United plans to add 25,000 flights in August as customers ‘are slowly returning’

United is planning to add about 25,000 flights in August compared with this month, hoping to capitalize on an uptick in air travel demand, particularly to leisure destinations ranging from Bozeman, Montana, to Bangor, Maine. The airline said it wants to stay nimble to cater to the ebbs and flows of demand as spikes in coronavirus cases shift around the US and that demand has started to level off. “The demand did flatten out over the past week or so,” Ankit Gupta, United’s VP of domestic network planning said Wednesday. With the increase in flights next month, United will still be flying about half of its August 2019 domestic capacity and a quarter of the international service it operated last year. In comparison, this month it plans to fly about 30% of its domestic service as the same month last year, and just 16% of international service, the airline said. Among the international service United plans to add in August are flights to Lima, Peru, Shanghai and Frankfurt, Germany. While the European Union continues to bar Americans from travel amid the pandemic and vice versa, the new United schedule is based on current demand trends, said Patrick Quayle, the airline’s VP of international network and alliances. Much of the recent demand has been one-way tickets, indicating customers repatriating, he said.<br/>