United sees payoff from 'rebanking' hub schedules

After rescheduling its flights at Houston and Chicago, United enjoyed double-digit revenue growth in serving smaller markets that send travellers to or through those hubs, executives said Wednesday. Denver is next for what the industry calls "rebanking" flights, or a way of scheduling waves of flights at hubs. The Denver rebanking is scheduled to launch in February 2019. The goal is to better match connecting passengers with flights. United says it was rescheduling flights to have fewer "peaks" when customers are making the most connections. In Houston, the clusters dropped from 10 to eight. That fewer clusters may lengthen the connection times for some fliers, but it also boosts the number of connecting itineraries that can be booked. Andrew Nocella, United’s CCO, said he was “very pleased” with the results during April, May and June. Houston and Chicago each had a 10% increase in revenue for the available seat miles from passengers flying to big or medium cities to smaller cities, Nocella said. And Houston had a nearly 20% increase in revenue for connecting travellers flying between two small cities via that hub, he said.<br/>