Boston, MA 10/30/2013 (wallstreetpr) – United Continental Holdings Inc (NYSE:UAL) has launched a new flight and made seats available for sale for a nonstop service from San Francisco to Chengdu, China. This direct service from San Francisco to beyond Beijing and Shanghai in mainland China is the first one by a U.S. carrier. The airline will operate a three-time weekly service from June 2014 if it obtains government approval for the nonstop flight from its hub in San Francisco to Chengdu. The company intends to use Boeing 787 Dreamliner for the new China mainland flight.
If the flight gets the nod of the government, the airline will have its flights departing San Francisco International Airport on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays at 1.35 p.m. local time and arrive at Chengdu at 6.50 p.m. local time the following day. From Chengdu, the flights will depart Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 10 a.m. to arrive at San Francisco at 8.50 a.m. the same day. The westbound flying time will take about 14 hours 15 minutes while the eastbound flying time will be about 13 hours 50 minutes. This means that the new direct services will eliminate approximately four hours of the typical flight time between the tow cities.
By enjoining Chengdu among its flight destinations, the airline will be adding the ninth destination to its Asia/Pacific nonstop route from its San Francisco hub. From this gateway, Unite operates more nonstop trans-Pacific flights from the U.S. than the other carriers. The airline dwarfs other carriers with its more than 300 worldwide destinations and 80 nonstop destinations on five continents.
Considering United’s new direct flight to mainland China at Chengdu, this would be a major earner for the company. Chengdu is China’s fourth largest city with a population of 14 million people in urban area. The city has about 200 Fortune 500 companies and it is regarded as among the fastest developing cities in the country. This means that the three weekly flights would be busy enough to give the United Airline investors the value for their dollar.
