With air-travel demand (especially for leisure) picking up post a sharp rise in the number of people getting inoculated, United Airlines Holdings, Inc. (UAL Quick QuoteUAL - Free Report) announced that it intends to add nearly 150 flights to its domestic winter schedule.

Along with adding warm-weather destinations within the United States., the airline is also increasing its Latin beach and leisure schedule by 19% from 2019 levels. The airline expects to fly 137 more flights than it did in 2019 (pre-pandemic time) to places like Florida, California, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. The service will commence from November 2021 through March 2022.

As part of the expansion strategy, the carrier is also expanding service to the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America by 30% from 2019 levels. This includes 12 new routes departing from major cities like Denver, Los Angeles, New York/Newark, San Francisco and Washington D.C. to destinations including Belize City, Belize; Cozumel, Mexico; Liberia, Costa Rica and Nassau, Bahamas.

We believe that on materialization of this new seasonal service to sunny destinations will help the airline recover from prolonged COVID-19 led crisis by attracting substantial traffic, thereby aiding the carrier’s top line.

Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider

United Airlines currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Some better-ranked stocks in the broader Zacks Transportation sector are Landstar System (LSTR Quick QuoteLSTR - Free Report) , C.H. Robinson (CHRW Quick QuoteCHRW - Free Report) and FedEx Corporation (FDX Quick QuoteFDX - Free Report) . All the stocks carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1(Strong Buy) Rank stocks here.

Long-term (three to five years) expected earnings per share growth rate for Landstar, C.H. Robinson and FedEx is projected at 12%, 9% and 12%, respectively.