Featured Map: United Non-Stop San Francisco to Bangalore



Featured Maps have been on hiatus for a few months, with most airline news involving cuts in routes or at least frequencies, with seemingly constant schedule turmoil. It has been difficult to keep up with the changes and map ideas end up being obsolete before publication.

It seems fitting to return on the 19th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, in the same spirit as friends who make a point of flying on 9/11 every year, and United Airlines provided some uplifting news on Wednesday with the announcement of seven new long-haul routes.

The most interesting of the seven is non-stop service from San Francisco to Bangalore, to be operated starting May 2021 with Boeing 787-9 aircraft. The flight will be United's longest, 255 miles (410 km) farther than San Francisco to Singapore, though still 68 miles (110 km) shorter than Los Angeles to Singapore, which United flew from October 2017 through October 2018. The new flight will be more challenging due to Bangalore's relatively high field elevation of 3,001 feet. The Cranky Flier talked wtih Patrick Quayle, United's VP of International Network and Alliances, who explained that several software changes to the 787-9 will enable the new flight.

In February, American Airlines announced plans to fly to Bangalore from Seattle as part of a West Coast alliance announcement with Alaska Airlines. That route was supposed to launch in October 2020 but was delayed into 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Seattle offers a shorter routing to Bangalore for much of the U.S. but the San Francisco Bay Area is the largest U.S. origin for traffic to Bangalore (over four times Seattle) due to high-tech connections between the two areas. This local market should make United's planned service a winner. (See Cranky's article for more market analysis.)

Today's Featured Map shows United's new route plus the two routes from California to Singapore. American's planned route from Seattle is also shown (in red).

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