United Airlines drops summer service connecting SC coastal cities to 7 other destinations
The nonstop expansion of flights to vacation spots in South Carolina has come to an end.
United Airlines no longer plans to offer nonstop flights between Hilton Head, Charleston and Myrtle Beach and seven Midwest cities.
Here are the flights that were offered last summer that will not be resumed this year.
- Charleston (CHS): Three times a week to Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis and Pittsburgh along with flights to Columbus, Ohio, four times a week and Milwaukee twice a week.
- Myrtle Beach (MYR): Three times a week to Cleveland and St. Louis and two flights each week to Milwaukee.
- Hilton Head (HHH): Three times a week to Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburgh and St. Louis and four times each week to Indianapolis
“Due to the ongoing staffing challenges at our regional carriers, we are not planning to resume those routes,” United Airlines spokeswoman Christine Salamone said in an email.
“United is working to address the national pilot shortage by launching our own flight school, training as many as 5,000 pilots this decade, and creating a steady pipeline of highly qualified people, most of whom will first fly for one of our regional partners before joining United,” Salamone said in an email.
The airline began offering the now-discontinued flights last summer as carriers went through a major growth spurt. Carriers added hundreds of flights to South Carolina’s coastal airports, as many people sought to vacation for the first time since the pandemic began.
United said last March that the expansion was done in part to meet the “pent-up demand” of travelers seeking to get out of the house as vaccines were finally becoming widely available.
“In the past few weeks, we have seen the strongest flight bookings since the start of the pandemic,” Ankit Gupta, vice president of United’s domestic network planning and scheduling, said in a statement last March. “As we rebuild our schedule to meet that demand, adding in seasonal point-to-point flying is just one of the ways we are finding opportunities to add new and exciting service. And as we have done throughout the entire pandemic, we will continue being nimble and strategic with our network to add the right service to the destinations our customers want to visit.”
This story was originally published March 16, 2022 at 4:42 PM.
