Originally Posted by CLT

There goes the only OW-carrier to East Asia from WAS (IIRC JL also served IAD years ago with a 743).

Back before COVID became what it is today, and CX "temporarily" suspended IAD, I had a feeling that it wasn't going to resume. As a DC resident, I was thrilled when CX announced service to IAD, although I saw the writing on the wall when it was almost immediately down-gauged to a A359 from A35K. From the times I had taken it, the flight was almost always nearly empty. There was never a need to pay for J or PE on the route because you could almost always get a whole row in Y to yourself.

Personally, I cannot understand why the WAS market struggles with its East Asian services. There is a daily ICN service on KE (77W pre-COVID), a HND service on both UA and NH (772 and 77W respectively), and PEK on both UA and CA (787-8 and 77W, respectively). WAS is soon to be the third largest metro area in the country, and is by far the metro area with the highest income. A common argument is that IAD fails to attract long-haul routes because of the nature of the market (government-related travel). While government-related travel is important, I argue that the region has become very diversified within the last 15 years or so to the point where it isn't as large of a factor. I would have expected IAD to have both TPE (BR announced plans for IAD years back but never started) and PVG service by now (COVID-free world).

Take BOS, which is a significantly smaller market, for example, which is keeping its CX services, but also has PVG service, in addition to PEK/ICN/TYO.