When this happens, does this mean I can get AA miles for CX discount economy when I book it with an AA flight number?

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from SCMP.com March 8, 2002

American Air in HK link
JOSEPH LO

American Airlines, the largest carrier in the United States, plans to begin direct flights to Hong Kong by the end of next year.

The airline's presence will mean a significant increase in competition on services from the US to Hong Kong, which are dominated by rival carrier United Airlines.


American's plan has added pressure to negotiators for a more liberal air-services agreement between Hong Kong and the US.

David Cush, vice-president of international planning and alliances for American Airlines, said it would launch a direct service to Hong Kong within 12 to 18 months, with the first route a direct transpolar flight from Chicago.

However, Mr Cush said the starting date would depend on when Hong Kong and US negotiators agreed on an air-services pact.

Such a pact would be expected to allow American and Cathay Pacific to begin immediate code-sharing on transpacific services.

"A code-share deal would give us a low-risk way to introduce the American brand to Hong Kong. It would be a good precursor to introducing our own services into [this] market, since we are not well-known in Asia," Mr Cush said.

Without a new pact, he said, it could be three to four years before there would be an American Airlines presence at Chek Lap Kok.

Mr Cush expected a third round of meetings between negotiators in Washington within three months. Three days of talks last week were said to have progressed well, but the gap on more liberal fifth-freedom rights for cargo and passenger services through Hong Kong remained large.

So far, US negotiators have offered Cathay and American far fewer than the 40 code-share destinations they have requested.

Instead, they have been offered 11 destinations in continental US to which Cathay would be allowed to offer code-share services, in addition to the eight destinations to which it is allowed to fly direct.

Mr Cush said a similar code-share deal with Qantas to Australia had proved successful.

"We are exchanging about 500 passengers per day with Qantas. As a next step, we are encouraging them to fly a direct service to Los Angeles," he said.

By comparison, Cathay believes it could add about 800 passengers per day between Hong Kong and the US as a result of a code-sharing deal with American.

Mr Cush said American, which has a large domestic network and a large presence on the route between New York and London, had considered beginning services to Hong Kong last year.

It shelved the plans after studies found better options.

"We were close to putting our own metal into Chek Lap Kok about a year ago but we backed off those plans after assessing the risk," Mr Cush said.

"It was thought that there were services to other cities where we could better utilise our assets.

"We did put a lot of resources into it [at the time] . . . including two test flights over the polar regions and a lot of work with the Russians to allow us to do that. It was not a pipe dream."

The only Asian destination American services is Tokyo. Mr Cush said that was a result of both the dominance of Tokyo as an Asian hub for US traffic - about 40 per cent of US passenger traffic to Asia connects through Narita - and the difficulty of competing with United Airlines in this part of the world.

According to statistics provided by American, United had a 38 per cent share of the bookings in the US-Hong Kong market in 2000. Cathay Pacific had 19 per cent, while American 3 per cent.

"The only thing stopping us from flying into Hong Kong is risk. We are definitely a lot more risk-adverse since September 11 [when American lost two aircraft to terrorists]," Mr Cush said.