United Airlines is curtailing operations in Boston and terminating its lone international trip from the city.
On October 27, the airline will stop operating flights between Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) and London Heathrow Airport (LHR), according to schedules published by Cirium and later verified by a carrier representative.
Beginning on April 14, 2022, United began operating a daily service to Boston. The aircraft used for the service was the "high-J" Boeing 767-300ER, which has 46 Polaris seats in business class, 22 Premium Plus seats, and 99 economy seats.
Boston has a large, up-to-date United Club and numerous domestic flights to all of the airline's domestic hubs, even though it is not a United hub. Even the premium intercontinental flights from Boston to Los Angeles and San Francisco are operated by the airline using lie-flat Boeing 757-200s.
It may have originally baffled some aviation experts that the airline added the Boston to London route during the pandemic. It's conceivable that the company introduced the route in some way in response to JetBlue's brand-new service between the two cities, which began operations last August.
In recent months, JetBlue, which competes with Delta Air Lines for market share in Boston, has been expanding its transatlantic network by adding flights from New York and Boston to Paris and Amsterdam.
One of the possible reasons United entered the Boston to London market in the first place was that the airline may feel a little uneasy about this development.
Naturally, acquiring access to slots at Heathrow Airport, which are essentially authorized to take off and land, is no simple task. Nevertheless, United was able to secure a "remedy slot" — a temporary slot issued to increase competition — that was assigned to the Boston to London route through 2026.
Permanent slots at Heathrow have sold for up to $75 million over the years; this is a price that United was almost definitely unwilling to pay for this new Boston route.
Although the airline declined to provide a reason for ending this Boston-to-London route three years before the slot expires, spokesperson Christine Salamone of the company said that "We're reaching out now to any impacted customers to help them make alternate plans — we regularly adjust our schedules due to things like demand and importantly, United will continue to fly 19 non-stops a day to London Heathrow this winter from our seven U.S. hubs."
Despite United's reduction in frequency, American Airlines, British Airways, Delta, JetBlue, Norse Atlantic Airways, and Virgin Atlantic all offer a significant amount of nonstop service between Boston and London.
Even though it only operates one long-haul route from BOS, interestingly, American doesn't run a hub there either.
Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, and Seattle (ending on October 27) are the other two non-hub cities from which American flies to London, but these flights are primarily supported by the airline's transatlantic joint venture partnership with British Airways, which provides plenty of connectivity beyond London to cities in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and beyond.
With limited options for travel after London, United's Star Alliance membership may have made it more difficult for it to fill the 167 seats on its daily flight from Boston to London.
FACEBOOK