Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

Unit­ed Air­lines is set to fly be­tween New Jer­sey and Port of Spain, sev­er­al years af­ter shut­ter­ing the route.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia, the Chica­go-based air­line said it will op­er­ate a dai­ly, sea­son­al non-stop ser­vice from Newark Lib­er­ty In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port to Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port from De­cem­ber 19, 2024 to Jan­u­ary 6, 2025.

UA 1904 de­parts EWR dai­ly at 7:00 pm, ar­riv­ing in POS at 1:05 am. UA 1905 then de­parts POS at 2:20 am, ar­riv­ing back in New Jer­sey just over 5 hours lat­er at 6:55 am. Unit­ed will op­er­ate the route us­ing Boe­ing 737 MAX 8s.

Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell tells Guardian Me­dia “Unit­ed Air­lines re­sum­ing ser­vice from Port of Spain to North Amer­i­ca, al­beit on a sea­son­al ba­sis, is in­deed wel­com­ing news as it will add much need­ed air­lift and seat ca­pac­i­ty dur­ing the busy Christ­mas sea­son. We are ea­ger to con­tin­ue dis­cussing with Unit­ed on in­creased fre­quen­cy to and from Port of Spain for 2025.”

Unit­ed cur­rent­ly op­er­ates a dai­ly non­stop ser­vice to Hous­ton, Texas. This is the first time the air­line will op­er­ate be­tween Port of Spain and Newark since the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic forced T&T to close its bor­ders.

FILE: A pedestrian walks in front of the United office in downtown POS. Photo: Brent Pinheiro

In May 2024, the air­line per­ma­nent­ly closed the doors of its Port-of-Spain city tick­et of­fice lo­cat­ed at Nicholas Tow­ers.

In a no­tice to cus­tomers, Unit­ed said the ser­vice will con­tin­ue to be pro­vid­ed via its toll-free phone num­ber 1-800-461-2744. Reser­va­tions can con­tin­ue to be made on­line via the com­pa­ny’s web­site. The of­fice clo­sure was ef­fec­tive May 22.

Unit­ed is the fourth largest North Amer­i­can air­line in terms of en­planed pas­sen­gers. The air­line car­ried 164.9 mil­lion pas­sen­gers at an av­er­age load fac­tor of 86.4 per cent. The Chica­go-based car­ri­er's net in­come for 2023 was US$2.6 bil­lion, and its ad­just­ed net was US$3.3 bil­lion.