United joins American Airlines, which started daily service to LAX last year, and Breeze Airways, which operates the flight up to five times a week.<\/p>\n
Matt Smith, the Chief Growth Officer at the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, said the growing demand from Pittsburgh\u2019s innovation and tech community for West Coast access makes the flight announcement even more important.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe real competitive advantage that the Pittsburgh region has in a lot of the cases when we\u2019re pitching companies is that we sit very much at the intersection of AI, robotics, energy, manufacturing and life sciences,\u201d said Smith, who is also the Vice Chair of the Allegheny County Airport Authority board. \u201cA lot of the investment that we\u2019re seeing now is directly tied to innovation occurring in sectors that might not typically be the \u2018tech\u2019 sector.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pointed to Pittsburgh\u2019s strong advanced manufacturing, life sciences, healthcare, robotics, artificial intelligence and energy sectors that will be able to connect more seamlessly with Los Angeles\u2019 entertainment, tech, aerospace and international trade industries.<\/p>\n
\u201cInnovation really undergirds all of those other sectors so when we\u2019re able to enhance the connectivity that this region has to really key markets like Southern California, it proves the value proposition for us in terms of our ability to attract that external business investment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
United will operate daily, year-round service between Pittsburgh and Los Angeles beginning March 29, marking the carrier\u2019s return to the route for the first time since 2014. (Photo by Evan Dougherty)<\/p>\n
Dawn Keezer, Pittsburgh Film Office executive director, applauded United\u2019s addition, saying Pittsburgh\u2019s status as a growing TV and film market helps fuel West Coast connections.<\/p>\n
\u201cSouthwestern Pennsylvania has been home to over 250 film and television productions,\u201d Keezer said. \u201cPeople choose Southwestern Pennsylvania to film almost every single day because of our large crew base, our diversity of locations and our cost-effective ability to do business here.\u201d<\/p>\n
She recalled a recent story where the cast of the HBO Max series \u201cThe Pitt\u201d had filled the business class section of an American flight to go to the Emmys to the chagrin of a bunch of Apple employees who couldn\u2019t sit up front because it was full.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur clients spend a lot of money, and they want to be able to get back and forth easily. Most of these projects originate in Los Angeles, the management is based in Los Angeles, a lot of the talent lives in Los Angeles and time is money and they need to be able to get people back and forth easily,\u201d Keezer said. \u201cBy adding flights, we\u2019re showcasing once again that Western Pennsylvania wants this business and we\u2019re working to make things as easy as possible to get them here.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to tech and entertainment connections, other Pittsburgh corporate connections include PPG, Reed Smith, AECOM, Industrial Scientific and Wesco.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis flight addition by United shows the strength of the Pittsburgh market and we\u2019re pleased to welcome United\u2019s investment in Pittsburgh with another West Coast destination from PIT,\u201d said Bryan Dietz, Senior Vice President, Air Service and Commercial Development at PIT. \u201cLos Angeles is an important destination for both business and leisure passengers as well as a connecting point for flights to Asia and Australia. This flight gives our market more options to the West Coast and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n
With this addition, United will serve all of its seven hubs within the continental U.S. from PIT. The carrier last served the route in 2014.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur new daily nonstop flight between Pittsburgh and Los Angeles is an exciting addition to our route network,\u201d said Mark Weithofer, United\u2019s Managing Director of Domestic Network Planning. \u201cThis not only provides our customers with greater access between the two cities, but makes it convenient for travelers in Pittsburgh to travel to Los Angeles and destinations around the world with United\u2019s leading global route network.\u201d<\/p>\n
The United announcement comes on the heels of PIT\u2019s year end traffic report, which showed 9.85 million passengers passed through its terminals in 2025. That\u2019s the second busiest year since 2006, when the airport still had significant hub traffic.<\/p>\n
The 9.8 million figure fell within 1 percent of 2024\u2019s record 9.9 million passengers, the busiest ever since 2006. The year-end report also showed PIT finishing with three straight months of passenger gains heading into the new year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The strength of the Pittsburgh market, particularly its West Coast connections, has prompted another airline to start nonstop…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[32612,1197,1250,44272,73,75,74,21735],"class_list":["post-89202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-air-service","tag-feature","tag-los-angeles","tag-new-routes","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-united-airlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}