Originally Posted by
someone0000
Reported in Taiwan's Economic Daily News today:
- Plan for 4 weekly flights to MXP from early 2020
- Planning underway for a destination in Germany (currently rumoured to be MUC)
- BNE moving to 78J starting Nov 2019
Originally Posted by
bzcat
North America expansion is on hold because of competition basically... JL and HU took all the potential SE Asia transit traffic ex-BOS and KE is too entrenched in IAD-SE Asia for BR to get in.
The European focus now make sense because it is targeting Taiwan outbound traffic, not SE Asia transit.
MXP is going to be a good station for BR. Lots of outbound Taiwan tourism to Italy and Switzerland that currently routes thru VIE and now be routed open jaw to work with 4x weekly ops. I think the frequency is restricted to 4x by bilateral because CI operates to FCO 3x weekly.
MUC should be a good station too but the bilateral needs to be revised as CI has FRA and each side can only have 1 airline service regardless of which airport. Perhaps the revision is in the works and we just don't know it yet.
I think BR will start returning the older 77W when the lease starts to expire in 2 years. They can easily maintain the fleet capacity by retrofitting all the remaining owned 77W with 10 abreast Y cabin.
MXP and other comments were made by Chairman Steve Lin during the annual Evergreen Group Investor conference.
With regards to North America, BR has made it very clear that there will be no expansion for the next two years as they "develop existing markets" and focus resources on "other aspects of the overall network".
With regards to the German bilateral, the 3rd son has reportedly been dispatched to begin discussions with governments. He has been credited with many of the bilateral negotiations, including Italy, France, and the UK back in the day.
BR is expecting another great year in 2019, and their Jan/Feb results are already showing this. A jump of 15% and 7% respectively in yields while maintaining roughly the same LF.