main target market of those flights to begin with. Especially true for BKK-HKG which already has 20+ daily flights.
Your comment shows a lack of self awareness in where the US stands at the moment. If you are looking at the US from the outside in, you would see numerous countries have placed travel warnings to the US & as I noted above there are active boycotts on anything associated with this country. Therefore why should US carriers be immune?
I’m fairly sure the folks making those decisions have a pretty good grasp on the geopolitical situation as well as what everyone below government level is trending.
4 years ago folks on sites scoffed at anyone trying to go into the nonstop to Phillipines market. Oh well!
United really is getting bold and creative in network planning. Good for them. One catch with the long directs that the not-quite-a-tag solves is fuel efficiency – it’s usually most efficient to stop somewhere around 6-8 hrs and refuel rather than keep going. Hawaiian should have about a 15% fuel burn advantage on LAX-Australia because of the fuel stop in HNL, even with their older generation planes, rising past 20% when they can go from HNL to somewhere UA has to connect to. Fuel costs in the Islands might negate that advantage, but it’s at least illustrative of the advantage of UAs new Asian connections.
100%
UA is showing the sort of moxie that DL used to be known for
to be clear, DL has never been into sexy or exotic route systems – no claims to round the world flights or first to fly to all 50 states.
DL briefly added a bunch of flights to the Middle East, Eastern Europe and elsewhere but not only pulled back most of that stuff but also pulled back most of NW’s Pacific network – which operated at just breakeven levels of profitability.
DL has consistently led the industry in profitability – which is what for-profit companies are supposed to strive for – including across the Pacific despite being half the size of United.
adding another flight to Seoul or Dublin or Rome isn’t terribly sexy but it has allowed DL to develop a level of financial leadership that no other airline has been able to match.
Given that trillions of dollars of wealth was wiped off of global stock markets today and futures indicate the losses will continue tomorrow, Delta’s boring strategy will likely once again prove to be the safest strategy in both good times and bad.
CF,
One airplane in a 4-city basket? What happens if there is MX or WX? Or crew illness, etc? The “perfect” schedule gets blown to bits. And before TWA’s divesture of its Pacific Division to UA back decades ago didn’t Trans World try basically the same thing?
Angry Bob – Not sure what crew staffing will look like but I would assume it will flow off of the Pacific runs. If they have to cancel, they can at least put people on in other airlines. But I don’t know what the reaccom plan is
Pan Am, not TWA.
Theses type of analysis and highlights have kept me reading this blog for many, many years. Very interesting.
With the current political & economic uncertainty we’ll see if the route even happens, but the SFO to Adelaide route seems like an early contender for next year’s Cranky Network Awards if it launches as planned.
BKK/SGN makes sense after reading this, I was pretty confused why they were stopping in HKG. There’s 1 stop options to BKK from pretty much every international airport already, not sure this will be an attractive option for those outside of LAX/SFO.
Cranky, did you see reports that UA will split the double daily LAX-HKG into 1 daily LAX-HKG-SGN and 1 daily LAX-HKG-BKK? Its timings show BKK to HKG arrives 20:45 and HKG to SGN leaves 21:15, so it can’t be a dedicated plane in HKG?
https://x.com/ishriona/status/1907467922928275464?s=46&t=99zjwpClQbiW_TOEUoTaSA
https://onemileatatime.com/news/united-airlines-adelaide-bangkok-ho-chi-minh-city-flights/
I’m just reporting what United tells me. Something will have to change in that schedule.
UA will not keep a 787-9 in HKG for the routes.
They say that the routes will require 1 frame to fly, that frame will be work the LAX – HKGs flight, not live in HKG.
UA might have meant that ‘equivalently’ one airplane is needed to cover both BKK and SGN segments, not necessarily that one will be literally dedicated. It looks as if 789 from LAX will run continuously to either BKK or SGN.
hk – United tells me there will be further tweaks to the schedule to make this work as planned.
This also has to be a defense against Starlux and the Taiwan airlines.
If this works, but only “sort of”, can they use a 737 on this instead?
Finally, can you remind me how they have rights to do this, and can passengers purchase HKG-BKK, or is it only for connecting passengers?
