Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
Still, DL serves noticeably fewer Southeast Asian destinations than PMNW. BKK seems to be the latest casualty. This would be a leisure destination but HKK would have a lot of high yielding business travel, yet HKK is difficult to reach on DL.
But in the world that PMNW was in, the local Asian carriers were not nearly as many or large as they are today. Also there were not many planes that could go with a full load from SE Asia to the US Mainland, and probably none that could do it constantly profitable.
The entire TPAC to US segment is great for consumers but not all that great for airlines right now.
None of the US carriers have a JV anywhere near as robust as their TATL JV's and there are a ton of Asian carriers who may be in an alliance, but are not part of any JV.
So you combine very long flights with weak partnerships, lack of access to certain airports/slots in Japan and China, and competition from out of the region with the ME3 taking some Eastern US passengers to Asia, and everyone is going to have some major holes in their networks.