Summary United Airlines has further extended the suspension of Amman flights. A three times weekly service is due to return on October 28. In the year to May 2024, the carrier carried 58,000 Amman passengers and filled 85% of seats.
United Airlines flights from Washington Dulles to Amman, Jordan, began in May 2022. However, due to the subsequent Israel-Palestine war and, at times, its wider escalation, Flightradar24 shows that the Star Alliance carrier has not served Amman since the end of July 2024. United's schedule update over the weekend disclosed that the route will not resume until October 28 —if it is not pushed back again.
Will it be like Tel Aviv, with all United flights removed for the foreseeable future ? This depends on activity close to the Jordanian border or wider area and any safety, security, insurance, or demand changes. The route has existed for nearly three years. Introducing flights to Amman The Jordanian capital has long had North American flights by Royal Jordanian and—believe it or not—Delta Air Lines.
The latter operated from New York JFK to Amman between 2008 and 2011. According to the US Department of Transportation T-100 data, it only filled 73% of seats. United announced its first Amman flights in October 2021.
It was when other 'innovative' destinations, enabled by the pandemic, were added, such as Bergen (started in 2022, but flights have since ended ), Palma (2022), Ponta Delgada (2022), and Tenerife South (2022). United launched flights on the 5,183 nautical mile (9,599 km) route on May 5, 2022. At the time, it was its second Middle Eastern city, joining Tel Aviv.
Dulles-Amman flights operated three times weekly on United's 243-seat Boeing 787-8 . (Having last been served in January 2016, Dubai reappeared in March 2023 in partnership with Emirates.) Where the demand comes from According to booking data, Amman-North America had 440,000+ passengers before the pandemic in 2019.
United would have used data from that year to decide on the new route. About three in four passengers flew via a European hub, showing how underserved it was from a non-stop perspective. The demand mainly came from people visiting friends and relatives, growing tourism (at least before the nearby war), US embassy travel, and government travel.
Interestingly, Amman, usually considered a relatively safe country in the region, has often been used by passengers bound for nearby nations, including Lebanon, Syria, and parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. A look at the DC-Amman market Washington DC traffic totaled approximately 30,000 point-to-point Amman passengers in 2019, making it the largest US unserved market from the Jordanian capital. It also had among the highest fares of all Amman-North American markets.
Of course, as Dulles focuses so greatly on transit passengers, it is unsurprising that connecting passengers would be critical. A look at United's traffic to May 2024 According to the US DOT T-100 data for the 12 months to May 2024, the most recent month to which I have access, United carried 58,000 roundtrip Amman passengers . An average of 85% of seats were filled.
As always, this is just one performance element and should not be considered in isolation. Some months had 90%+, down to a low of 76%. Relating traffic to booking data suggests approximately 17,000 passengers (29%) were point-to-point; they only flew between Dulles and Amman.
The rest of the passengers—around 41,000 (71%)—connected to another flight in Dulles. The top five origins and destinations Nearly everyone went to other US destinations. Booking data indicates that Tampa (!) was number one.
Given so many connections, the traffic volume was not large. The Greater Tampa area has a reasonable population of people, or their families, from the Levant and other countries . Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq are key, and United's flights to Amman are thus important.
Raleigh Durham came after Tampa, then Detroit (unsurprising, despite Royal Jordanian's non-stops), New Orleans, and Chicago O'Hare (despite Royal Jordanian's non-stops)..
