United to Become World’s Largest Airline

With this growth in mind, the airline has ordered some 560 new jets in just the last three years including the world’s largest ever order of up to 60 7 47-400s and 68 777 twinjets in October 1990. If that wasn’t enough to show that the old ‘900Ib Gorilla’ is back in action, consider that the requirement alone for CFM powered 737s will see a fleet of 350 in service by mid decade in addition to 150 P&W powered Boeing 757s.

The strategy is of course that by the late nineties, United will operate an all Boeing fleet of 747-400s, 777s, 767-300ERs, 757s and 737-300/500s. The domestic jets will feed the airline’s four primary US hubs which will in turn feed the long haul services covering the transatlantic and Europe, southward through Central and South America and westward across the Pacific, to Australasia and Asia. Such a route network will provide a truly global coverage unparalleled in international aviation and something that should just keep United a whisker ahead of arch rival American Airlines.

As well as being the biggest airline (given that Aeroflot, as it was, is now well and truly on finals), United is also one of the oldest. Its origins date back to 1928 when an amalgamation of Pacific Air Transport, Boeing Air Transport, Varney Airlines and National Air Transport saw the birth of United Aircraft & Transport Corporation. The new company soon began to build a viable air transport network based largely on the then fledgling air mail services provided under contract by the US Government. As such, United began to diversify into passenger carriage with the introduction of the 12 passenger Boeing 80 in 1930 and also was the first airline to employ trained nurses as flight attendants, a service that was not only extremely popular with passengers but forced rivals to rapidly follow suit.

Heavily influenced by Boeing, United needed a competitor to the very popular Douglas DC-3 in the mid thirties and approached Boeing to make something better than its Model 247. Boeing at the time was flat out working on what was to become the B-17 for the US Army Air Corps to also develop a new four engined airliner. Thus United turned to Douglas and with a number of other carriers launched the DC-4 Skymaster. Ironically United did not get to use its Skymaster fleet till 1945 as they were taken into US Army Air Corps service with the commencement of hostilities. More ironic is the fact that Boeing did eventually proceed with a DC-4 rival once it appreciated the commercial opportunity it had lost to Douglas. That rival was of course the potentially very successful Stratoliner, a high speed pressurised four engined civil airliner using the wing, powerplants and many structural components of the then revolutionary B-17 Flying Fortress. That aircraft however was never really to be owing, to the intrusion of WW2 and Boeing was thus denied an entree to the civil transport market till the late forties when its singularly unsuccessful Stratocruiser would ultimately do more harm than good for the Seattle company.

The decision to acquire the DC-4 led United into a relationship with Douglas that was to span more than three decades. As well as operating Skymasters in the post war years the airline also built up a large fleet of DC-6s and was instrumental in prompting Douglas to invest in the DC-7C. The latter, probably the ultimate in piston engine airliner design, was conceived as the first truly transcontinental non stop airliner, being able to fly between New York and Los Angeles with a maximum payload and against any headwind. Though this capability was also offered by later generations of Lockheed’s Constellation, it was sadly the twilight era of the piston heavies as the new generation of jets had already made their presence felt via the C-135 and British Comet.

United in fact evaluated the Comet but understandably gave the project a big miss after the series of unfortunate accidents that effectively destroyed whatever chance the type had of large scale worldwide sales. In the wings however were the Boeing 707, based on the in service C-135 of the USAF and the Douglas DC-8. United went with the Douglas product and in 1960 became the first US airline to initiate jet services on domestic sectors. The airline had also that year taken over ailing Capital Airlines and had thus inherited a fleet of Vickers Viscount propjets. A far cry from their very large piston engined fleet, the Viscounts performed well in service though took quite a time to assimilate due to the engineering divisions unfamiliarity with non piston engined airliners. Experience with the British Viscount though led United to positively appraise the concept of modern technology short haul aircraft and thus the US airline took what at that time was a monumental step and ord0red 20 French Sud Aviation Caravelles. The aircraft were wisely configured in a 64 seat first class arrangement and operated only on high density business orientated routes. Their immediate success, both technically and in the marketplace actually prompted Boeing to speed up its launch plans for the 727 and eventual 737 programmes.