They could use a 737 but then they have to get it there from Guam and that was a huge money loser. Like, HUGE. Besides there should be enough volume and they probably need the lower seat cost to make it work
And yes, they can sell the local
Interesting play for SGN – right now the most convenient way for an American to get to SGN is to fly Vietnam Airlines out of San Francisco, but Delta’s hub-and-Austin-only service to SFO means a domestic connection first if you want to stay in-alliance (SkyTeam, in this case.) There are lots of other connections to HCMC from the US, but all involve a second connection in Asia or having to fly east (LHR, FRA, etc.)
UA’s new service offers an interesting alternative for a lot of Americans. I am a little concerned about what happens during IRROPS, although UA could work with Star Alliance partners in those cases. And the timing has…political issues. (Let’s just leave it at that.)
I’ve always wondered why Vietnam Airlines went into SFO instead of LAX – yes, San Jose has the largest Vietnamese population in the US for a single city, but the Southland in total is larger than SF Bay. And DL is much, much stronger at LAX compared to SFO, so there’s more potential feed.
Interesting plan! Why not start with a B737 instead of a B787 and see how it works?
I’m told that the expectation is that they will have a lot more demand than a 737 could provide. Plus, there are aircraft routing issues that I just mentioned in another comment.
I don’t think the timing works for what you’re describing.
SIN-HKG lands at 0935 and HKG-BKK departs at 0900, so the same plane cannot serve both. Unless the HKG-LAX flights shift ~90 minutes later things are very much a mess on the fleet utilization.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:utq5txoqgh5d5gqy5hs577ad/post/3lltuaafph225
Then timing will have to change. This is what UA is telling me, it’s one airplane.
Minor correction but I think you’re referring to SGN rather than SIN, right?
Any route addition is high risk in light of the tariffs which have been announced given the growing fears of a recession on top of the drop in stock market value which is what has allowed many older Americans to pull money out of their retirement accounts to travel internationally.
These 3 routes are all intended to lure premium economy passengers; Vietnam and Thailand are at the high end of the tariff list.
We could be looking at a lot of capacity coming OUT of the US airline system even by late summer and a collapse of the profitability of international flying.
It’s amazing you mentioned this Tim, as I considered something like this for my 2025 prediction. The only reason I chose the one I did was I didn’t want to be all doom & gloom & then look foolish if it didn’t occur. I intuitively knew once Trump took office it wasn’t going to be good for the airlines, especially from an international perspective.
It’s amazing you mentioned this Tim, as I considered something like this for my 2025 prediction. The only reason I chose the one I did was I didn’t want to be all doom & gloom & then look foolish if it didn’t occur. I intuitively knew once Trump took office it wasn’t going to be good for the airlines, especially from an international perspective.
Flying to ADL is an interesting choice. It’s a smaller city and it doesn’t have the same natural beauty that surrounds Christchurch. Granted Adelaide is a good spot for wine and food and the coast line is really pretty. Plus, I really liked visiting Kangaroo Island.
This seems like an interesting attempt to fill the currently unsold seats on the US-HKG flights.
Hong Kong O&D demand faces serious headwinds. Since 2019 it has lost its status as the de facto financial and professional services hub in East Asia. Those industries drove a lot of long-hail demand, including for premium cabins. The evolving US/China relationship has also suppressed travel demand for both business and leisure travel.
At the same time, Hong Kong is still important enough that United has a serious interest in maintaining direct service from its West Coast gateways. This seems like a reasonable way to help utilize the unsold seats on those planes.
Seems like interesting Network Development during Low Season.
ADL is a wonderful city, but I am biased as I have family roots there!
The HKG-BKK and HKG-SGN routes seem like a “Two-For” in that the #1 expand the network to places with High VFR and Tourist demand AND #2 will increase occupancy on the LAX-HKG and SFO-HKG routes too. In a world with constrained supply, this seems to drive high utilization of equipment and hopefully occupancy too.
This move should get written down on the CF Network Awards brainstorming list….although I appreciate that CF always looks at new routes with both Open Eyes and Equal Skepticism given his past professional experience in this area!
