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United Airlines will launch 17 new flights to Florida this winter, looking to capitalize on travelers eager to enjoy the sun and make a stopover with their families during the holiday season. The source of additional earnings makes sense; however, routes are rare for the airline and are a replacement in the strategy as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic adjusts industry standards.
As the top classic airlines, United operates a star model. Most of your flights take off or land in one of your destination centers or cities, adding Chicago, Los Angeles, Newark and Washington, DC.
These new routes bypass hubs and take passengers to various Florida destinations directly from Milwaukee, Columbus, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, New York and Boston. Instead of connecting traffic to attendance filler flights, United happens to be responding to the call only between pairs of cities.
This type of peer-to-peer flight is no more unusual among cheap airlines like Allegiant, which rely less on interconnected networks with spouse airlines and connection models, and instead check to capitalize on the individual call wallet or by creating calls. in a small market by introducing a recreational itinerary.
But given the disruptions the pandemic has caused in the airline industry, any new revenue-raising strategy would likely merit an attempt. United lost $2.6 billion in the first quarter of the year and $1.6 billion in the second quarter. CEO Scott Kirby said in a call with analysts and media in July that the airline does not expect the call to rise above 50% of the 2019 grades until a COVID-19 vaccine is available, which does not see drop until the end of next year.
The new nonstop flights will operate daily, bringing up to 28 new daily flights to The United network. This is a short-term measure: flights, of which they will start on November 6 or December 17, will end on January 10.
These routes would possibly be new to United, but the airline is not exactly placing a flag. Each couple of cities already has services through airlines, some through classic airlines like Delta and American, and at most through cheap airlines like Spirit, Southwest, Frontier and JetBlue.
United believes that fighting for its consumers on those roads is the best thing. The resolution “reflects our data-driven technique for adding capacity where consumers tell us to go,” Ankit Gupta, United’s vice president of home network planning, said in a press release. “We look to the future to give Midwest and Northeast consumers more functions to fly nonstop Florida this winter.”
In times of crisis, the path to good fortune requires breaking the mold, or at least the model.
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