Originally Posted by
jsloan
Cargo? MNL isn't a big manufacturing hub. Government traffic for new bases, maybe, but are those bases really going to be operational in that timeframe? And I can't imagine the GSA is approving business class 60 times a day each way.
No idea what the military ships, which is why I'm curious as to why they are using 77W instead of trusty 789.
Originally Posted by
jsloan
But that goes both ways: the demand for business travel to China has been dropping. Even if you assume that HKG is really intended as a proxy for mainland China travelers -- and, excepting Pearl River Delta travelers, why wouldn't they transit TYO instead? -- the same geopolitical forces that have limited US-PRC nonstop flights have also killed the business case for a lot of US-PRC travel.
HKG still offers a lot more connections to secondary Mainland China cities than TYO/ICN. While not as convenient, it's still a better (economic) alternative for a lot of Y passengers going to FOC (Fuzhou) or TFU (Chengdu) or WUH (Wuhan). Even if it's on a separate ticket. OR they can also take the bus directly from HKG to Mainland China and take high-speed rail.