The ADL service is ‘supported’ the South Australian government, similar to the newish flights to Brisbane in Queensland. There will probably be an increase in USA to Adelaide traffic in the longer term as (if?) the AUKUS submarine project builds up.
The number of seats UA operates into Australia will decrease slightly with this change as the 11 weekly SFO-SYD service reverts to 1 daily.
SFOSYD is going up to 2x daily :)
SGN and BKK are markets that are long overdue for better NA connections. I’m surprised it’s taken this long.
As far as political impact on these routes, note that these are overwhelmingly North American Point of Origen markets–75/25 for SGN and 70/30 for BKK. That makes them them the #6 and #7 Far East destinations for NA originating traffic. I think it’s only a matter of time before these become nonstop SFO flights for UA.
Brett, I’ve read that while MNL-North America is largely VFR, a sizable and growing proportion of that market is actually business related, mostly due to Manila being a BPO hub, and that’s one reason why United and now Air Canada are eager to serve MNL, in addition to Qantas growing its presence in the Australia-Philippines market. How that?
MK03 – I’m sure there is a business component, but we’re talking 700 seats per day now between the two 777-300ERs! VFR still has to be carrying the weight.
This follows United’s stated strategy of trying new markets and limiting risk. One 787 to serve these two destinations and increasing load factor on the HKG flights is an easy calculated shot to take. And gives you a much stronger data set to identify if flying direct is worth it when they have the airframes. Otherwise you can cut your losses and move the plane to other routes. Also, adding these two destinations serves adds to United’s motive/cachet and there are many people that will fly US carrier due to being familiar with it and it feeling like home. Even if the service is not as good as other carriers in the region.
Any insight into what markets are reduced vs winter 24-25 in order to support the additions?
Tony G – They said there will be no reductions on the briefing call, but it’s far too early to say that definitively anyway. I saw a note that SFO – Sydney will drop from 10x weekly to 1x daily but that wasn’t confirmed.
They have more airplanes (just not as many as hoped), so cuts shouldn’t be needed other than shifting the fleet around a little.
All these routes will probably be axed before they start. The US is headed for a deep, stagflation laden recession and will be cut off from much of the rest of the world as well. Look for more routes linking ORD with Florida and Branson MO because pretty soon that’s pretty much the extent to which Americans will be able to afford any travel.
UAL’s stock price decline yesterday was about 50% worse than the 10% average for US airline stocks and, now that markets are open on Friday, UAL’s decline is outpacing the rest of the industry by a similar amount.
On what basis do you think the US is headed into a deep recession? In summer of 23 Goldman Sachs had a 30% forecast probability of a recession that did not occur due to continued unsustainable government spending spree.
I predict the opposite. There will be a brief reset followed by a surge as the ongoing economic negotiations work themselves out over time.
Trillions of dollars in wealth are being destroyed. That can’t be undone without a dramatic change in economic direction
Delta opens airline earnings season in a few days. Everyone will be watching very closely to what they say
We just got back from Vietnam two weeks ago. Used AA miles to go LAX-HGK on Cathay Pacific (a 15 hour flight, but it only felt like 14 hours and 47 minutes), then HKG-HAN. Came home from SGN-NRT (Godzilla threat was LOW), then NRT-SFO where we had 9 hours, mostly because our flight to PHX was delayed by AA, then we had an aborted takeoff, flight cancelled. We schlepped to get our bags, only to find out from other pax, not the app, that they found a plane, so we schlepped back to the gate, through the dumbest TSA folks ever invented, our duty free whiskey from NRT went through OK the first time, second time, they had to open it, with a sloth like speed, examine both bottles, have another lackey examine both bottles, then repack it and use their special tape, twice. No thanks. If we go back we will do the SFO-SGN nonstop on Vietnam Airlines. Good to see United going to SGN!
Very interesting puzzle they’re putting together here. Any insights on how crew scheduling will work? I’m assuming the pilots will fly LAX-HKG (given both LAX flights are on 789s), rest in HKG, operate the intra-Asia flights, rest in HKG, return to LAX? And FAs will do something similar, but could come in from SFO or LAX?