One of the most important hubs for United Airlines is Denver International Airport. With hundreds of departures daily, the airport is a major connecting hub for East-West traffic on United. Now, it appears that United has done some rebanking at Denver in order to better support traffic flows.

United Airlines appears to rebank at Denver

FlyerTalk users noticed that United appears to have rebanked at Denver. User PDXalways posted the following:

I recently noticed that, effective this Thursday, February 14, UA is making a change to the Denver hub's bank structure. The airline is basically swapping it's major eastbound and westbound banks in the morning.

Currently, the 8:30 a.m. (arrival) to 9:45 a.m. (departure) bank is a westward flow, while the 10:00 a.m. (arrival) to 11:15 a.m. (departure) bank is an eastward flow. These two directional banks get swapped starting Thursday... which marks a return to to the way things were prior to last year's big rebanking effort.

For the last year, United Airlines has been working on rebanking at Denver in order to time the best connections. East Coast to West Coast (and vice versa) are lucrative traffic flows for a number of carriers.

DIA
Denver International Airport has been a site of rebanking for about a year for United. Photo: United Airlines

Airline schedules are all about maximizing connections. To an extent, this does not necessarily matter with multi-daily departures. However, for an airline that is targeting lucrative business travelers and other frequent fliers, offering quick and seamless connections is almost necessary.

How does this affect passengers?

Essentially, flights from the West Coast en route to Denver now depart earlier. This means that passengers will have to wake up earlier in order to catch their United flights via Denver. Meanwhile, passengers from the East Coast will be able to sleep in a little more.

United new livery
Passengers on the West Coast will have to wake up a little earlier to catch their United flights. Photo: United

For United, this shows a greater shift from East Coast to West Coast passengers through Denver. As far as the big three airlines go, United has the strongest presence with a major hub in San Francisco. However, for time-sensitive passengers, a connection in Denver can be a quicker itinerary than connections through San Francisco.

Denver is an important city for United

United has recently focused heavily on Denver. After getting some new gates, Denver is now ripe for further expansion. So, it is not surprising to see United continue to tweak schedules to maximize connections for passengers. In fact, out of Denver, United does fly some key domestic routes on widebodies.

In addition, United is also upgrading international frequencies after experiencing a fair bit of success on those routes. Ultimately, those capacity upgrades will be supported by new connections.

Overall

United continues to tweak its Denver schedule as it seeks to find a balance for the hub. Denver continues to see growth from United, so it will be interesting to see how much more United grows out of Denver.

What do you make of this rebanking? Let us know in the comments!