United Airlines today marked 25 years of serving Heathrow in the same week as the airline’s 90th anniversary.
The US carrier’s first scheduled flight to Heathrow, a Boeing 747 aircraft from Washington, DC, landed on April 4, 1991, followed by services from New York, San Francisco and Miami later that day.
Since then United, which now operates up to 17 flights a day from Heathrow to Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York/Newark, San Francisco and Washington, has carried more than 42 million passengers on 233,000 flights to and from the airport.
More than 300 staff work for the airline at Heathrow Terminal 2 and it has 450 UK flight attendants based at the airport.
UK and Ireland managing director of sales, Bob Schumacher, said: “From our home at the new Terminal 2: The Queen’s Terminal, we look forward to a bright future at one of the most important airports in our global network.”
The airline operated its first flight from Pasco, Washington, to Boise, Idaho, on April 6, 1926.