Winston

https://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/...hoo&yptr=yahoo

Behold the fast-shrinking regional flight network at United Airlines.

Regional flight traffic has been dropping off for months at the Chicago-based airline, but never more so than in June.

Late Tuesday United released its June operations report, which contained the stunning news that traffic on United's regional flight network shrank a whopping 8.9 percent last month compared to June of 2016. Regional flights account for about half of United's total daily flight count.

Even as United's regional flight traffic was dropping drastically in June, the carrier's mainline traffic rose 9.5 percent compared to a year ago.

For years, United's regional operations have been a problem for the carrier. Operated by third-party vendor carriers, United's regional flights have struggled to operate on time and avoid cancellations. Some months have been better than others, but United has not been able to get a satisfactorily consistent performance from those third party vendors.

Now with mainline flights carrying more and more of United's total traffic, the shift has clearly helped boost the carrier's overall on-time performance — a plus for the airline's reliability image in the eyes of millions of passengers. United finished a strong No. 2 in the June on-time arrival competition among the four major domestic carriers.

Meanwhile, United's June operations report shows that international traffic is still sluggish on several fronts compared to domestic traffic. Trans-Atlantic traffic has been trending downward for months. With the peak summer travel season now here, United's trans-Atlantic flights show no signs yet of returning to robust growth, with traffic down 0.5 percent year over year in June. The trans-Pacific falloff was somewhat bigger in June, with traffic off 1.4 percent year over year.

Still the strong mainline domestic showing in June caused United to post a consolidated 3.4 percent growth in traffic year over year for the month.

The capacity numbers for June also point to major expansion of United's mainline operations. Domestic mainline capacity grew a whopping 10.8 percent, while domestic regional capacity shrank 5.2 percent in June year over year.

As capacity grew substantially on the domestic front, United's load factor dropped domestically in June by 1.4 percent to 87.4 percent. Load factor is the percentage of seats filled with paying customers.

Load factors also declined on all United's international routes with the exception of trans-Atlantic, which climbed a very modest 0.4 percent. United's consolidated load factor dropped by 1.4 percent to 85.7 percent.

United Airlines is a unit of United Continental Holdings (NYSE: UAL).

Dougdrvr

Good. Would actually like to see a law against being able to put another companies name and logo on your airplane. It's deceptive to the average passenger.

Aquaticus

The regional product isn't up to par in probabably 60% of the markets it serves. The wrong airplane, an underpaid / overworked flight crew, and an outsourced below wing and over wing support staff is recipe for pure mayhem and a poor customer experience. These third party airlines make money by operating flights with as little staffing as possible.

John Carr

"Shedding" regionals may not be the correct term.

It simply states that traffic/capicty is down in the network.

AWAC was just signed for a deal after all.

And now there's strong rumblings that UAL may NOT take XJT down to the 100-ish airplanes by year's end and will extend the current 130-ish past 2018.

WHEN there's announcements that the agreement with (insert UAX carrier here) has been terminated with NO REPLACEMENT as well as announcements that (insert UAX carrier here) is parking X many of ERJ/CRJ's and they won't be replaced, THEN it's shedding regionals.

JoePatroni

Traffic is not down and capacity is up, there was a 3.4% growth YOY- one of the main reasons to abandon some regional feed. The drop in load factor is directly tied to putting bigger airplanes on "historic" (which were originally mainline) RJ routes.

The annual report clearly shows a marked decrease in regional capacity and predicts even more to come.

John Carr

So what part of the bold are you not getting? Should I have put "UAX" in front so you'd get it?

JoePatroni

My bad, should have read the whole thing. My personal opinion is this is finally a concerted effort to address some of the long standing service complaints about certain parts of the Express system. Smisek didn't give a **** as long as the short term outlook showed a savings......and it showed.

John Carr

Agreed. Bethune got it, Kellner, sort of, J-Lo Jeff'd it up.....

But I'm pretty sure he just did what Tilton did in that regard. Manage line item costs, maximize shareholder value for the next SEC, 10K, quarterly, whatever.

But I'm STILL waiting for the announcement that (insert carrier/RJ fleet) is going away with NO replacement or expansion at another carrier before I get excited.

JoePatroni

Bethune was the guy who ordered almost 300 RJ's BUT he understood it was important to keep the service level at or near the mainline one- that costs money that Smisek wasn't interested in spending.

WesternSkies

Walk st. Puff piece.