Originally Posted by
robertocusato
Realistically speaking, these Asian destinations are high in demand and will be even higher in the years to come:
Seoul-Incheon
Tokyo NRT and HAN
Osaka
PEK
PUD You mean PVG Shanghai Pudong?
HKG
Possibly another chinese city like Guangzhou
BKK
SIN
KUL
CGK (Indonesia is a rapidly-expanding economy)
DEL
BOM
Plus SYD and at least DBX in the ME.
While OW is pretty strong in many of these cities through BA, CX, JL, QF I don't see why AA shouldn't tap the growth potential as other competitors are doing (See DL and UA). Continental, for instance, mantains a hub in Guam, and Delta has now a hub (!) in Tokyo!
Also, any idea why AA shut down their Asian operations from San Jose?
Airlines have a very good revenue management system which can correctly forecast future demand and revenue related activities.
It is obviousely that San Jose does not have a strong enough market to support the Asian route. Insted AA use hub strategy to let passenger originated from San Jose to transit in LAX or take direct flight from nearby airports.
PEK/SHANGHAI is going to have the potential of growth. But without China government cancel their tough visa policy, and/or US put China as one of the visa-waiver country list, there will not be a realistic leisure market in the volumn airline can afford to have double daily service or triple or added service routes...So is CGK. US-CGK volumn will be largely one way flow unless Indonesians being granted more visas to visit USA.
BKK and SIN are reaching their designed capacity. Both of them are keen to have transit passengers from nearby countries like India, Laos, Myanmar etc. The US--BKK/SIN traffic will be somewhat steady and less room for growth due to the nature of competition from North Asia.
Otherwise the only growth point seems to be India, but again there will be visa problems. With US government limits visa insuances in certain country, it will somehow seal a plug in the leisure market as well as certain business market. AA already have ORD-DEL service and keen on cooperation with Kingfisher.
So, Asia will remain one very competitive market with intangible potentials of growing point. But the government policy on restricted travel between many Asian countries and US will not help the situation. Airlines certainly knows what it take to develope this closed-door market.