United adds several destinations, including Greenland

United Airlines has announced a list of eight international additions to its route map next summer, including the first U.S. airline service to Greenland and to Mongolia.

“What we’re trying to do is add experiences — lifestyle in the moment experiences — and take people to unique destinations around the world,” said Patrick Quayle, the carrier’s senior vice president of global network planning. 

The eight new destinations will be Nuuk, Greenland; Ulaanbataar, Mongolia; Kaohsiung, Taiwan; Faro and the island of Madeira in Portugal; Bilbao, Spain; Palermo, Sicily; and Dakar, Senegal.

Of those destinations, only Dakar, with service from Delta, is currently served by a U.S. carrier. Palermo, with twice-weekly summer New York service from Italy-based leisure airline Neos, is the only other one of those destinations that has U.S. service. 

United will fly to five of the new destinations — Nuuk, Palermo, Bilbao, Faro and Madeira — from Newark. Dakar flights will be from Washington Dulles. The carrier will fly to Ulaanbataar and Kaohsiung from Tokyo, which it is increasingly using for Asian connecting service to augment its base in Guam. 

Most of the routes will be seasonal, with daily Tokyo-Kaohsiung and thrice-weekly Dulles-Dakar being year-round. United had previously planned to fly Newark-Faro beginning this past summer, but delayed the launch while the FAA increased its oversight of the airline’s safety procedures.

Each of the routes will launch between May 1 and July 11. 

For Greenland, United’s new route to the capital of Nuuk will be especially compelling. It’s a result of Greenland’s decision to expand the Nuuk Airport runway and to build a larger Nuuk terminal, which is slated for a Nov. 28 opening. 

United will fly to Nuuk with a Boeing 737 Max 8. The old Nuuk runway was too short to accommodate a plane of that size.

United will also fly Max aircraft on the two Tokyo routes. Quayle said that the carrier saw an opportunity to capture tourist demand to Mongolia. Ulaanbataar used to have significantly more connecting service from Beijing, he said.

But the sharp drop in flights between the U.S. and China since the pandemic has created opportunities out of Tokyo.

Quayle added that Tokyo-Kaohsiung is geared primarily toward business travelers, who currently tend to fly into Taipei and then travel to the southern Taiwanese city via a three-hour train ride.

United’s four new European destinations are all leisure oriented. Especially far flung is Madeira, which sits northwest of the African continent, approximately 250 miles north of Spain’s Canary Islands. 

Quayle noted that these new, somewhat unorthodox, destinations will build on moves United put in place beginning in 2019, when it became the first U.S. airline to serve Cape Town. Since then, United has expanded into several overseas leisure destinations that aren’t front and center for U.S. travelers, including Ponta Delgado in Portugal’s Azores Islands; Dubrovnik, Croatia; the Spanish island of Mallorca; and Tenerife, Spain. 

United will also begin flying to Marrakech in Morocco and Cebu in the Philippines later this month. 

Quayle said that adding exotic destinations differentiates United from its competitors, which among other benefits, helps with co-branded credit card acquisition.

“As we’ve added more unique content into the network, what we’ve found is we grow our customer base,” he said.