United Airlines said Tuesday it plans to add a string of new international destinations next year, from Ljubljana, Slovenia, to Okinawa, Japan, continuing what the carrier describes as a profitable bet that travelers will keep spending on new and less-touristed spots abroad.
The airline already operates more international service than any other U.S. carrier, and it is deliberately selling destinations well beyond major draws like Tokyo and Rome to capture shifting traveler preferences and grow profits, even as costs climb.
“They want to get away from the overcrowded, large European cities,” Patrick Quayle, United’s senior vice president for global network planning and alliances, told CNBC.
Business travel tied to new routes
Some of the new routes are aimed squarely at business travelers. Airbus is based in Toulouse, and its U.S. office sits in Herndon, Virginia, so the new flight connecting those two airports — naturally operated by an Airbus — targets the aircraft maker and other aerospace business traffic. Meanwhile, Amazon’s European headquarters is in Luxembourg and its second U.S. headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia, which Quayle said helps explain the carrier’s focus on those markets.
United said it has added 49 new destinations since 2021 as part of this push and that it is the only U.S. airline flying nonstop to 32 of those places.
Longer seasons, new demand patterns
The airline says demand for these routes no longer peaks only in summer. “All these new international destinations … have become much longer seasons instead of just flying during the summer,” United CEO Scott Kirby told CNBC’s Phil LeBeau on Tuesday. “These go all the way through October. October has become one of our best months of the year.”
Quayle said United is aiming to be a “one-stop shop” for flyers at every stage of life — whether that means a college student backpacking, a traveler headed to Paris, someone in their 20s flying to a nightclub in Ibiza, a business trip, or a honeymoon in Sardinia.
He also noted that customers are increasingly booking so-called open-jaw flights, where they fly into one city and out of another — for example, flying into Rome and leaving from Bari on Italy’s Adriatic coast without needing to backtrack to a major hub. That trend, he said, makes it valuable for United to serve multiple points within countries like Portugal, Italy, Spain and France.
Quayle stressed that the carrier is not dropping any existing routes to make room for the new additions.
Competitive pressure from Delta
United is now the second-most profitable U.S. airline behind Delta Air Lines, though Delta serves fewer international destinations. Delta’s president, Peter Carter, told CNBC in June that the airline wants to challenge United’s international dominance, particularly on trans-Pacific flying. Delta this summer announced new service to Tokyo-Narita and to Manila, and it launched its previously announced Los Angeles-Hong Kong route in June.
United’s other new additions include nonstop service from Los Angeles International Airport to Osaka, Japan, a food-focused destination the carrier already serves from its San Francisco hub. The airline is also adding flights from Denver to Paris and will restart service from San Francisco to Tel Aviv.
Earlier this year, United said it plans to launch San Francisco-to-Sapporo service in December, connecting its West Coast hub to the Japanese ski destination favored by高端 (upscale) travelers.
— CNBC’s Michele Luhn contributed to this report.
Source: www.cnbc.com — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/25/united-airlines-2027-international-routes.html
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