fishywang

A friend of mine just visited China during Thanksgiving, and took HU+AS SFO-SEA-PEK route. I tried a dummy booking on HU's website and that's totally bookable, but the AS segment earns no miles on HU's FF. This is interesting in several aspects:

1. HU is a nice airlines, have 5-star skytrax rating. They are not as good as other 5-stars, but at least they are not bad.
2. HU use 787 to fly PEK-SEA route.
3. HU is a non-alliance airline with lots of various partners (just like AS)
4. HU's Northern American partner is AA, so normally they use AA to feed their NA destinations (SEA, ORD, BOS, YYZ, all with 787). But obvious AA don't have a strong network ex-SEA. I suspect this route is also bookable through AA, as they are both AA's partners.

It would be interesting if HU & AS can extent their current partnership, maybe through AA. This will give me some more options to visit China and other Asian parts. But that might makes CX unhappy*, so who knows.

* Rumors are HU could join oneworld (There's no Chinese carrier in oneworld, and they have partnership with AA), only CX hate this idea (HU has 2 subsidiaries based on HKG: Hong Kong Airlines & Hong Kong Express Airways)

CDKing

Since AS is not a member of OW, HU joining wont make a difference. CX may take up issue with AS partnering with HU. Although maybe a threat would get Dragon Air to earn miles in AS. If AS could partner with everyone and get away with it, they probably would have done it already. I mean they did partner with both AA and DL but DL wasn't too happy about that anymore and wanted AS to dump its oneworld partners.

fishywang

Getting KA would be nice. CX alone serves too few Chinese airports, I mean, even KE serves more Chinese airports than CX.

If you ask me to choose only one between CX and HU, maybe I'll still pick CX.

1353513636

I thought CX would only have an issue if AS partnered with HX, which is a subsidary of HU. However, I didn't think CX had any problems with HU itself.

WhIteSidE

Flying in China.

It's an experience.

But overall, I like HU.

jona970318

I would love to see that! It's funny that on the MP page it says that:
"When your travels take you somewhere that Alaska Airlines doesn't fly, you can redeem your Mileage Plan™ Miles for travel on any of our airline partners. With our Partner Awards, you can fly to Acapulco, Zhengzhou, or just about anywhere in between."
But it's funny that AS doesn't actually have a partner that flies to Zhengzhou

CDKing

Of the cities in the USA that HU serves, only SEA is not served by CX. CX and HU both have BOS, ORD and YYZ. Seems HU is trying to move in on markets served by CX.

mediator

Another problem is HU does not have a real "hub" in mainland China. Take PEK for example, CA which dominates PEK, operates from T3 exclusively but HU uses the old T1 and has way too fewer flights than CA. HU's network is more like a point to point model rather than hub and spoke. Also the financial condition for HU is unclear. HU has so many "subsidiaries", like JD,8L and GS. It will be a mess if all those "subsidiaries" are trying to join the OW.

1353513636

No, HU is trying to serve every city in USA/Canada/Europe they can profitably serve that CA will let them serve. Has nothing to do with CX. Surprised that CA hasn't stopped them from serving even these cities though, as CX is part-owned by CA and if CA says HU can't fly a route, they can't.

taxicabnumber

Here's a good read relating to this:

http://centreforaviation.com/analysi...-routes-191664

Jimgotkp

I think this would be a cool addition. If the mileage earnings are pretty good then it would be a better option than DL's non-stop between SEA and PEK. I heard their Business Class seats on the 787 is pretty good too.

beckoa

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's BB: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.694 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

Solid read.

Thanks for the link ^

CDKing

Another problem is the partnerships also rely on AS feeding partner flights or AS taking partners traffic to its destination. Partly what is happening with the DL partnership and SEA international buildup is AS doesn't have enough capacity so DL needed to add a bunch of its own, that put some considerable strain on the partnership. AS can only have so many partners.

Dieuwer

What is CX waiting for. They should not let DL have the sole non-stop.

CDKing

From what I've seen SEA to Asia has not been very profitable for many airlines. UA used to put its crappiest equipment on it, it was a notorious equipment swap route. I believe ANA did the same before 787 cam online If CX had some 787 they would probably be on it by now. CX had more important routes to start like BOS-HKG