United looks for route opportunities beyond standard demand data

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 44:13

   of we used to add to it last week all these like new cities yeah 10 new international this is very cool how do you make the decisions like uh when you launch nuke in greenland like is that you have a vibe that it could work is this like actually very dear is it card counting or poker uh it's uh that one it's different it's hiring a great it's hiring great people because i would have never picked nuke um or no nuke uh we got a guy patrick quayle and a great team that are really creative and they go look for things that are different and outside the norm not in the data we talked about data earlier um that aren't in the dick because no one's ever done it so there's no data to support it and nuke has been really really good um as an example yeah people love it. It's a great place to go. We've added, so across the Atlantic, by next summer,

2. 45:03

   we'll have 53, we had 23 destinations 10 years ago when I got to United. We'll have 53 next summer. We've only had two that didn't work. But we're also disciplined about it. When they don't work, we stop. That's the great, our assets are fungible. Bergen, Norway didn't work. I think Norway's awesome. I think it should have worked, but it didn't. So we tried it, and it lost a little bit of money. It's not that much. And we just stopped. That's the great thing. We can try stuff and stop. But so the fellow Patrick Quaid? Patrick Quayle. Yeah, Patrick Quayle. How does he make the decision that nuke is a go? He has all kinds. They're staying really connected to what's happening in the world. Another example, I forget the names of these cities, but we added a couple of cities in Spain and Portugal that are, that I've never even heard of, and I don't

3. 45:52

   remember them now uh the names that are part of pilgrimage trips so people catholic they're passing probably they fly to one and they walk you know to the pilgrimage to the other a couple hundred miles apart and then they fly out of the other city oh you have to add both of them at the same time and so we knew we've added you know and anyway he went like read it somehow read about pilgrimages went and got some data how many people do it then he went and found data that said oh i I can see all these broken itineraries that somebody flew us into one of the cities and they flew another airline out of the other cities.

4. 46:24

   And we added them and they went gangbusters. He, this year, took a trip to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Like, we can't fly there today because we can't fly over Russia. All right. But he's there like, you know. This could work. This could work down the road. So he's doing stuff, you know, he's doing stuff like that. And his team is great. But. He'd be more interested in me for one of your podcasts in the future than me.

5. 46:46

   Yeah, yeah, yeah.