In the meantime the airline _continued to grow and began to build to an all jet fleet with the last of the Douglas pistons departing the airline in 1970, coincidentally the first year of United 747 services. Also in the seventies the airline took the decision to reengine its stretched DC-8 fleet whilst the DC-10 became the backbone of the primary route network. Something that was to create havoc when in 1979 the type was grounded by the FAA owing to the perceived DC-10 design problems at the time following the loss of an American Airlines 10 at Chicago. That was a bad year for United as in addition to the DC-10 grounding, and the type’s (undeserved) unpopularity with the travelling public afterwards, the airline also suffered a disastrous ground handling strike.

US deregulation came into being of course the previous year and as a consequence United began a massive campaign of expansion. However, as the early eighties dawned it became clear that the airline really needed to begin looking at the strategic scene in relation to an ever increasingly unprofitable and failing Pan American and TransWorld Airways. Both famous airlines were the primary bulwarks of the US flag abroad and ironically they were both headed on a course to oblivion owing to their lack of US domestic feed. PanAm had tried to counter this with the acquisition of National, whilst TWA, which still flies today, though always with the spectre of Chapter 11 insolvency as its wingman, has done likewise to bolster its own reasonable domestic network. However, it was obvious to the decision makers within airlines like United and American that if they could tap into the international market then their incredibly strong US networks would provide sufficient feed to easily outperform the competition.

Thus United was able to take the first step in this internationalisation process in early 1986 when it purchased from Pan American all of its Pacific route structure. This also includes many routes not presently exercised though still possible at some time in the future. Following consolidation in the Pacific, United carefully expanded its transatlantic services and acquired, again from PanAm, its primary Heathrow base and non stop routes connecting San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Washington with eight destinations in Europe. This massive transatlantic airbridge is now being developed fiercely in view of the liberalisation of European air services on January 1, 1993. In the 1991 (northern) summer peak, United offered just 23,500 seats a week across the Atlantic, this year that capacity will increase to a massive 39,000. The fabled ‘9001b Gorilla’ has well and truly arrived and now the European carriers, particularly Swissair, Lufthansa, BA, Alitalia and Air France, will have to face strong service-oriented competition from US airlines such as United, American and Delta rather than an ailing PanAm and Trans World which generally offered service standards well below that of their European competitors.

United is also attacking Europe with a plethora of high-frequency non stop services from US gateways into its eight European ports that will centre on its London Heathrow and Paris Charles deGaulle hubs. CDG is being tripled in capacity this year as United taps into the European market, feeding its hubs with short haul jets to then feed its transatlantic 7 4 7 services which in turn are augmented with non stop 767-300ER services from the smaller US cities.

The real coup came though in early December 1991 whom the closure of Pan American saw United pick up all of the defunct carrier’s Central and South American routes, something that earlier in the year it had unsuccessfully tried to achieve. The other coup for United was that it was able to acquire the route package for just $A175m, substantially less than the $A260m that it offered earlier in the year at the time of the primary PAA carve up. In addition to all the lucrative routes into the southern continent the deal also provides a large number of slots and gateways at New York’s JFK in addition to Washington DC and Chicago.

Thus in a little over a half decade the airline has gone from being a modest international carrier to a fully fledged global airline. In our region United is hoping though to reap its greatest gain as it fully recognises the potential for growth that is nowadays the Pacific Rim.

The airline has consequently increased services into Australasia greatly in the past year and will expand upon this as additional 747-400 equipment becomes available. At present, the massive surge into Europe and now South America, has made it difficult to operationally expand in our region as much as perhaps the United strategic plan of 1988 would have then envisaged. However, with the large number of long range aircraft coming on line, and American’s withdrawal from the market, United is certainly not about to slow its growth into the region. Australian ports serviced are Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. The airline is probably best known for its daily non stops from Sydney to Los Angeles though also uses the harbour city as a pseudo hub for offering the non stop 747-400 service from Melbourne and Brisbane several times a week. Melbourne is also offered the ‘non stop’ out of Auckland and the airline hopes later this year to also be able to initiate a daily non stop service from Brisbane to Los Angeles. Also operating out of Sydney is a daily DC-10 service to Honolulu via Auckland.

Ports in Asia serviced include Manila, Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taipei, Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul and Osaka and Tokyo in Japan. The airline is planning to expand capacity into all of these ports as more 747-400s become available and to also begin services into Indonesia and Malaysia sometime in the coming two years.

United has certainly come a long way from that day sixty two years ago when the world’s first flight attendant boarded a Diminutive Boeing Model 80.