United Airlines Hubs in 2025: What Travelers Should Know

What Makes a Hub?

Airline networks aren’t random. They’re carefully designed around “hubs”—airports where flights are concentrated to funnel passengers through connections.

If you live in a hub city, you enjoy more nonstop destinations and frequent flights. If you don’t, odds are you’ll connect through one. That’s the logic of the hub-and-spoke system we’ve written about before on FlightWisdom, and it still drives U.S. airline strategy today.

For United Airlines in 2025, there are seven official hubs—plus a few cities with special roles that blur the line between hub and focus city.

United Airlines Hubs in 2025

United officially operates seven primary U.S. hubs and one overseas gateway. According to United’s own Airports & Terminal Maps page, these hubs are:

Chicago O’Hare (ORD) – United’s largest hub and its historic home base. Thousands of connections flow through here daily.
Denver (DEN) – A major connecting point for the Mountain West and increasingly busy as United expands.
Houston Bush Intercontinental (IAH) – The key hub for Latin America and the southern U.S.
Los Angeles (LAX) – A smaller hub than SFO, but still important for West Coast and Pacific flying.
Newark Liberty (EWR) – The dominant international hub for the New York region, with heavy transatlantic traffic.
San Francisco (SFO) – United’s premier transpacific hub, with a strong West Coast domestic presence.
Washington Dulles (IAD) – A gateway to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, with extensive domestic feed.
Guam (GUM) – United’s Pacific outpost, connecting island-hopping flights across Micronesia and Asia.

What About Cleveland?

Cleveland (CLE) used to be a United hub, inherited from Continental Airlines. After the United–Continental merger, it lost hub status in 2014 due to limited demand. Today, CLE is a focus city with some nonstop service, but it no longer plays the central role it once did.

Why Hubs Matter for Travelers

For travelers, hubs shape everything:

More Nonstops: Live in Denver, and you can fly United to dozens of cities without changing planes.
Connection Likelihood: Live in Kansas City? Your United itinerary probably runs through Denver, Chicago, or Houston.
Pricing: Hub dominance can sometimes mean higher fares, especially where United has little competition.
Upgrades and Lounges: Hubs are where United concentrates its Polaris lounges, United Clubs, and premium services.

United’s Strategy Compared to Rivals

United’s hub strategy emphasizes international reach. Compared to Delta and American, United leans heavily on Newark, Dulles, and San Francisco for global connectivity. Its Mountain West hub in Denver gives it a unique advantage for coast-to-coast flying.

The Big Three are more similar than different, though: each controls 6–10 key hubs, each uses those hubs to concentrate traffic, and each has scaled back or redefined old hubs over the years.

Shared Rides, Long Walks, and Hub Life

If you’ve read our recent piece on JFK’s rideshare shuffle, you know hubs aren’t just about where the flights go. They’re about the whole passenger experience—from how long it takes to get to your gate, to whether you can actually find your Uber when you land.

Hubs magnify those issues because they handle so much volume. Chicago and Newark can feel like endurance tests, while Denver’s sprawling concourses test your walking shoes. But they’re also the places that make United’s network work.

How United’s Hubs Shape Your Journey

United doesn’t just fly you from A to B—it funnels millions through its seven hubs, shaping the way Americans connect to the rest of the world. Understanding those hubs helps you predict when you’ll connect, what prices you’ll pay, and how smooth (or bumpy) your journey might be. For frequent travelers, that knowledge isn’t just trivia—it’s a strategy for making the most of United in 2025.