acavpics wrote:Geographically speaking, DEN is somewhat "sandwiched" between the SFO and ORD hubs, both of which have far more international/long haul flights on UA metal. UA loves routing the majority of its TPAC passengers via SFO, while ORD is a TATL gateway to the mid-west and central portions of the country. So that kind of strips DEN from having a lot of long haul flights as they would be rather redundant there.
Going forward, I think long haul additions from DEN will depend heavily on local O&D to/from Colorado and neighboring states.
This. UA has no jack of all trades hub ala DFW or ATL. ORD and EWR are the closest, but a lot of that is simply because they are massive O&D markets. Because of that, hubs have to be relegated to serving specific purposes. EWR is the trans-Atlantic hub, IAH is the Latin Hub, and SFO is the Pacific hub. LAX and IAD are more O&D than hub focused. ORD, DEN, and to a lesser degree IAH are the domestic powerhouses.
For a hub to get service to a long haul destination outside of those specific functions, there must be a large O&D component or it must be a flight to a JV partner hub. Its not hard to fill planes to LHR from any of UA's hubs so thats a slam dunk. ORD, IAD, and SFO all have massive O&D to Europe so that explains their large amount of service to Europe. IAH-AMS is a market rich in O&D and fare premiums so that explains its existence.
In order for DEN (or IAH for that matter) to obtain new service to a destination in Europe or Asia that is not a JV partner hub, it has to justify it off of O&D and fare premiums both. IAH-CDG has that, but AF gets the lions share of the fare premiums and always has so that may not be worth while. DEN doesnt have either so its not worthwhile. AMS is much more concentrated to specific markets than a market like CDG. Its O&D to the US is nowhere near as spread out. That makes starting a flight from anywhere to there more challenging for UA.
In the end, if you live in a UA hub city, you have to be comfortable with whatever your city's focus is. That said, you dont have to connect through other UA hubs to go long haul. Ive never connected through SFO to go to Asia, I always use NRT. For Europe, LHR, AMS, FRA, or MUC gives me enough to play with that I can avoid EWR like the plague. That is changing for my trip to JNB in a couple of weeks but that was because the business class fare was so dirt cheap I couldnt ignore it.