Why does UA have such a huge presence in Guam? Do that have a base there?

UA inherited it from CO, who helped start "Air Micronesia," often called Air Mike, in the late 60s (remember at this time CO was a west coast airline) based in Guam to obviously serve Micronesia. Air Mike eventually became Continental Micronesia as CO took full ownership of the airline in the 80s. Air Mike's certificate was merged into CO's operating certificate shortly before UA's was (it was kinda of a dry run).

And yes, they have a 737 base there with several 73Gs/738s that occasionally get rotated out into the mainland operations.

Do they run long haul ops from Guam to mainland?

No. GUM-HNL, now a 777 but historically a 764 under CO (and before that DC-10/747?), is the only route they fly to a US state.

MiddleEastMike wrote:

Do they run long haul ops from Guam to mainland?

They fly to HNL, but nowhere in the lower 48.

While I don't claim any accuracy. wikipedia is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Micronesia

United gained the Guam operations through the merger with Continental.

Obviously it must make money, but is that the only reason they still operate a base there? Or is there historical reasoning behind it too?

Because they still have a large presence in GUM/Micronesia and it is isolated from the rest of the system. Using a mainland base is impossible; there is no way to fly between the mainland US/Hawaii and GUM via any point in the world solely on UA 737s. The Micronesia 737s only fly to/from GUM/Micronesia. To switch them out UA needs to use ferry flights.

Polot wrote:

Because they still have a large presence in GUM/Micronesia and it is isolated from the rest of the system. Using a mainland base is impossible; there is no way to fly between the mainland US/Hawaii and GUM via any point in the world solely on UA 737s. The Micronesia 737s only fly to/from GUM/Micronesia. To switch them out UA needs to use ferry flights.

In theory it's possible given that UA does fly the 737-800 on SFO-HNL now (as well as 739s on LAX/SFO-HNL); however I believe the GUM based airplanes have slightly different configurations on the 737-800s.

deltairlines wrote:

Polot wrote:

Because they still have a large presence in GUM/Micronesia and it is isolated from the rest of the system. Using a mainland base is impossible; there is no way to fly between the mainland US/Hawaii and GUM via any point in the world solely on UA 737s. The Micronesia 737s only fly to/from GUM/Micronesia. To switch them out UA needs to use ferry flights.

In theory it's possible given that UA does fly the 737-800 on SFO-HNL now (as well as 739s on LAX/SFO-HNL); however I believe the GUM based airplanes have slightly different configurations on the 737-800s.

Yes, you are right I forgot the island hopper goes between GUM and HNL. But that is only 3x a week in each direction so kind of hard to make a schedule for mainland pilots for all the Micronesia work using just that to bridge them between their base and required flight work without spending a ton of money to hold them up in GUM anyways, so might as well make GUM a base.

Polot wrote:

deltairlines wrote:

Polot wrote:

Because they still have a large presence in GUM/Micronesia and it is isolated from the rest of the system. Using a mainland base is impossible; there is no way to fly between the mainland US/Hawaii and GUM via any point in the world solely on UA 737s. The Micronesia 737s only fly to/from GUM/Micronesia. To switch them out UA needs to use ferry flights.

In theory it's possible given that UA does fly the 737-800 on SFO-HNL now (as well as 739s on LAX/SFO-HNL); however I believe the GUM based airplanes have slightly different configurations on the 737-800s.

Yes, you are right I forgot the island hopper goes between GUM and HNL. But that is only 3x a week in each direction so kind of hard to make a schedule for mainland pilots for all the Micronesia work using just that to bridge them between their base and required flight work without spending a ton of money to hold them up in GUM anyways, so might as well make GUM a base.

UA200 (GUM to HNL) flies daily

Don't forget the song! Continental Micronesia
"Fly with the Warmth of Paradise"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlnSlDlAJ5c

jagraham wrote:

UA200 (GUM to HNL) flies daily

Which is a 777. So unless you want to just keep deadheading 737 pilots between their HNL and GUM on the flight (which again, at that point you have to ask yourself why not just make GUM a base?) it doesn't really help the 737 crew scheduling all that much. Hence why UA maintains a GUM 737 base.

The Guam base exists partially because foreign airlines cannot transport people between US territories. People flying between US territories in the Pacific and to the mainland must fly a US airlines so there is a captive market. United has expanded well beyond that to serve the leisure market to Guam. They are under the US Bilaterals for the most part so they have good access to many Asian destinations especially in Japan.

