Originally Posted by
PsiFighter37
As for TPE, because it is a *A hub (not sure what kind of arrangements they have with EVA), perhaps it made sense? Imagine there is a decent amount of tech folks flying SFO-TPE as well, particularly from the manufacturing side...
SFO-TPE is very tech traffic heavy and load factor 87%. BR will operate SFO-TPE 17x weekly as of Nov'17, CI ~10x weekly, and UA daily. East coast travelers have few non-stop choices (only JFK, YYZ, and very recently ORD, most/all of which are poorly timed for connections NA-bound so I imagine BR gets poor feeds). So we have to put up with the 9 hour combined TCON+SFO layover or the other EastCoast-NRT-TPE with NH the final leg.
DL also recently ended NRT-TPE service, perhaps anticipating the KE JV, which should help with east coast connections to TPE via ICN.
I mostly travel east coast to TPE and ICN, and the lower loads on SFO-ICN vs SFO-TPE are noticeable, but I imagine these changes will make ICN routings on UA difficult for last minute travel.