At a time of constant flight delays and airports brimming with unclaimed luggage, a longer direct flight is almost always safer bet than a short transfer — even if, as those who've been on a flight of more than 10 hours know, it can feel like an entire life has passed by the time you land at your destination.
As the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic and airlines struggle with the rise in air travel demand, not every route is available right when you need it.
This summer, American Airlines (AAL) cut a number of long-haul routes and stopped servicing cities like Ithaca, New York and Toledo, Ohio entirely. Southwest Airlines (LUV) cut over 2,000 summer flights while Alaska Airlines (ALK) also cut as much as 2% of its flights.
Direct To Cape Town, Please
But at the same time, airlines are also rethinking trajectories and adding new destinations to their rosters.
A few days after announcing that it was adding 120 temporary flights to a number of college towns during the playoffs, United (UAL) is now launching a nonstop flight between Washington, D.C. and Cape Town, South Africa.
The first nonstop flight between the two cities, the new route will take 14 hours and 30 minutes and is unusual in that there were already seasonal winter flights (summer in South Africa) between Newark Airport, one of New York's three major airports, and the South African city.
United will use a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner with 188 economy seats and 48 business seats including some of the lie-in seats that many want to test out at least once in life.
"These new flights build upon our existing year-round New York/Newark to Cape Town service," Patrick Quayle, United's SVP of network planning and alliances, said in a statement. "Together they'll provide a near-daily pattern from the U.S. to Cape Town along with connectivity to the broader region through our Airlink partnership."
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United said that Washington, D.C.'s large South African population (the fifth largest outside of South Africa) cemented the decision to expand coverage; the Newark flight will also be changed from seasonal to year-round.
Flying Is A Mess But Most Are Powering Through It
Once the flight launches in November, United will have a total of 19 flights from the U.S to Africa a week. These include flights between New York and Johannesburg as well as Washington, D.C. and Accra, Ghana and Lagos, Nigeria.
"We are thrilled to further expand our Africa offering with this first-ever direct link between Washington DC and Cape Town," Quayle said.
Travel has picked back up in 2022 as many are going on trips, whether business or personal, that were put off due to closures during the pandemic. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics reported that the U.S. airlines flew a total of 66.4 million passengers in the first quarter of 2022, up 9.1% from 60.8 million passengers in first quarter of 2020 ( mostly before the pandemic hit in March.)
That said, most major airlines have not been rehiring the staff laid off during the pandemic fast enough to navigate this surge.
Demand for certain popular routes can lead airlines to open new routes and at the same time cause delays. After seeing weeks of check-in lines of several hours, airlines in London Heathrow are now required to reject bookings if the number of passengers departing the airport risks surpassing 100,000 a day.
A similar cap was is also now in place at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport.
