United airplanes are seen on the Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, Unitted States on July 16, 2024.
Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images
United Airlines is plotting a 2025 international expansion that spans Senegal to Mongolia and Greenland to Palau, a bid to win over travelers who’ve already had their fill of the well-trodden streets of Paris, Rome and Tokyo.
Starting May 21, United will fly thrice per week between its Newark, Recent Jersey, hub to Palermo, Sicily; on May 16, it’s going to launch nonstops 4 days per week to Faro in Portugal’s Algarve region; on June 7 it plans three-days-a-week-service to Portugal’s Madeira Island; and on May 31 it’s starting nonstop flights to Bilbao in northern Spain, destinations that may beef up existing service to Italy, Spain and Portugal.
Its inaugural flight between Newark and Nuuk, Greenland, will begin June 14, United said Thursday.
“The savvy traveler has been to Paris, Rome and Madrid so repeatedly that they are on the lookout for something different,” Patrick Quayle, United’s senior vice chairman of world network planning and alliances, told reporters.
The experimentation with routes makes United a standout amongst U.S. and global airlines which have largely stuck with bread-and-butter additions. The expansion is an element of United’s technique to “skate where the puck goes,” Quayle said, as the corporate desires to be certain that it may be all things to all travelers, offering destinations from U.S. cities like Corpus Christi, Texas, to Cape Town, South Africa.
United is planning to launch day by day, nonstop service to Dakar, Senegal, from Washington Dulles International Airport on May 23. Service from Tokyo’s Narita airport to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, is about to start May 1. United has been beefing up service from Tokyo and can offer year-round nonstop flights to Koror, Palau, from there.
Not all destinations work. United had discontinued a nonstop flight to Bergen, Norway, in 2023 as a result of a scarcity of demand, but Quayle said the airline has wiggle room to proceed expanding to far-flung destinations and that a various network will help drive sign-ups for lucrative rewards bank cards.
“The more unique content, the more we differentiate ourselves from our competitors and the more individuals are going to spend on United,” Quayle said.
United had originally planned to begin the Faro, Portugal, service this yr but was forced to delay it due to a Federal Aviation Administration safety review, which the agency ended earlier this month without identifying any “significant questions of safety.”
United can be planning to expand flying from the West Coast, however it didn’t disclose any details on Thursday.
