Create Airlines of China forum

Being relieved of internal TB work, I found a better way to contribute to the community

Its time to rehash the old suggestion of an Airlines of China proposal. This has been half heartedly suggested several times over the years, but now the times have changed, so has the TB and the recent history of creating new forums as well.

I will try to put my thoughts into the form suggested by TB
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/11201697-post2.html

(IMO these guidelines are very poorly written, and I will likely suggest in a different thread that these are updated, unless TB itself is on the ball. Especially as this area seems to be the only area where TB has some "power", and it repeatedly generates member participation discussing new forums.)

1. Will the forum be (or is it now) beneficial to FlyerTalk?

To add some background:
Airlines of India got a forum in 2007.
Airlines of Russia+ got a forum earlier this year.
Airlines of Hawaii has been on for longer than I managed to utilize the search function to verify.
Destination forum for China was created in 2006.

Airlines of India has been a great success. Airlines of Russia is only a few months old, hence not having that high volume yet, but personally I think its a great addition to FT. The China destination forum is a great success. For a country forum, only Japan and UK is bigger in terms of posts.

China is the second largest economy in the world, with a rapid growth for huge masses. Including travel and aviation.

China would in this proposal obviously include Hong Kong and Macau, and I choose to include Taiwan. Cathay (CX) already has a forum (which includes Dragonair/KA). I therefore suggest to include "including Taiwan, Hong Kong (exceot Cathay/Dragonair) and Macau" in the forum description.

I will get back to more numbers and math below but those sole facts alone; the sheer size and growth of Chinas economy including aviation industry and the success of the China forum lead to me to claim that its about due time to create an Airlines of China forum.

I feel this will be very benefitial to the current members of FT, and especially so helping FT become more international (see TB candidates voting platforms). There are huge groups of frequent flyers already in China, and with english being more and more widely spoken, and the chinese travellers going increasingly international such a forum creation on FT will potentially pave the way for a broader and more international FT with adding new members.

Both China Southern (CZ) and China Eastern (MU) are on top 10 lists of passengers flown worldwide. Both are Skyteam members, as well are China Airlines (CI) and Xiamen Airlines (MF).

*A has Air China (CA) with a great new F product as well. Shanghai Airlines (FM) recently left *A. But EVA Air (BR) is expected to join *A in 2013, and Shenzhen Airlines (ZH) is expected to join almost as I write.

There are also plenty of other non-alliance carriers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ublic_of_China for mainland China only.

Obviously in addition to plenty of main alliance airlines, equally many or more do have FFPs.


2. Will the new forum benefit a relationship with FlyerTalk? E.g., does the forum provide value for FT members, such as a friendly ear highly placed in the company

I really dont get this question. Maybe someone can help? As its involving a number of airlines its hard to say whether any of them will provide a lurker. this is probably something FT leadership should look into, trying to attract lurkers. That is if we feel thats benefitial. Some of the lurkers around do more harm than good, and makes it more difficult to discuss gems of the program in fear of closure as well.

3. Is FT the best place to discuss this subject?

For the english speaking crowd, yes. This is within the core value of FT, FFPs, so its a no-brainer to reply yes on this.

4. Is there a passionate following? This is essential in order to provide dedicated expert helpers to get questions answered.

The success of China forum, and the huge volume clearly indicates massive interest in travel to/within China. See also below.

5. Is a critical mass of posts and readers anticipated or existing? We need adequate traffic to keep everyone visiting frequently. One living forum is more valuable than two mostly dead ones.

It seems Chinese based airlines take up a rough 2/3 of all traffic in Other Asian, Australian and South Pacific Frequent Flyer Programs. And that is by far the biggest of the four "Other airlines.." forums. Any estimate based on this would give a rather medium sized forum just to jump-start.

6. Is this the best place on FlyerTalk for this subject? This is the classification issue. The answer depends primarily on achieving and maintaining critical mass. It also depends on whether or where the discussion might (or does) occur in the absence of the forum.

This is also mixed up with the above. But this discussion which is so specific to one region is today scattered around other asian carriers, as well as within their alliance partners forums, and China forum as well. Clearly it would be better to gather such information on one forum. It should be no problem to achieve critical mass considering several major carriers are within the proposal. Some of them may eventually even get their own forum.

Paging the community and TB for input^

I support creating an airlines of China forum. ^

I, too, support creating an Airlines of China Forum, where the airlines of China can be lumped together in one easily searching source. However, leave airlines of Taiwan out of it. I say that not for political reasons, but because airlines of Taiwan do not operate on the same geographic-economic premises as airlines of China.

