US major, United Airlines, has revealed plans to boost its schedules in and out of San Jose, Costa Rica for a two week period over the 2014/2015 New Year period. The carrier will offer a combined six additional return flights a week across two routes to hub airports from December 19, 2014, to January 4, 2015, increasing its schedule to the Central American country by 9.4 per cent.

During the holiday period, United will offer four additional weekly flights between San Jose’s Juan Santamaría International Airport and its Houston hub at George Bush Intercontinental Airport (friday to Monday), while two additional weekly flights will be offered to and from its New York hub at Newark Liberty International Airport. These will be operated by Boeing 737-800 configured with 16 seats in United Business and 138 in Economy, including 48 Economy Plus extra-legroom seats and add to its existing schedule of 21 weekly flights across the routes.

“Due to strong demand in the holiday season, we decided to increase the number of flights, and will become the airline that offers the most numbers of seats to the US to Costa Rican travellers” said Salvador Marrero, managing director, Central America for United Airlines. “Additional flights to Houston and Newark allow us to support the country's strategies to attract US, European and Asian tourism and to contribute to the momentum and dynamism of the export and industrial sector in Costa Rica,” he added.

United began operations in Costa Rica in 1990 and from December 19, 2014 will offer 64 weekly non-stop services between Juan Santamaría International Airport and four United US hubs. Alongside the highlighted routes to Houston and Newark, United also has direct links to San Jose from both Chicago O’Hare International and Washington Dulles International Airport and between Liberia International Airport and Chicago, Houston and Newark.

In our analysis, below, we look in greater detail at scheduled air capacity to Costa Rica from the US. The data shows this market has seen a varied capacity offering across the past ten years but will hit a peak of almost 1.5 million one-way seats this year, based on published schedules.

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United, thanks to inheriting the activities of Continental Airlines in 2012 following their merger, is the prominent carrier in this market with a 30.0 per cent capacity share, followed closely by American Airlines with 27.5 per cent. Both are facing tougher competition this year from Delta Air Lines and JetBlue Airways which have boosted capacity 35.6 per cent and 33.8 per cent, respectively.

The largest departure point for capacity into Costa Rica from the US this year is Miami (7.4 per cent share, down 4.0 per cent versus 2013) followed by Houston (7.0 per cent share, up 1.2 per cent), Atlanta (4.8 per cent share, up 8.7 per cent), Fort Lauderdale (3.7 per cent share, up 32.6 per cent) and Newark (3.0 per cent share, down 7.0 per cent).