CHALLENGE · JUNE 5-9, 2026

Europe to Asia,
the long way.

Glasgow to Manila on sixteen consecutive United-operated narrowbody sectors. The 7 Hub Run was in the middle. The Island Hopper was the heart of it.

The idea came from going the wrong way on purpose

Kevin Wu had documented an even more restrictive challenge: Mongolia to Portugal using United 737s. I loved the premise. A global airline network is designed to move people efficiently. What happens if you deliberately use that network in the least widebody way possible?

My version would allow any United narrowbody, not just 737s. That mattered because the A321neo had become part of the domestic network. The goal was simple to state and awkward to execute: start in Europe, end in Asia and do every United-operated segment in between on a narrowbody.

Glasgow was the opening move

On June 5, I boarded UA231 from Glasgow to Newark on a Boeing 737 MAX 8. That single flight made the rest possible. Instead of beginning the challenge in North America, the narrowbody crossed the Atlantic first.

The next day was already committed to another idea: the 7 Hub Run. That meant the challenge immediately turned into six more segments across the United States.

The 7 Hub Run became the spine

Nearly seventy people joined the June 6 run. For everyone else, it was the event. For my larger itinerary, it was also the middle section of a continent-spanning chain.

That distinction disappeared quickly when the IAD-ORD leg ran into a brake or maintenance issue and required an aircraft change. We lost more than two hours. The group focused on preserving the Hub Run. I was also watching a second chain of flights extending beyond San Francisco, across the Pacific and eventually into Manila.

By the time we reached SFO, both plans were still alive.

West, not home

On June 7, UA2380 took me from San Francisco to Honolulu on a 737 MAX 9. The next day, eight of us started the Island Hopper.

That was six more narrowbody sectors on the same flight number: Honolulu to Majuro, Kwajalein, Kosrae, Pohnpei, Chuuk and finally Guam. The route added more than 4,300 great-circle miles while moving across island communities one stop at a time.

For the challenge, those were sectors nine through fourteen. For the story, they were the part that made the itinerary worth doing.

The eighth hub was not the finish

Five of the Island Hopper group stopped in Guam. Three of us kept moving. UA193 continued from Guam to Palau and then Manila on a 737-800.

Those two segments completed the narrowbody chain: Europe to Asia without a United widebody anywhere in the sequence.

Then I finally got on a widebody

On June 10, I boarded UA810 from Manila to San Francisco on a Boeing 777-300ER.

That flight is not part of the challenge. It is the punctuation mark. After crossing from Europe to Asia by narrowbody, the ordinary long-haul way home suddenly felt almost too straightforward.

What made the challenge work

The routing looks engineered because it was. But the best parts were the pieces that did not behave like a spreadsheet: seventy people trying to protect a collapsing connection chain, eight people being welcomed across Micronesia, a go-around in Pohnpei, a held connection in Guam and the realization that the eighth hub was only the beginning of the final two sectors.

The challenge was inspired by an aircraft constraint. What made it memorable was everything that happened inside it.