Originally Posted by
east_west
Wow, I believe CI+BR already run 6x daily on LA-TPE (5x LAX, 1x ONT) all on 777/A350s...?
ICN and HKG only have 4x each.
Currently CI only operates 7 weekly on LAX. 10 weekly from next week.
So it will be almost 5 daily but short of 4 weekly flights.
Originally Posted by
username
LAX is the number one priority for JX and Taiwanese carriers because of the huge Asian/Taiwanese population. Who would have thought 30 years ago it would be like this.
I am sure his hope is to take some passengers from CI & BR as his network is a lot smaller and he, at least right now, is not in any alliance.
It's going to be difficult to fetch any premium passengers off BR and CI as they are not in an alliance. They will likely be able to get passengers if they chase down the price.
Originally Posted by
east_west
How would a smaller network and not being in an alliance help take passengers away? And with that much capacity wouldn't BR/CI just cut prices to squeeze JX? I simply don't see anyway this can work... trying to compete with BR/CI head-on. Why not pick an unserved market with no TPE competition (DFW, IAD, BOS, SAN, PDX, ATL, LAS -- basically go after KE's network) or something like SJC that might attract people from the South Bay?
Those markets don't work. Most of those markets you listed above relies heavily on transfer markets and Starlux does not have that network. The only one that may work are SAN/SJC but then they might as well just serve LAX/ONT/SFO. SAN is only 2.5 hours away from LAX and if you leave San Diego at 7pm you will likely arrive LAX at latest 10pm (if you hit traffic), right on time for the midnight flights with many options. Maybe they can consider ONT/SAN/SJC once they get their first flight on LAX/SFO, but SJC still has the curfew problem where midnight flights are impossible to operate efficiently.
If they start they would need a market filled with Taiwanese whom are sensitive to prices willing to switch airlines. LAX is the perfect market as the international routes are dominated by numerous foreign airlines with O/Ds and no big presence of an US carrier there. It has always been very difficult to do beyond TPE transfer businesses from LAX and it will only get worse when Vietnam Airlines or Bamboo starts a direct route there. You need to be very cheap to get those VIP passengers.
In all honesty I don't see the reason for Taiwan to have 3 big/premium airlines. The only countries that I know have 3 big/premium airlines are the US and China (I am not familiar about India so I won't comment there). On top of that Starlux has no feeds from alliance partners (doubt CX will let them in), it gets really difficult to operate.