Trade war hits demand but United Airlines sticks with US-China routes
- Chicago-headquartered company runs more flights from the US to mainland China than any other airline
- But executives admit demand is ‘weaker than we expected’ between the world’s two biggest economies, which are still in tariff spat
United Airlines is keeping faith with its core China business despite being buffeted by the country’s trade war with the US, company executives have said.
Demand for flights between the world’s two biggest economies has been “weaker than we expected”, the carrier’s president Scott Kirby conceded, and flight schedules showed it had reversed some plans to fly larger planes to Shanghai and Beijing.
The Chicago-headquartered company operates 66 flights from the US to mainland China per week, more than any other carrier. It also enjoys a large share of profitable business travel through its many long-term deals with US firms, meaning its wider performance can be taken as a reflection of the trade war’s impact on the real economy.
“We have seen some impact. Demand is not as strong as we would have expected it to be [for] Beijing and Shanghai,” Kirby said, speaking with other United executives to reporters at a gathering late last month in Chicago, adding the shortfall was “not terrible”.
Expectations of a truce in the US-China trade dispute, now in its 16th month, were dashed on Friday after US President Donald Trump said he had not agreed with Beijing a rollback of tariffs on Chinese imports.