Originally Posted by
rudyjb
I mentioned this on airliners.net and I will mention it here too. Before the AS/HA acquisition announcement, DL was content to send all secondary Asia pax (SIN, KIX, SGN, etc.) via ICN. With the acquisition made public, there is now a real possibility that AS will take in HA's B789s and A332s and do SEA long-haul international with them. Since DL loves competing head-to-head with other airlines, TPE is a natural first step should they decide to rebuild SEA-Asia and preemptively compete against AS. Starlux is trying to get employees in Seattle and UA already added a red-eye SFO-TPE at the end of October. Plus, TPE is in the range of an A339. I think DL will add more Asian destinations out of Seattle once they can get more A350s and introduce the fleet type to SEA.
If AS does indeed start flying long-haul from SEA, that would be huge!
The most obvious Asian destinations missing from DL's network, imo, are HKG and SIN. The A350 has enough range to fly to both of these cities. Bastian just needs to have the courage to give this another go.