Despite expectations of significantly lower winter air travel, United Airlines will add eight new routes and 19 flights to destinations in Mexico, the Caribbean and Latin America, including additional services from Dulles International Airport.
Beginning Dec. 17, United will start daily, year-round service from Dulles to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The airline already operates daily flights from Dulles to Punta Cana.
United will also increase Dulles to San Salvador to two daily flights, and increase service to San Jose, Costa Rica, to as many as three weekly flights.
The carrier will also increase its existing twice-per-week service from Dulles to Cancun, Mexico, to two or three flights daily.
United will operate flights from Dulles to 10 Caribbean destinations this winter, including daily flights to Grand Cayman, Nassau, Montego Bay, Aruba, Turks and Caicos and San Juan. It will maintain nonstop weekend flights to St. Thomas and St Maarten as well.
Other airports that will have new or increased Caribbean, Latin America and Mexico flights from United this winter are Chicago O’Hare, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Newark and Cleveland.
United Airlines had $2.5 billion in third quarter revenue, down 78% from the same quarter in 2019. That was a $1.8 billion quarterly loss.
While U.S. air travel remains down roughly 60% from this time last year, it has been steadily picking up since the summer. On Oct. 18, TSA screened just over 1 million passengers at U.S. airports, the first day above 1 million since the pandemic began.
U.S. air travel bottomed out April 14, when fewer than 87,000 passengers were screened at U.S. airports.
