Originally Posted by
orbitmic
Well, it does leave quite a lot of ground uncovered - such as
Canton, Assume you mean Guangdong, the official Romanized name for the province since ~1950. Guangzhou is the long city in Guangdong that could possibly pencil... but the mideast carriers sort of have that market locked up because they draw from all over Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. KLM still stays in the game due to AMS' larger natural catchment area than LON and its partnership with CZ (which is based at CAN)
Shantou, Seriously? I'm at a loss for words on this one.
Tianjin, Airlines fly to TSN when they can't get slots at PEK. There is no point in splitting the market (puts downward pressure on demand from PEK).
Nanjing, I've heard that LH receives some pretty nice corporate guarantees (from German companies that have business in Nanjing) to keep that route afloat.
Chongqing, This is one that I could almost see. In fact, would have put it neck and neck with Chengdu (less advanced economy, but significantly greater population).
My comments are in
blue. 20 years from now, I think many Chinese cities will have intercontinental flights, but the status quo seems to serve 2014 pretty well... maybe even too well in some cases.
Just because cities have lots of people doesn't mean that those people have any desire to go to foreign countries or vice versa. (Nanning, with its 8 million people and booming economy, is my poster child for this argument, but it can be applied in dozens of other cases.)