As some of you might know, QF have been tossing around recently the prospect of direct flights - probably from AKL - to ORD.

But, just this week, they announced flights to ORD, as a continuation of the MEL-LAX flight.

Now it has been thrown up, in another place, that this has occurred at this time because of the parlous state that UA has found itself in.

Going to DFW will take bodies from AA, leading to a leach from one oneworld carrier to another. oneworld sees no benefit, and they are bodies which QF would have carried anyway from LAX to wherever.

But going to ORD, on the other hand, with the current state of UA, opens up all sorts of possibilities - the main one being that people might think twice about using UA, and might instead use QF, leading to a drain from the Evil Empire (aka Star Alliance) across to oneworld.

This not only helps QF, but leads to a further drain on UA, and thus making their situation a little bit worse.

Any thoughts on this?

Dave