United Airlines is on the move.

Attention on the COVID-19 recovery in the United States has been focused on the domestic market since the summer of 2020. Even before we started referencing variants by Greek letters, it was clear the domestic markets would be leaders in bringing people back to travel.

In 2023 the battlefield has shifted to the international arena. As travel restrictions slowly fell away, international travelers sought to do what they do best: travel.

Hence, the fight for the long-haul international market from the U.S. is officially renewed. American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines are all reaching deep into their bag of widebodies to deploy capacity into the international market - sprinkled with the occasional narrowbody.

Things are happening. While the world was parking widebodies, United invested in its fleet - and it shows in the robust international network.

The challenge of displaying airline networks

But how do you show this deep international strategy? After all, we are a data visualization company (it's in our name, so we don't have much of a choice).

There is a story to tell of United's international network. It's not just a story of which international cities they fly to, it's how they fly there - how each market fits into their overall network. Our challenge was to show how each hub adds to the overall strategy.

Route maps are the obvious answer. We use them often. They show the lines flown, the markets touched, and the geographic reach.

This is a mess.

Look at United's convergence on NRT. Or is it HND? Is it both? From which hubs?

United is relying on EWR and IAD heavily for transatlantic reach. But wait, what's from IAD, and what's from EWR?

Don't even get us started on Europe:

A picture is worth a thousand words - it just can't say all 1,000 words simultaneously.

This was our challenge this week. How do we convey the deep complexities of the strategic moves happening in United's international route planning?

We're not designers, but we do very much appreciate design. We spend much time expanding our data engineering skillset, data science, and analysis. We also spend a fair amount of time looking through innovative ways of displaying data.

This week, we honor the likes of Harry Beck and Massimo Vignelli, data visualization pioneers. If you don't know these names, you've been a beneficiary of their influence anytime you've looked for the best way to get from West Hampstead to Liverpool Station or from Clark St. in Brooklyn to the upper east side of Manhattan.

In our opinion, subway maps are the pinnacle of displaying complex networks in a usable format. But they are hard. A layer of abstraction is required to deliver the 1,000 words in a way that leads to discovery and understanding rather than just showing a map.

We are constantly learning new techniques, coding frameworks, and software packages to find new ways of telling complex stories. Sometimes they work, other times they don't.

This one worked.