None of the airlines listed above offers a decent FFP that's worth it's own forum. For the major carriers, there are often other airlines in the alliance that's worthy to bank the miles. For the regional carriers, I don't think enough flights are being taken by flyertalkers to the extent a heavy talk for group forums.

As Flyertalk being a heavy FFP/Miles discussion forum, I find a forum for China not needed. A sticky on FFP is more than enough.

I'm one of the few people that likes the "other" forum, so my vote is "no" (I explained why in greater detail the last time this topic popped up, but much boils down to the fact that since so few of us actually accrue points in Chinese FFPs, the China forum itself is often the best venue for discussion... though I must admit that we don't really care what airplane MU is flying to/from HNL and the like).

The OP provides a link to a list of airlines of mainland China, with further links to airlines of Hong Kong and Macau (but not Taiwan), but how many of these airlines currently offer scheduled commercial passenger service? Some seem clearly to be cargo operations while others appear to be general aviation.

Is a similar list available for Taiwan? I know China Airlines and EVA, but are there others?

With recent history with the same issue during discussing Russia based airlines and their regional conflicts, I assumed this objection would pop up. Lets leave politics, be pragmatic and future oriented. A bunch of airlines now traffic China-Taiwan. Im not sure what geographinc objections there would be, and even less economic?

But I have no strong preferences if we need to include Taiwan, but I see it as very practical.

In OP I simply googled "airlines of china" to get the wikipedia link.

Same trick for Taiwan revealed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airlines_of_Taiwan

Yes, but you didn't answer how many of these airlines provide scheduled commercial passenger service. Within mainland China, I recognize (in addition to the major airlines you mention) Chengdu, Hainan, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Sichuan, and Tianjin, plus Dragonair and at least one carrier with Hong Kong in its name. The list includes one outfit that seems to mainly take people between HKG and a few locations in Kowloon or Central and a similar helicopter operator based in Macau.

I cant answer questions I dont know the answer to Thats why I chose to reply only to what I knew. If you had clicked through my link, and consequently on each of the carriers listed under chinese carriers you would find 22 passenger carriers within mainland China (excluding HK/Macau), where of 11 (if I counted fully correct) have FFPs.

In addition there is one carrier in Macau (Air Macau) and one in HK (Hong Kong Airlines) which provides scheduled passenger flights, and both have FFPs.

I have not counted sea plane companies, helicopter companies, private jet companies or cargo carriers.

In Taiwan Mandarin and Uni have FFPs in addition to CI and EVA, plus there are a few others without FFP.

With this said its more than safe to say that we are talking about the highest density of FFPs in the world that doesnt have some dedicated space on FT.

^ it already exists: flyertea.com

I heartily support the proposal. However, according to the new FT norms, the forum's name will most likely be "China-based airlines".

Just shows how conservative I am

But you are right of course@:-)

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/talkb...e-members.html

Thats an interesting question. The following deserves its own thread, but I will pop it here as relevant. To me there seems to be a total lack of strategic thinking in terms of expansion of FT. Russian, spanish, arabic and chinese (even japanese, korean, portuguese etc) forums are growing. Lots of those active members do have english skills, but still limited if any knowledge of FT, and for many at least no good forums (with traffic).

How to attract those growing numbers? There is obviously a roof for local carriers like Croatian, but there is basically no limit for carriers like Air China, China Eastern and China Southern. We should start them, and be market leading.

Joint projects or whatever with such forums could work. I bet Randy will consider this and be in front of the evolution. Or heck, maybe I start it myself

I am neutral to the creation of a PRC-based airlines forum since I don't know much about them. However, if there were a China-based airlines forum, I don't think it's any good idea to included Taiwanese airlines. The forum name itself could cause some problems. Even there's currently a China Forum, FT and formal TBers are wise enough to have (destination) Taiwan topics rest in Asia Forum, so there's no chance for any political muddy water to get through. Taiwanese airlines are doing fine in our Other Asian, Australian and South Pacific Frequent Flyer Programs Forum.

Even with cross-strait agreement w/r/t direct flights between China and Taiwan, savvy FTers had argued not to include Taiwanese airlines in some previous similar proposal. As of today, those points are still valid:

If the new TBers want to dig deeper, here are links to existing discussion threads on this topic:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/talkb...ter-china.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/talkb...nes-china.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/talkb...-has-come.html