United may have hit back at Houston by cutting off non-stop flights to Paris, but it looks like the airline is still committed to making Houston an international hub.
The first international flight of the new Boeing Dreamliner 787 jet will depart from Houston on Dec. 4, with service to Amsterdam that will run through March 29, 2013.
Notably absent from the Dreamliner route list? Nonstop flights to New Zealand from any American airport.
In Houston that will be followed by a new Dreamliner route to Lagos, Nigeria, that will begin five-day-a-week service on Jan. 7, 2013. United will also fly Dreamliners nonstop from Houston to London's Heathrow Airport from Feb. 4 to March 29.
Notably absent from the Dreamliner route list? Nonstop flights to New Zealand from any American airport.
Continental (RIP) initially announced plans to fly non-stop from Houston to Auckland in May 2010, but flights, which were supposed to begin in Nov. 2011, were put on hold after the United-Continental merger and the airline's talked of scrapping them all together after international flights from Hobby Airport were approved for Southwest Airlines.
It appears that Houston will be replaced by Denver as the origination city for Auckland now that Hobby is expanding to international departures against United's wishes.
"We will have to reallocate some resources, including the 787 that we had planned to operate from Houston to Auckland, New Zealand. That flight is heavily dependent on connecting traffic and won’t work if this proposal is enacted," United spokesperson Mary Clark told CultureMap in an email before international flights were approved at Hobby.
United has not yet announced what domestic routes the Dreamliner will fly, but says those routes will begin before international service.
