United Airlines is reporting strong demand from New Zealand despite ‘noise’ about visiting the USA.
Regional manager Tim Wallis says there’s a slight boost in capacity this year from Auckland to San Francisco (thrice weekly over winter, daily in summer) and UA is returning to Christchurch for a third season for its thrice-weekly summer service to SFO. “We’re still really happy with the demand picture,” he adds. New Zealand remains a bucket list destination ‘and we are still seeing strong demand out of New Zealand as well’. Travel to the US has dropped steeply from Canada and some European markets but UA ‘is feeling good’ about the Australasian market, says Wallis. While there’s been some negative sentiment around travel to the US he says: “US politics can be a little bit messy and democracy can be a little bit messy, but when you look at a destination like the US, [it] is unique. We’d really encourage people to keep checking it out.’’
. . . Premium Picture
Wallis says its premium economy and Polaris business class demand ‘really just keeps on giving, which is obviously a great news story’. UA is standardising its long-haul fleet product. Polaris has been revamped but there is no timetable for deploying it on AKL or CHC, he adds. Other product improvements include Starlink rolling out on the fleet of close to 1000 aircraft, and refurbed lounges.
. . . Agent Advice
Wallis says the Kiwi trade is a very important channel for UA and accounts for a big proportion of bookings. With local sales manager Leanne Cheeseman, he says UA is strongly represented here; and that agents have access to UA’s Sydney Solutions Centre’s dedicated trade support desk which ‘has a high degree of empowerment’. He also recommends agent use UA’s Jetstream dashboard which has live updates across the UA network, the world’s biggest by available seat kilometers.
. . . Far And Wide
UA is prepared to take a punt on diverse routes, an approach taken post C-19 as the airline transformed its fleet. Recent routes launched include intra-Asia, Greenland and Mongolia. ‘’If the numbers stack up it makes sense to do it. At other times you might be taking a bit of a gamble and you’re going to see how it goes.’’ That approach has enabled UA to fly CHC-SFO and its ADL-SFO later this year, he added.
