Originally Posted by
phol
Air China does the same thing (that itinerary is ¥993 cheaper to CDG, of which ¥902 is APD)
China Eastern does absorb some of the fare difference, but it is still ¥702 more expensive to fly to LHR.
That's 3 of the biggest airlines in the world coming from one of the most important markets, in other words far from just an anomaly. Spread across a family those APD charges add up. If they didn't affect flights at all the APD debate would be non existent, but it's not.
So what? Yes, these are big airlines but a very large proportion of that traffic is domestic chinese traffic. Being overwhelmingly big on domestic Chinese routes does not make you the most significant carriers on Asia to Europe markets, let alone on rest-of-the-world to Europe markets. None of these 3 is a dominant player on Asia to Europe. This may change in the future but perhaps so might rather idiosyncratic pricing policies that are unlike those of most other carriers in not seemingly taking into account supply and demand.
