Amid heavy competition from American, Delta, JetBlue, and Virgin America on transcontinental flights from JFK, United is raising the white flag.
Effective 10/25 there will no longer be any United service from JFK. The p.s. service from JFK to Los Angeles and S. Francisco will transition to Newark and eventually all LAX and SFO flights from Newark will feature lie-flat business class seating.
Last year United ended service from JFK to Washington D.C. In 2006 United ended flights from JFK to Tokyo and London and with the end of the LAX and SFO flights United will no longer have any JFK service.
United is giving Delta their JFK slots in exchange for Delta’s Newark slots.
Currently United doesn’t offer kosher meals on transcontinental routes from Newark, though presumably that will be added back with the transition of p.s. service to Newark as p.s. flights currently do offer kosher meals in business class.
If you are already booked on a p.s. flights departing on or after October 25, United will be rebooking you on a Newark-based p.s. flight. Those changes will happen over this weekend. Once the change is processed, if the schedule or route doesn’t work for you, you can contact United for other flight options or to request a refund.
Update: 2pm: United has pulled all JFK-LAX/SFO flights after 10/24 from their website.
In the meantime you can book award tickets on the p.s. flights from JFK and you’ll be guarenteed a p.s. seat from Newark after this weekend when the new schedule is published.
BusinessFirst lie-flat seats can be booked one-way for 17K Lufthansa miles, 20K Singapore miles, or 25K United miles.
If you book one of these JFK awards now you’ll receive notice of your new flight to/from Newark over the weekend. If the new flight doesn’t work you’ll be able to call to choose another flight or get a refund. If you book 2 people on separate flights on the same day (or an adjacent day if you’re a good talker 😉 ) you should be able to merge them both onto the same flight to/from Newark.
After 10/25, there are currently BusinessFirst saver awards from JFK to LAX on:
11/23: 2 seats
11/24: 1 seat
01/06: 1 seat
01/17: 2 seats
01/20: 1 seat
02/16: 1 seat on 2 flights
02/17: 1 seat
03/23: 1 seat
03/29: 1 seat on 2 flights
03/30: 1 seat
After 10/25, there are currently BusinessFirst saver awards from LAX to JFK on:
11/26: 2 seats
01/07: 1 seat
02/04: 1 seat
02/13: 2 seats for top-tier elites, 1 seat for gold elite and lower.
02/17: 1 seat on 2 flights
02/18: 1 seat
After 10/25, there are currently BusinessFirst saver awards from JFK to SFO on:
11/23: 3 seats on 1 flight, 1 seat on a 2nd flight.
11/26: 3 seats on 1 flight, 2 seats on a 2nd flight.
11/27: 1 seat
12/25: 1 seat
01/06: 1 seat on 2 flights
01/12: 1 seat
01/17: 3 seats on 1 flight, 2 seats on a 2nd flight.
01/18: 1 seat
01/20: 1 seat
02/17: 1 seat
02/17: 1 seat
03/28: 1 seat
After 10/25, there are currently BusinessFirst saver awards from SFO to JFK on:
11/26 2 seats on 1 flight, 1 seat on a 2nd flight.
12/25: 1 seat
01/06: 2 seas
01/07: 1 seat
01/17: 2 seats on 1 flight, 1 seat on a 2nd flight.
01/20: 1 seat
02/14: 2 seats on 1 flight, 1 seat on a 2nd flight.
More United flights from Newark is perfectly fine with me.
The second grouping of dates should say LAX-JFK 🙂
Thanks for the detailed dates, you are awesome with that!
What is p.s.?
any chance we will see lie flat seats from Newark to Sand Diego in the near future?
Always wanted PS service from EWR and wondered why UA never offered it when competition resumed from AA and VA..
Are there any lie flat seats available for JFK-LAX on July 29-August 3?
@lazer: Premium service
Sad news for me. I like having three mileage options from JFK.
Lazer. Its a kind of cotton candy
P.S. = Premium Service
Do you think UA will keep running the non-p.s. but still lie flat planes from EWR or will they get rid of them and only fly the p.s. planes?
thanks dan
how did you check the availbilty +the number of seats available fro miles?
@@Yehuda:
Thanks.
@Josh:
You can search on United.com.
@Anonymous:
Doubtful.
@Walter:
Because they didn’t face much competition from EWR.
@@Yehuda:
They will likely have a mix of planes.
@yanky:
http://www.dansdeals.com/archives/44505
i flew lax-jfk recently it wasnt great service a i recieved passover food two days after
also every time i look for dates i never see any saver awards i had to pay 50k for a one way ps
how do do luftanza or singapore ? can i transfer form chase , use avios??
@Anonymous:
Transfer options in this post:
http://www.dansdeals.com/archives/61695
Wow really bad coming from Sydney.
So you either stop in ORD to LGA or go to EWR and pay $90 for an hour taxi after a 15hr flight…
Awesome news for a Lakewood resident frequent flier!
@Dan:
Thanks. Looks like TPG thinks they’ll be pulling 757-200s off int’l routes and reconfigure them to P.S. Perhaps they’ll do the same with the current 757-200s on the route.
Guess we’ll see.
Poor service and an inferior product have finally come home to roost. Those stating it is “good news” are mistaken as fares at the EWR fortress hub will rise even more and there will be fewer options for MP availability.
Looks dead.
This is really bad for competition. Especially in Newark. United switching with Delta will allow both of them to raise fares with less competition at each airport.
Dand
Did Delta swap out all of their Newark gates or only some? Does this mean the end of a Delta presence at Newark also?
I flew P.S service plenty of times from and to jfk and there was never kosher food.
Excellent, can get lie-flat from LAX to TLV now!
So does that mean the full amount of jfk flights will be added to the current 10 or so daily flights currently flying ewr-sfo?
curious how come you can’t get kosher food on united flight from newark to Tel Aviv? what do people do besides bring food?
@aviva k: There is no ksml on ua ewr-tlv??
@aviva k: maybe u thought transcontinental meant to a different continent?
heard a rumor that American may start flying straight to Israel is there any truth in that have a great day
I just flew United from Newark to Beijing and then back from Hong Kong and had kosher meals
@delta flyer:
Delta will keep some presence at EWR.
@Robert:
There is kosher only in business class.
@aviva k:
Not sure why you think that.
@David:
No.
There will be more flights from EWR, but not nearly as many as United had before going from NYC-LAX/SFO.
@anon:
There is.
@Ira:
Hopefully.
@Ava:
Of course there is.