United will end its twice weekly flight to Cairns in September as part of service reductions from the airline’s Guam hub.
The last service between Cairns and Guam, which are operated by Boeing 737s with flight numbers UA94 and UA95, will be on September 26 and 27, United said in a statement.
The Star Alliance member is also cancelling its daily Guam-Seoul Incheon flights from September 30.
“We have taken this decision because the services’ financial performance did not meet our expectations,” United said.
“We will contact customers with bookings for flights beyond those dates to either offer them alternate travel plans or provide refunds. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.”
The Cairns-Guam route, which according to the Airline Route website began in 1998 with Boeing 727 aircraft, was inherited from Continental Micronesia when United and Continental merged in 2010.
A 1991 Continental brochure showed the airline also previously served Brisbane and Sydney from its Guam hub.
United senior vice president of worldwide sales Dave Hilfman told Australian Aviation in a October 2014 interview the Cairns-Guam route carried mostly leisure passengers, with some military traffic.
“That tends to be a little more sensitive to the economic ups and downs be it in Guam or in Australia,” Hilfman said.
United flies from Los Angeles to Melbourne and Sydney, as well as between Sydney and San Francisco.
Besides United’s Guam flights, Cairns Airport also has international service to Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Philippine Airlines is due to start Manila-Cairns-Auckland service in December.
