Originally Posted by
FireEmblemPride
NRT will continue to see flights from the US mainland from each hub except SLC. It's an important destination in general, and DL wouldn't be opposed to HND's daytime slot allocation and lobby against it if Tokyo weren't an important market for the airline, hub or not. The lack of ability for SEA to support O&D traffic to HND is a good indicator that SEA is not ready to become another SFO or LAX for several years. Nor can less-important ICN or the problematic Chinese mainland airports serve as complete substitutes. NRT will stay, and will never stop being a priority of some sort for DL.
Just because DL has short term pain from Japan's currency woes doesn't mean that Japan isn't a reliable aviation market. They'll just end up ceding market to other competitors, especially as overall tourism in Japan grows. Not necessarily the wrong strategy, but it says more about DL than it does about Japan itself.
Of course. The A350 addition will certainly bring new possibilities to the Asia Pacific market. I frequent Narita so I of course don't like to see the hub diminsh. What I meant was more along the lines of I expect DL to drop the tag on flights to 3rd countries, atleast the vast majority of them as SEA continues to build. The service US-NRT will stay, that's essentially guaranteed. Tokyo in general has the demand for the traffic we send out there.
Originally Posted by
lamont2718
Delta's presence at NRT will remain roughly flat unless it secures a JV with KE and/or MU, in which case it will decline substantially.
I don't know about it remaining flat. I do expect TPE to be gone fairly soon and of course with the remaining of the 744s leaving the fleet I expect overall seats to decrease as well, whether or not actual flight numbers decrease. Remember, Delta plans to reduce Japanese traffic by 15%-20% by the 4th quarter this year alone.