United and Continental to merge; no difference for adoption travel

By no means a surprise, the long-awaited completion of merger talks between fellow Star Alliance members United and Continental was announced last week. 


While the combination will take some time for regulatory approval - and then more time to actually go about the process of splicing the companies together - as far as Asian travel goes, you won't see much difference for many years.


Both carriers are in the same alliance, so you have already been able to earn frequent flier miles on either airline. Both carriers already cooperate on Transpacific flights, and coordinate arrivals and departures at Tokyo and Beijing with their fellow alliance partners All Nippon and Air China.


Also, no new routes to Asia in general (except for some tweaks to Tokyo) - or China in particular - are expected to come out of this deal. United has again pushed back its San Francisco - Guangzhou service by another year, there's no indication they'll be resuming the Washington DC - Beijing route. There are simply not enough long-haul airplanes in the combined fleet to do any more Pacific flying than they already do, until later this decade, when the new United will start receiving Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 long-haul super-efficient widebodies.


So for foreseeable future, this news should not impact your adoption travel plans one bit.