United Airlines Pushes Back Resumption Of Several China Routes

Summary

United Airlines temporarily pauses the start of direct flights to Beijing and Shanghai from Newark.
The airline was scheduled to commence daily direct services between Newark, Shanghai, and Beijing starting on January 9th, but these flights are now expected to begin in mid-February.
In February, United Airlines plans almost to double the available seats, increasing from 124 flights to 317. This represents an additional 49,000 seats between the US and China.

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United looks to be shaving flights to China, with data from Cirium outlining the carrier will pause its upcoming direct service from Newark to Beijing and Shanghai. Simple Flying reported on the capacity increase earlier this year, where the airline planned to almost quadruple its weekly service to and from China; however, that seems to be momentarily on hold.

Initially commencing January 9th, 2024, United was going to operate a daily direct service between New York’s Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) and both Shanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG) and Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK). These are now only expected to commence in mid-February.

Photo: Vincenzo Pace/Simple Flying

January

For the first month of 2024, the Star Alliance member seems to be keeping a low profile in China, with the below flights now paused until February:

Newark to Beijing
Newark to Shanghai
Washington Dulles to Beijing
Chicago to Beijing
Chicago to Shanghai

By January, United was supposed to be operating almost all of its China routes daily and some twice daily, like San Francisco to Shanghai, and it’s increased to double daily from January 9th; this will not occur until the middle of February along with the other network expansions.

Photo: United Airlines

Read more: United Airlines Makes Significant Alterations To China Flights.

February

February will look a lot more positive, with the carrier expected almost to double the seats on offer. A jump from 124 flights to 317 between the two months will represent almost an extra 49,000 seats between the US and China, with most city pairs representing an additional 3,400 seats in each direction, alongside SFO to Shanghai gaining its second daily service between the two cities. Let’s break it down below:

To / From	Monthly flights	Monthly seats
Newark to Beijing	15	4,140
Newark to Shanghai	15	4,140
San Francisco to Shanghai	44 (an increase of 16)	14,290
Los Angeles to Shanghai	15	3,855
Washington Dulles to Beijing	15	3,645
Chicago O’Hare to Beijing	15	3,645
Chicago O’Hare to Shanghai	15	3,645
San Francisco to Beijing	29 (remains unchanged)	10,150

Photo: Vincenzo Pace | Simple Flying.

Back in Beijing

United Airlines only relaunched its SFO to Beijing connection on Thursday, just in time for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders’ Meeting, which is being held in San Francisco. UA888 departed from SFO on November 9th, departing at 11:32, 42 minutes behind its scheduled departure time of 10:50. The flight was able to make up time en route. It landed only ahead of schedule at 17:23 (instead of 17:25) – two days later due to crossing the international date line. The outbound service had a flight time of 13 hours, 51 minutes.

The return flight, UA889, was pushed back from PEK on Saturday, the 11th, initially with a scheduled departure time of 19:20; the flight departed at 19:40 before crossing the Pacific back to the Golden Gate, touching down at San Francisco International Airport at 14:07, ahead of it’s expected time of 14:50. Flight time of ten hours and 27 minutes.

Photo: Croatorum | Shutterstock

United deployed its three-year-old Boeing 777-300ER for the first flight, registration N2250U, serial number 66590, which first took flight for the carrier in December 2019.

Sources: Cirium, Flightradar24