One of my favorite industry blogs is Cranky Flier, written by Brett Snyder. We both live in Los Angeles and I have benefited from his perspective for years. But I think he missed a big issue in his recent analysis about the alarmingly low Asia-Pacific loads on United Airlines.
United Airlines Struggles To Fill Seats On Many Asia-Pacific Routes, But There’s More To The Story Than Passenger Loads
In a story entitled, “United Struggles to Fill All Those Seats Down Under” Snyder points out that United’s transpacific passenger loads have been alarmingly dismal on some routes to Asia and particularly in the South Pacific.
In its Q1 results, United announced some pretty gruesome numbers. The average fare for the airline over the Pacific dropped by 2.8 percent year-over-year. Even with that decline in fare, its load factor plunged 7.6 points. The end result was unit revenue dropping a hefty 12.9 percent in the region.
Indeed, the load factors for December 2023…