MiddleEastMike wrote:

Obviously it must make money, but is that the only reason they still operate a base there? Or is there historical reasoning behind it too?

I do not have specifics figures for the passenger side but I know cargo makes a killing. UA has the largest USPS mail contract and the flight is often completely full with mail.

77H

Newbiepilot wrote:

The Guam base exists partially because foreign airlines cannot transport people between US territories. People flying between US territories in the Pacific and to the mainland must fly a US airlines so there is a captive market. United has expanded well beyond that to serve the leisure market to Guam. They are under the US Bilaterals for the most part so they have good access to many Asian destinations especially in Japan.

Are NON-US metal allowed? As I just searched for possible flight between GUM and PPG, I saw a United offer that use ANA metal for the NRT-HNL leg. Is this allowed?

Does UA receive any subsidies, tax breaks, or revenue guarantees?

Guam is a popular tourist destination from Northern Asia, given its relative proximity. Visitors from South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Japan have been going there for years. It is also a major US military base and as others have said, isolated from the rest of the US system so the presence there is attributed to military and cargo contracts, and tourism. Believe Delta also has flights into Guam. Post-merger, an expanded UA had tried several mainland China markets and I'm not sure if those succeeded or not, from Guam. And there is a daily 777 service to HNL which is rotated through to the mainland (ORD, SFO and maybe even LAX).

In the Continental days, four of the 16 767-400s in the fleet were based on Guam along with up to four 737's (-700s, and then -800s). For a short time, a few 757's also rotated through there.

Fun Fact World largest K-Mart is on Guam and is a tour bus destination for Japanese tourists ,to include all signage in both English and Japanese

Until a couple of years sgo if you wanted you
could fly a UA 737 from the US east coast to Australia.

Was CNS dropped pre or post the CO/UA merger? I was always thought it was cool that CO kept a small presence in Aussie.

I don't think they run them to the mainland just to Hawaii I think, do you know if they still run to Cairns in far North Queensland ?

I know it flew until 2015.

QF108 wrote:

Was CNS dropped pre or post the CO/UA merger? I was always thought it was cool that CO kept a small presence in Aussie.

I should have read on before asking that question lol. When was CNS dropped and why?

Do they still fly the Island hopper all the way to Hawaii?

For many years I flew from IAH to ORY. Later CDG, and at least three times the CO DC-10 I flew had "Continental Micronesia" titles on it.

Interesting connection here in that CAL bought a company back in the late 60's called Bird & Sons. They operated number of aircraft in Vietnam and Laos doing work for the CIA. That was the true beginning of Air Micronesia if you dig down deep into the family tree.

I just flew them a few weeks ago (HKG-GUM-YAP-KOR-MNL, not all on the same day obviously). UA is the only carrier flies to Yap, Micronesia, and it's probably true for the other destinations in Micronesia. Delta flies to both Guam and Palau from Tokyo. HKG-GUM is pretty full, but the other segments, not so much. However, I noticed the locals flying between islands carried with them a lot of checked bags, boxes or coolers of stuff (I was flying around Christmas/New Year holidays). Flipping through the pages of UA in-flight magazine, it showed that they do fly Guam-Shanghai.

Randomly checked a few United planes in Guam via flight tracking sites, it seems like the common pattern for them to use 777 in GUM is to fly one from random continental US city via HNL and then do a few shuttle between GUM and NRT and then return the plane back to another random continental US city via HNL.
For those 737 there they seems to be exclusively connecting GUM to other nearby destinations from MNL to ICN include ROR.

Polot wrote:

deltairlines wrote:

Polot wrote:

Because they still have a large presence in GUM/Micronesia and it is isolated from the rest of the system. Using a mainland base is impossible; there is no way to fly between the mainland US/Hawaii and GUM via any point in the world solely on UA 737s. The Micronesia 737s only fly to/from GUM/Micronesia. To switch them out UA needs to use ferry flights.

In theory it's possible given that UA does fly the 737-800 on SFO-HNL now (as well as 739s on LAX/SFO-HNL); however I believe the GUM based airplanes have slightly different configurations on the 737-800s.

Yes, you are right I forgot the island hopper goes between GUM and HNL. But that is only 3x a week in each direction so kind of hard to make a schedule for mainland pilots for all the Micronesia work using just that to bridge them between their base and required flight work without spending a ton of money to hold them up in GUM anyways, so might as well make GUM a base.

Mainland 737 pilots are not qualified to fly the islands.

Under the FRMS, Island Hopper requires 2 captains and 2 FOs and 50some hours rest in HNL prior to the return trip to GUM.