Originally Posted by
coolfish1103
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.
For most travelers, especially business travelers paying 5-10K for J fares, the last thing they want to do after a 15hr flight is get in a car for another 2.5-3hrs.
Originally Posted by
coolfish1103
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.
For O&D, LA may have a huge Asian/Taiwanese population with lots of VFR, but J cabins are filled by business travelers, and Taiwan business is tech hardware, not LA's finance/legal/film/aerospace. Many of Taiwan's business customers are NA companies primarily in SFO/SAN/AUS/SEA/NYC/BOS/WAS/DFW. LA is probably in the top 10, but there isn't much more than parts of AVGO and some low-volume aerospace. But most of these companies have existing contracts...
For onward transfers, it seems JX thinks they can also serve SE-Asia with A321s so presumably they'd eventually build their transfer network on the TPE side to fill the Y cabin. I think there is an opportunity to do a better job than CI/BR of building NA feed by partnering with non-alliance players B6/AS. For example, they might find a way to serve the 5M ppl in Detroit metro that can't book a flight with BR.
All this being said, I agree that the need for a 3rd carrier seems low. Presumably JX's creditors feel those A321/A350 frames will do well on the secondary market in a couple years.