Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
I'm guessing that pulling HK out of UK agreements in 1995 might have been a preliminary step as the mid 1997 handover approached. In fact, I would have expected bigger route changes in this time period than have been reported so far in this thread. OTOH, by 2008 CX mainline had surprisingly few routes/frequencies to mainland Chinese cities beyond PEK and PVG.
You are right, the 1995 carve out was part of the handover plan. There were some interesting changes from the early 1990s onwards.
1. China would only let BA fly to Peking so there was a weekly Heathrow flight to HKG that went onwards to PEK. Known for having ultra-cheap First class tickets. When an HK airline was allowed into PEK this was pulled
2. BA also operated LHR-ANC-NRT-HKG I think it was twice weekly. The plane then operated HKG-MRU-JNB. From there it went back to London. Made for an interesting round the world journey. Again this was pulled as new arrangements were put in place
3. Also in the mid 90s CA operated a twice morning HKG-LHR flight which did not last long
4. Although Pan Am and later UA operated HKG-DEL-LHR, neither could sell tickets for direct HKG-LHR as this was counted as a domestic flight, though they dot around this apparently by selling back to back HKG-DEL/DEL-LHR tickets.
Also it is interesting to go back to when Dragonair won its licence. It was up against British competitors like BCAL with its proposed BCAL Far East plans.