Originally Posted by
uanj
Moondog, my friend, this is not correct for the initial period of flight disruptions during covid. Perhaps I am not expressing it clearly. China initially chose an arbitrary date in March 2020 and said airlines that were flying into China on that date could resume limited flying. The problem was no foreign airlines were flying to China on that particular date while most of the Chinese airlines were still flying. This was a ridiculous measure that by fiat effectively barred foreign carriers. Moreover, during that time Chinese airlines flew additional international passenger routes as charters which were routinely approved by most countries including the US. Incredibly, it took the Trump administration until June to respond. From the NY Times June 4 2020:
"...Flights between the countries were already sharply curtailed by the pandemic and Chinese restrictions on foreign airlines that effectively halted trips by United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and American Airlines, the major U.S. carriers that go there.
China’s aviation regulators said on March 26 that they would limit foreign carriers to one flight per week based on schedules that were in place earlier that month. But those three airlines (referring to UA, AA and DL) had already stopped service to the country by then because of the coronavirus. Chinese airlines were continuing to fly to American cities (while US carriers could not fly to Chinese cities).
I don't recall the details of events during Q1 2020, but my broad recollection is that Chinese government entities were shooting from the hip in many areas. An even better example than the five ones was them locking us in our houses for 2 months starting in April 2021 with ~3 days' notice and overlooking the fact that we might want to eat. While this experience didn't do much to engender confidence, it's in the past, and now things are back on track. The same goes for commercial aviation. There is no point sobbing over all of the poorly conceived policies that CAAC and its brethren implemented.
The Chinese restrictions became a problem only in recent weeks, as Delta and United sought to resume flights to China in June. Both carriers appealed to the Civil Aviation Authority of China, but did not receive a response. U.S. Transportation Department officials also pressed Chinese officials to change their position during a call on May 14, arguing that China was in violation of a 40-year-old agreement that governs flights between the two countries and calls for rules that “equally apply to all domestic and foreign carriers” in both countries."
My understanding is that negotiations between the DOT and CAAC started in January, and reached a point of near-complete stagnation within 2 months. Furthermore, my source tells me that an air services agreement needs to be in force as a prerequisite for individual route applications.
US airlines could not resume any flights until the Trump administration threatened to block all Chinese airlines' flights into the US. DOT wants to avoid a repeat of this completely one-sided situation and maintain a 50/50 split as called for in the Air Services Agreement. Please provide a source where DOT says they want to tinker with the number of weekly flights. I have only read that they seek parity as they build up to the previous level.
As I mentioned in my previous post, throughout most of Covid, US and Chinese carriers seemed to have equivalent frequency caps (this was somewhat exciting though because there were circuit breakers that resulted in specific flights getting canceled for weeks at a time on short notice; Chinese and foreign carriers were treated equally in this regard because the circuit breakers didn't have any subjective elements).
I'm not sure if you have sources for what you say DL and AA are lobbying for or if this is conjecture. If you do, please share, I certainly would like to know because this has become a complicated, twisted issue which needs to be solved.
I don't feel comfortable sharing my source on the public internet because he is somewhat well-known. I will say that he is not currently employed by AA, DL, or UA and isn't even based China or HK anymore, but is still in the airline business, and tries to keep up to speed on these matters. He fills me in about interesting developments via WeChat every several weeks. I'll try to probe him a little more about the lobbying efforts next time I catch him, but I don't have confidence that me (or you) knowing more could bring us closer to a solution.
It may suit your or my needs better to have a free-for-all and open up the flood gates to 350 flights a week but realistically that is not going to happen. I wish there were an easy way forward but it does not look like it despite the deep frustration that abounds.
I don't know if the 2019 offer is currently on the table or could be on the table. It was in January. I also don't know the details about the France and German bilaterals, but I do know that there are now lots of flights between China and those countries again (e.g. CA, LH, and MU each do PVG-FRA daily).
Originally Posted by
JimInOhio
I know there's talk about AA and DL wanting something much different than a full 350 flights/week agreement but why would UA want that? By all accounts, they barely have enough widebody aircraft and crews to fly the current global schedule. Also, Russian airspace resctrictions might neccesitate additional frames and crews for flights from the US over the historical needs, especially those not to/from the West Coast.
I never suggested that UA would want the full schedule. Rather, if the cards fell that way, it could deal. Remember, that solution wouldn't have required much negotiation because the agreement already exists.
I can't imagine avoiding Russian airspace on EWR-PEK/PVG would necessitate extra airframes (1.5-2.5 hours additional flight time, westbound only). If CA can do it with 748s, UA's 77Ws should be fine.