United to Introduce Washington Reagan Link from San Francisco

United Airlines has announced it will launch a daily non-stop service between its San Francisco hub and Washington Reagan National Airport from May 14, 2012. With the addition of the new flight, United will serve San Francisco 13 times a day from the Washington DC metropolitan area, mainly serving Dulles International Airport in Washington. The new service will be flown with a Boeing 737-700 configured with 12 United First and 112 United Economy seats.

"We look forward to offering this new service between Reagan National and San Francisco, which will further complement United's extensive service between these two great American cities and provide more options for our customers," said Jim Ferea, Managing Director of Domestic Planning, United Airlines.

In the past year an estimated 997,000 O&D passengers travelled between San Francisco and Washington with around 845,000 flying to or from Dulles International and a further 152,000 flying to or from Reagan National. The table below shows there are currently more than 80 weekly flights between the two US cities offering more than 13,000 seats in each direction.

The new link by United Airlines will be the first to Reagan National from San Francisco. The airline currently has an estimated 47.8 per cent share of the traffic between the two cities, ranking it as the largest operator. Virgin America, the only other operator with direct flights follows with a 24.8 per cent share.

United Airlines and its regional partner United Express now operate an average of 5,656 flights a day to 376 airports on six continents from hubs in Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Guam, Houston, Los Angeles, New York/Newark, San Francisco, Tokyo and Washington, DC. Last year it operated more than two million flights carrying 142 million passengers.